ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches out a bi-relational approach to some of the socio-religious challenges of the twenty-first century. They claim again is that a bi-relational approach to development provides a useful way to conceptualise and (re)solve some of the wicked problems that arise in relation to dyads such as faith/reason, matter/spirit and, though it use the secondary dyad with caution, religion/science. A bi-relational approach offers an understanding of developmentally different ways of knowing and relating dyadic constituents that can help to identify and (re)solve wicked socio-religious problems and conflicts. The chapter suggests that this is true whether the wicked socio-religious problem presents itself in the form of terrorism or creationism. As the emergence of neo-atheism suggests, expressions of faith have persisted well beyond the historical Age of Reason. Such epistemological dynamics can underlie very real socio-religious conflicts that play out everywhere from the family dinner table to the Gaza Strip.
