Religious pluralism is an attitude or policy regarding the diversity of religious belief systems co-existing in society. It can indicate one or more of the following:

Religious pluralism, to paraphrase the title of a recent academic work, goes beyond mere toleration. Chris Beneke, in Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism, explains the difference between religious tolerance and religious pluralism by pointing to the situation in the late 18th century United States. By the 1730s, in most colonies religious minorities had obtained what contemporaries called religious toleration: "The policy of toleration relieved religious minorities of some physical punishments and some financial burdens, but it did not make them free from the indignities of prejudice and exclusion. Nor did it make them equal. Those 'tolerated' could still be barred from civil offices, military positions, and university posts." In short, religious toleration is only the absence of religious persecution, and does not necessarily preclude religious discrimination. However, in the following decades something extraordinary happened in the Thirteen Colonies, at least if one views the events from "a late eighteenth-century perspective." Gradually the colonial governments expanded the policy of religious toleration, but then, between the 1760s and the 1780s, they replaced it with "something that is usually called religious liberty." Mark Silka, in "Defining Religious Pluralism in America: A Regional Analysis", states that Religious pluralism "enables a country made up of people of different faiths to exist without sectarian warfare or the persecution of religious minorities. Understood differently in different times and places, it is a cultural construct that embodies some shared conception of how a country's various religious communities relate to each other and to the larger nation whole."

Marcus J. Borg (born 1942) is an American New Testament scholar, theologian and author. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar and was formerly Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, a position from which he retired in 2007. Borg is among the most widely-known and influential voices in progressive Christianity and is a major figure in scholarship related to the Historical Jesus.

Borg was born and raised in a Lutheran family in South Dakota. After high school he attended Concordia College in Minnesota, initially planning to be an astrophysicist and majoring in math and physics. He later changed his major to political science and philosophy. Though plagued by doubt as a young adult, after his undergraduate studies Borg decided to study at Union Seminary in New York City, where he became familiarized with liberal theology. One of the profound influences on Borg during his seminary years was his professor and the noted theologian W. D. Davies. After graduating from Union he then enrolled at Oxford University, where he earned his D. Phil.

Eboo Patel is a member of President Barack Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships. He is an American Muslim of Gujarati Indian heritage and founder and president of the Interfaith Youth Core[1], a Chicago-based international nonprofit that aims to promote interfaith cooperation.

Patel grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where he attended Glenbard South High School. He has a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. Patel attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for his undergraduate studies.