‘You shall 
love the Lord your God … and you shall love your neighbour as yourself’. This double love command of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, is the inspiration for a research project begun in collaboration with the Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Amman, Jordan. The project is the context for the appointment of the “H.M. King Abdullah ibn al-Hussein II of Jordan Fellowship for the Study of Love in Religion”, and the first aim of the post and the project is discovery of the nature of love, divine and human, as ultimate reality.
While drawing on the theological and aesthetic resources of different religious traditions, the first aim of the project is to explore the research question: what grounds are there for thinking that love, in 
religious consciousness and practice today, is the ultimate reality of the universe? The underlying conviction is that a study of the phenomenon of love is, finally, discovery of the nature and activity of God in the world. From 2016 to 2020 the project worked on this issue with the help of partners from Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and with funding from the John Templeton Foundation.
Leading on from this primary aim is its practical actualization. The project aims to explore ways in which the commands to love God and neighbour should have an effect on critical aspects of our life in the world today. From 2021-2024 the attention of the project turned to ecology, asking what impact ‘loving the planet’ might have on the present environmental crisis, including the challenge of global warming. From 2024-2026 the project is exploring a related issue, the place that the double love command should have in business and the structure of economics. The intention from 2026 is to focus on an issue which is entangled in both the ecological crisis and the concerns of business, namely artificial intelligence.
Love in Religion 