Cosmas Sarbah: “The Patriarch Abraham, His Family, and Christian-Muslim Dialogue in Contemporary Societies”

Cosmas Sarbah, a University of Ghana professor who studies comparative religion and interfaith relations, will give a lecture at YDS on Wednesday, April 5.
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Titled “The Patriarch Abraham, His Family, and Christian-Muslim Dialogue in Contemporary Societies,” the lecture will take place at 12:15 p.m. in the RSV Room (S200).
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In his lecture, Prof. Sarbah will offer a critical study of the patriarch Abraham and his immediate family from both Christian and Muslim perspectives. The religiously plural nature of today’s society, Sarbah explains, often calls for cooperation among various religious traditions for peaceful co-existence. Such cooperation works optimally when the parties can identify a common ground that serves as a rallying point for their purposeful conversation and meaningful interaction.
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Often, the image of Abraham, expressed in exclusivist terms as an ancestor of a family in both Biblical and Islamic narratives, is considered by scholars to be fundamentally unsuitable as a basis for interreligious dialogue. Sarbah argues that despite the striking differences in both Islamic and Christian perspectives, they both acknowledge and present a certain commonality of immediate family of Abraham that cannot be ignored in such discussions.
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A Catholic, Fr. Cosmas Ebo Sarbah holds a licentiate in Arabic and Islamic History from the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (Rome) and Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the Centre for Christian-Muslim Relations at the University of Birmingham (U.K.). He is a Senior Lecturer of Comparative Religion and Interreligious Dialogue at the Department for the Study of Religions (University of Ghana) and St. Peter’s Regional Seminary (Pedu). Since 2019, he has been a research fellow on Interreligious Dialogue for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ghana.