{"id":12,"date":"2008-11-25T10:11:38","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T10:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html"},"modified":"2008-11-25T10:11:38","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T10:11:38","slug":"three-rules-of-religious-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html","title":{"rendered":"Three rules of religious understanding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Krister_Stendahl\">Krister Stendahl<\/a> died earlier this year (hat tip: <a href=\"http:\/\/lehislibrary.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/17\/stendahls-three-rules-of-religious-understanding\/\">Lehi&#8217;s Library<\/a>).<br \/>\nHe was a Swedish scholar and theologian, and also served for a period<br \/>\nas the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm. In LDS circles, he is fondly<br \/>\nremembered as the author of three rules of religious understanding,<br \/>\nwhich he propounded during public debate critical of&nbsp;a planned LDS<br \/>\ntemple in Sweden. They are good rules to follow in any religious or<br \/>\ninterfaith conversation. Here are Stendahl&#8217;s three rules. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t compare your best to their worst.<\/li>\n<li>Leave room for &#8220;holy envy.&#8221; (By this Stendahl meant that you should<br \/>\nbe willing to recognize elements in the other religious tradition or<br \/>\nfaith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your<br \/>\nown religious tradition or faith.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Krister Stendahl died earlier this year (hat tip: Lehi&#8217;s Library). He was a Swedish scholar and theologian, and also served for a period as the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm. In LDS circles, he is fondly remembered as the author of three rules of religious understanding, which he propounded during public debate critical of&nbsp;a planned LDS&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interfaith"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Three rules of religious understanding - Mormon Inquiry<\/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\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three rules of religious understanding - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Krister Stendahl died earlier this year (hat tip: Lehi&#8217;s Library). He was a Swedish scholar and theologian, and also served for a period as the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm. In LDS circles, he is fondly remembered as the author of three rules of religious understanding, which he propounded during public debate critical of&nbsp;a planned LDS&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-25T10:11:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Three rules of religious understanding - Mormon Inquiry","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\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Three rules of religious understanding - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"Krister Stendahl died earlier this year (hat tip: Lehi&#8217;s Library). He was a Swedish scholar and theologian, and also served for a period as the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm. In LDS circles, he is fondly remembered as the author of three rules of religious understanding, which he propounded during public debate critical of&nbsp;a planned LDS&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html","og_site_name":"Mormon Inquiry","article_published_time":"2008-11-25T10:11:38+00:00","author":"Dave Banack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html","name":"Three rules of religious understanding - Mormon Inquiry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-25T10:11:38+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-25T10:11:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/11\/three-rules-of-religious-under.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Three rules of religious understanding"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/","name":"Mormon Inquiry","description":"Mormon News and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f","name":"Dave Banack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","caption":"Dave Banack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/author\/dbanack"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}