Religious Freedom in the Baptistic Vision and in Fethullah Gülen: Resources for Muslims and Christians

The chapter explores the place of religious freedom in both the Baptistic vision of Christianity and the teaching of the Turkish Muslim scholar, Fethullah Gulen. It does so by outlining the historic roots of the Baptistic vision of religious freedom in an England in which one form of Christianity was the established religion, and of Fethullah Gulen's teaching on religious freedom, emerging as it does out of the crucible of modern Turkish society and its encounter with the "secular". Also uncovered are their specific epistemological and hermeneutical roots which are discussed in relation the imperatives that both Islam and Christianity have towards Muslim "dawah" and Christian witness/mission. All of this leads into a summative critical discussion of the way in which both the Baptistic vision and Gulen's teachings on religious freedom can act as positive resources in the development of a plural and global society in which the exercise of religious freedom can take place in ways appropriate to a healthy relationship between the state and civil society, including the religious believers within it.