Dr. Ifi Amadiume is a full Professor of Religion and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Religion and the AAAS Program at Dartmouth College.

Professor of Theology Emeritus at Xavier University, Cincinnati, and co-editor Paul Knitter received a Licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (1966) and a doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany (1972). Most of his research and publications have dealt with religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue.

David R. Loy is Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University, Chigasaki, Japan. for many years, he is qualified as a sensei in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition.

Chandra Muzaffar, a Malaysian political scientist, was the first Director of the Center for Civilizational Dialogue at the University of Malaya and is the president of a Malaysian-based international NGO, the International Movement for a Just World.

Sallie McFague is presently Distinguished Theologian in Residence at the Vancouver School of Theology and, for thirty years, taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

Norman Solomon is a member of the Faculties of Theology and of Oriental Studies at Oxford University.

Swami Agni Vesh serves as chair of the United Nations Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery and the Bandhua Mukti Morcha (Bonded Labor Liberation Front). Zhou Qin received her Ph.D. in Chinese intellectual history from Harvard and is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore.

This was an opportunity we could not afford to let slip by. That, essentially, was the way Dr. Chandra Muzaffar and I responded to the invitation from the Boston Research Center to edit this book. Even though our plates were full, we knew we just had to find room for this project because we felt the urgent necessity--along with a growing number of academicians and activists around the world--of bringing the global reality of "the market" and the global reality of "the religions" into conversation. These ever-present realities are two global powers that, for too long, have neglected each other and this book offered an opportunity to do something about that.

On the one hand, the increasingly globalized market is producing unprecedented wealth; but at the same time it is producing an ever-greater disparity between the comfortably rich and the suffering poor. On the other hand, the religious communities, each in different ways, warn of the dangers when excessive attachment to "worldly matters" gets in the way of "what really matters." In other words, the economy should matter for the religions, and the captains of the economy might do well to listen to religious leaders and mystics. But first, the world«s religious communities must talk more openly with each other about how they would talk about the global economy. Only then could we expect economic leaders to listen attentively. The hope of stimulating such a dialogue is the motivation behind the conception of this book and it explains why Dr. Muzaffar and I wanted to help.

As we met for the first time with Ginny Straus, executive director of the Boston Research Center (BRC), to clarify our vision for this book, I remembered a parable from the ancient Confucian philosopher Mencius. In order to illustrate what he believed was in the heart of every human being, Mencius proposed the image of a child sitting on the edge of a well. The child loses its balance and is about to fall into the depths of the well. Mencius was convinced that any human being walking past and witnessing the child about to fall would immediately, instinctively, spontaneously reach out to save the child. This is what human beings would naturally do, he proposed. Such a natural response illustrates what Mencius called "the mind that cannot bear the sufferings of others." When we meet another human who is suffering and about to fall to his or her death, we naturally find ourselves reaching out to help. The suffering of others touches and calls forth something within ourselves, something that defines our humanity.

That, I think, is what is starting to happen within the religious communities of the world. The child perched precariously on the edge of the well, however, has multiplied to become the millions of human beings facing the threat of economic poverty, homelessness, and disease. These people are tottering on the edge of starvation or, worse, watching themselves and their children fall into death or despair. It is this vast population of suffering poor who are currently calling out to the religious communities of the world. More and more, religious persons are noticing, responding, and reaching out as they realize that each of them possesses "the mind that cannot bear the suffering of others."

The essays in this book recognize and record how persons from differing religious beliefs and backgrounds are responding to those among us who are confronting economic despair. At the same time, this book also addresses what is happening to and among the religions when they so respond. Expanding on Mencius«s image, we might say that the religions, having reached out, held, and come to know the child, find that the child--in the form of suffering humanity--unexpectedly returns the favor. In short, in responding to the economic plight of the poor, the religions are realizing that the poor are aiding them to better know themselves and to better understand each other. Members of religious groups even find themselves better able to relate to the broader world, including the secular or non-religious people of the world, as a result of their desire to help. Clearly, reaching out is a gesture that comes full circle as the poor undergo a metamorphosis from the objects of religious concern to a subjective force that turns around and helps religions fulfill their own best intentions. In this way, the poor are becoming the mediators who build bridges and new avenues of communication which enable religions to talk amongst themselves, with the broader academic community, and especially with the world of economists and politicians.