{"id":23,"date":"2010-06-10T14:17:39","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T14:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html"},"modified":"2010-06-10T14:17:39","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T14:17:39","slug":"buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html","title":{"rendered":"Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses: Guess Who&#8217;s Coming to Dinner?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>My daughter is finishing sixth grade at a school that teaches world religions to middle schoolers. &nbsp;This year, they studied Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. &nbsp;Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) comes next year. &nbsp;The program is wonderful, designed by a passionate young teacher who is working on her Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of Virginia. &nbsp;The children learn about world culture, politics, geography and history through the lens of religious beliefs and practices. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For fun, I wanted to share one of her final exam questions: &#8220;If Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses all had dinner together, what do you think they would talk about? Write a creative dialogue between these four religious figures. Each should speak at least once and his words should show an understanding of his beliefs.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>How would you answer? &nbsp;What do you think Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses might talk about?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My daughter is finishing sixth grade at a school that teaches world religions to middle schoolers. &nbsp;This year, they studied Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. &nbsp;Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) comes next year. &nbsp;The program is wonderful, designed by a passionate young teacher who is working on her Ph.D. in religious studies at the University&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-religions"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses: Guess Who&#039;s Coming to Dinner? - Christianity for the Rest of Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses: Guess Who&#039;s Coming to Dinner? - Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My daughter is finishing sixth grade at a school that teaches world religions to middle schoolers. &nbsp;This year, they studied Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. &nbsp;Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) comes next year. &nbsp;The program is wonderful, designed by a passionate young teacher who is working on her Ph.D. in religious studies at the University&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-10T14:17:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Diana Butler Bass\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - Christianity for the Rest of Us","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - Christianity for the Rest of Us","og_description":"My daughter is finishing sixth grade at a school that teaches world religions to middle schoolers. &nbsp;This year, they studied Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. &nbsp;Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) comes next year. &nbsp;The program is wonderful, designed by a passionate young teacher who is working on her Ph.D. in religious studies at the University&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html","og_site_name":"Christianity for the Rest of Us","article_published_time":"2010-06-10T14:17:39+00:00","author":"Diana Butler Bass","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/buddha-shiva-muhammad-and-moses-guess-whos-coming-to-dinner.html","name":"Buddha, Shiva, Muhammad and Moses: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}