Fr Michael Barnes SJ is a graduate of London, Oxford and Cambridge universities. He has taught Buddhism at the Pontifical University in Rome and has been a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome.
He became the Director of Westminster Interfaith in 1991. An academic, Fr Michael specialises in interreligious dialogue with a particular interest in the religions of the Indian sub-continent and has strengthened the theological underpinning of a movement that was breaking new theological ground. Fr Michael ran Westminster Interfaith for four years before moving to doctorate studies in Cambridge. Fr Michael has taught at Heythrop College in the University of London since 1981, where he is Reader and Senior Tutor in Interreligious Relations.
He runs the de Nobili Inter-faith Centre in Southall, West London, and is responsible for Faiths Together, an innovative programme at Heythrop which promotes interreligious literacy through a programme of seminars, lectures, visits and conversations. He also lectures on Christianity at the Muslim College, Ealing.
Books
Religions in Conversation, London: SPCK 1989
God East and West, London: SPCK, 1991
Walking the City, Delhi: ISPCK, 1999
Traces of the Other, Chennai: Satya Nilayam, 2000
Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge: CUP, 2002
Interreligious Learning, Cambridge: CUP, 2011.
Articles
‘Judging and Being Judged: on the Responsibilities of Faith’, in Robert Crusz et al, (eds), Encounters with the Word, Colombo: Ecumenical Institute, 2004; ‘The Intimacy of Distance: on Faith Learning from Faith’, Spiritus, 6.1; Spring 2006; ‘With God in the World: a Dialogue between the Bhagavad Gītā and the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola’, in Catherine Cornille (ed), Song Divine: Christian Commentaries on the Bhagavad Gītā, Leuven: Peeters Press and Eerdmans, 2006; ‘Way and Wilderness: an Augustinian Dialogue with Buddhism’, in Kim Paffenroth (ed), Augustine and World Religions, Lanham: Lexington books, 2008; and articles on spirituality and interreligious dialogue in the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, Philip Sheldrake (ed), London: SCM, 2005, and The Blackwells Companion to Christian Spirituality, Arthur Holder (ed), Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
