The latest issue of Faith and Freedom (Volume 24 Part 2, Autumn and Winter 2021, Number 193) is now ready and on its way to subscribers. There has been a slight delay but it is now ready and available to subscribers old and new.

In this issue we are delighted to have Margot Stevenson’s fascinating examination of the life and achievements of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922): ‘Hindu reformer, scholar and educator, feminist and Christian’. Her religious affiliation changed during her lifetime, but while she became a Christian she was far from being an advocate for proselytism. Both a scholar and an activist she taught in the United States and United Kingdom and also set up schools in India. Although a convert she did not abandon her Hindu culture and Indian forms. Within Christianity she changed direction a few times and was linked to Unitarians for a time. Most of all she was defined by an ardent desire to ameliorate the lot of women, girls and widows in Indian society and would go to great lengths to personally rescue young girls who had been married as children and were subsequently widowed and faced a life of misery as a result. Her article also includes a number of illustrations of Ramabai and her work, a person who, in the words of Margot Stevenson, still ‘exudes a mysterious charisma’, almost a century after her death.

Barrie Needham asks about the idea of progress in religion (a very pertinent question for our journal since Faith and Freedom has described itself as ‘a journal of progressive religion’ since it was instituted in 1947). Truth, discovery about God, moral norms, a fulfilling life – how do we define a progressive religion?

Esther Suter is a journalist and ordained pastor in the Swiss Evangelical Church. She writes about ‘How do we become human?’ in the context of Fritz Buri (1907-1995) one of the most prominent liberal theologians in Europe in the twentieth century. An active member of the IARF with many close associations with Unitarians, Fritz Buri was a disciple of Albert Schweitzer who developed and extended his theology in his long career.

Csaba Tódor, a Unitarian minister and educator in Transylvania, looks at the difficulties experienced by churches behind what was once the ‘iron curtain’ as they transition and their societies transition from the centrally planned, authoritarian system of the Communist era to the market-led liberal democracies of the present era.

Helena Fyfe Thonemann gives us her exegesis of ‘Christ’s fury in the Jerusalem Temple at Passover, and the problem of vicarious sacrifice’ which looks at the meaning of communion in the context of replacing the covenant of the Old Testament.

As always we have some important reviews including Marcus Braybrooke on Andy Bannister, Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?, (Inter-Varsity Press, 2021) and Peter Godfrey on Brian Holley’s personal journey ‘from fundamentalism to faith’. In addition Andrew Hill reviews Samuel Haliday by the editor of the journal and Mary Stewart’s book on her church graveyard.

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The illustration at the top of this page shows Pupils of Pandita Ramabai at the Sharada Sadan, Poona (Pune) from Helen Dyer, Pandita Ramabai: The Story of Her Life (1900)