Tales of saints, whether told by their adherents or detractors, frequently featured the holy persons dealings with members of other religions or cultures, or the stories themselves were appropriated by different religious or cultural groups. As such narratives moved from one social, cultural, religious or chronological milieu to another, the representation and meaning of the given holy person and the manner of his/her dealing with the religious other also often changed. As basic storylines remained recognizable, (...) the transformations of specific details often provide important clues about shifts in attitudes over time and between communities. This volume provides a varied array of case studies of this process, ranging from early China to various Christian, Muslim and Jewish cultural contexts in the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. (shrink)

In this book, Marianne Moyaert develops a new interreligious appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy. Viewed in context of his philosophical, anthropological, and ethical work, Ricoeur’s fragmentary reflections on the encounters between religions provide insights on global cooperation practices and religious identity concerns.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ahmadis: Community, Gender, and Politics in a Muslim Society. By Antonio Gualtieri. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 192. Hardcover $65.00. Paper Cdn $24.95 / U.S. $19.95.American Knees. By Shawn Wong. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 229. Paper $14.95.The Art of Worldly Wisdom. By Baltasar Gracian and translated by Joseph Jacobs. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. (...) xiii + 114. Paper $5.95.Bashō's Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō. Translated by David Landis Barnhill. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xvii + 191. Hardcover $59.50. Paper $17.95.Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice. By Laurie L. Patton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 289. Hardcover $49.95/£32.50.Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. viii + 145. Hardcover $89.95.A Chinese Ethics for the New Century: The Ch'ien Mu Lectures in History and Culture, and Other Essays on Science and Confucian Ethics. By Donald J. Munro. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. Pp. xlv + 158. Hardcover $33.00.Chinese Theories of Reading and Writing: A Route to Hermeneutics and Open Poetics. By Ming Dong Gu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 334. Hardcover $85.00.A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang: The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs, and City Life. By Christopher Hutton and Kingsley Bolton. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 492. Paper $28.00.Ghazālī and the Poetics of Imagination. By Ebrahim Moosa. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 349. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $22.50.Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya. Edited by William M. Bodiford. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp. x + 317. Hardcover $48.00.The Harem: Inside the Grand Seraglio of the Turkish Sultans. By N. M. Penzer. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. 277. Paper $14.95.Ideals of the East: The Spirit of Japanese Art. By Kakuzo Okakura. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. xiv + 106. Paper $5.95. [End Page 365]An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. By Jing-Nuan Wu. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 706. Price not given.Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations. By S. D. Goitein. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. xv + 263. Paper $12.95.The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō. By Robert J. J. Wargo. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp xi + 241. Paper $25.00.The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. By Raghavan N. Iyer. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 449. Paper Rs 520.00.Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. By T. K. Seung. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. Pp. xxviii + 370. Hardcover $83.00. Paper $27.95.Of Guilds, Companies, Corporations, and Governance: A Conceptual Sketch. By Leonardo R. Silos. Makati City, Philippines: Asian Institute of Management, 2005. Pp. xvi + 238. Price not given.The Path to Rome. By Hilaire Belloc. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. ix + 251. Paper $12.95.The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgātā : A Study based on the Evaluation of the Commentaries of Śamkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva. By S. M. Srinivasa Chari. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2005. Pp. xxvi + 294. Hardcover Rs 575.00.The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. By Kalyan Sen Gupta. Burlington, VT: Ash-gate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. ix + 103. Hardcover $79.95.The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse. By Thomas Michael. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 170. Hardcover $60.00. Paper $21.95.Three Mountains and Seven Rivers: Prof. Musashi Tachikawa's Felicitation Volume. Edited by Shoun Hino and Toshihiro Wada. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 2004. Pp. xx + 903. Hardcover Rs. 1800.The Unity of Mystical Traditions: The Transformation of Consciousness in Tibetan and German Mysticism. By Randall Studstill. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Pp. xii + 304. Hardcover @89/$127.00.Writing the World: On Globalization. Edited by David... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mullā Sadrā. By Christian Jambet. Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2006. Pp. 497. Hardcover $38.95.Analysis in Śaṅkara Vedānta: The Philosophy of Ganeswar Misra. Edited by Bijayananda Kar. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2006. Pp. xxv + 190. Hardcover Rs. 240.00.Bhakti and Philosophy. By R. Raj Singh. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006. Pp. 112. Hardcover $65.00.Brahman and the Ethos of Organization. (...) By Leonard R. Silos. Paseo de Roxas: Asian Institute of Management, 2006. Pp. xix + 344. Price not given.Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. viii + 145. Hardcover $89.95.Classical Northern Wu Style Tai Ji Quan: The Fighting Art of the Manchurian Palace Guard. By Tina Chunna Zhang and Frank Allen. Berkeley: Blue Snake Books, 2006. Pp. xiii + 203. Paper $21.95.Classical Sāṃkhya and Yoga: An Indian Metaphysics of Experience. By Mikel Burley. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Pp. xiv + 226. Price not given.Comparative Philosophy and Religion in Times of Terror. Edited by Douglas Allen. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006. Pp. xiv + 257. Hardcover $62.00. Paper $32.00.Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. By B. Alan Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. vii + 211. Hardcover $29.50, £19.00.Contexts and Dialogue: Yogācāra Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind. By Tao Jiang. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 198. Paper $20.00.Dialogue Transcultural. Edited by Yue Diayun et al. Nanjing: Jiangsu Peoples Press, 2006. Pp. 335. Price not given.Dōgen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen. By Hee-Jin Kim. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 169. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.The Garden of Loneliness: A Translation of Jayshankar Prasad's Āṅsū, "Tears." By Charles S. J. White. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2006. Pp. xv + 136. Hardcover Rs. 295. [End Page 608]The Happening of Tradition: Vallabha on Anumāna in Nyāyalīlāvatī. By Anna-Pya Sjödin. Stockholm: Elanders Gotab, 2006. Pp. 195. Price not given.Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature. By Reiko Ohnuma. 2006. Pp. xvii + 372. Hardcover $45.00, £29.00.Hwa Yu T'ai Chi Ch'uan: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Five-Word Song. By Glenn D. Newth. Berkeley: Blue Snake Books, 2007. Pp. xiii + 160. U.S. $18.95. Can $24.95.A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad: 'Izz al-Dawla Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) and His Writings. By Reza Pourjavady and Sabine Schmidtke. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. Pp. xii + 274. Hardcover $130.00, €100.Letting Be: Fred Dallmayr's Cosmopolitical Vision. Edited by Stephen F. Schneck. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Pp. x + 382. Paper $35.00.Myth and the Existential Quest. By Vassilis Vitsaxis and translated by Deborah Brown Kazazis and Vassilis Vitsaxis. Boston: Somerset Hall Press, 2006. Pp. 301. Hardcover $49.95. Paper $39.95.Nietzsche-Buddha-Zarathustra: Eine West-Ost Konfiguration. By Michael Skowron. Daegu: Kyungpook National University Press, 2006. Pp. 293. Paper $18.00, Won 17,000.Popularizing Buddhism: Preaching as Performance in Sri Lanka. By Mahinda Deegalle. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 241. Hardcover $65.00. Paper $21.95.Ramana Maharashi: The Sage of Arunachala. By Arvind Sharma. New Delhi: Penquin Group, 2006. Pp. 215. Hardcover Rs. 295.Readings in Han Chinese Thought. Edited and translated by Mark Csikszentmihalyi. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006. Pp. xxx + 220. Hardcover $39.95. Paper $14.95.Religions of Korea in Practice. Edited by Robert E. Buswell Jr. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xx + 542. Paper $24.95, £15.95.The Scripture on Great Peace: The Taiping jing and the Beginnings of Daoism. By Barbara Hendrischke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. x + 410. Hardcover $60.00, £38.95.The Self 's Awareness of Itself: Bhaṭṭa Rāmakantha's Arguments against the Buddhist Doctrine of No-Self. By Alex Watson. Vienna: Sammlung de Nobili, 2006. Pp. 433. Price not given... (shrink)

_Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other_ examines the hermeneutics of interreligious encounter, investigating the implicit judgments of Judaism and Islam that often arise in contexts of conflict.

This article aims at exploring some recent developments in Catholic Church's recent relationship with religious others. It does so by exploring the theological-anthropological sources behind Vatican II and some subsequent Papal teachings concerning the Church's mission of dialogue. Specifically, it discusses the notion of common origin, destiny and common humanity as sources for praxis-oriented and faith-based initiatives in a Christian-Muslim dialogue. This article is divided into three sub-sections. First, it considers the Catholic Church's renewed dialogue with non-Christian believers, with (...) particular focus on the theological-anthropological turn in recent Church teaching. Second, it examines the prospects and challenges of Christian-Muslim dialogue based on belief in God the creator and divine revelation, and human beings' response to divine manifestations in history. Finally, it considers some faith-based humanistic and dialogic initiatives that emerge from the Christian-Muslim confession of one creator God. The paper suggests that a theology of dialogue that understands the world and human beings as the realm of encounter, uncovering and necessitating the divine and the Church's activity in human history, can foster faith-based humanistic and dialogic initiatives between Christians and Muslims. (shrink)

Call a belief ”non-negotiable’ if one cannot abandon the belief without the abandonment of one’s religious perspective. Although non-negotiable beliefs can logically exclude other perspectives, a non-reductive approach to religious pluralism can help to create a space within which the non- negotiable beliefs of others that contradict one’s own non-negotiable beliefs can be appreciated and understood as playing a justificatory role for the other. The appreciation of these beliefs through cognitive resonance plays a crucial role to (...) enable the understanding of those who hold other perspectives. epistemological and spiritual consequences of this claim are explored. (shrink)

Cet article expose une analyse sémique d’un ensemble de mots, diffusé par le biais du discours religieux, censé présenter une définition des « non-musulmans ». Il s’agit, essentiellement, de montrer en quoi des mots (polythéiste, idolâtre, mécréant, athée, protégé, Nazaréens, chrétiens, Juifs, égaré), figurant dans le discours d’un prédicateur musulman, façonnent, d’une manière systémique, des images, des imaginaires, et peuvent potentiellement véhiculer une représentation altérée de l’Autre. Ces occurrences, généralement spécifiques à un balisage exégétique ou canonique, débordent de leurs contextes (...) et s’utilisent comme concepts génériques dans la prédication contemporaine. En circulation sur le Web et employés hors de leur contexte historique, ces discours sur l’Altérité, révèlent l’ambiguïté qu’engendre une assimilation d’un ensemble de mots, sémantiquement différents, sous l’hyperonyme de « non-musulmans ». (shrink)

Call a belief ‘non-negotiable’ if one cannot abandon the belief without the abandonment of one’s religious perspective. Although non-negotiable beliefs can logically exclude other perspectives, a non-reductive approach to religious pluralism can help to create a space within which the non- negotiable beliefs of others that contradict one’s own non-negotiable beliefs can be appreciated and understood as playing a justificatory role for the other. The appreciation of these beliefs through cognitive resonance plays a crucial role to (...) enable the understanding of those who hold other perspectives. epistemological and spiritual consequences of this claim are explored. (shrink)

Nevertheless, the work is not a standard handbook of religious information. It is written with intelligent passion, and is stamped with the urgency of an author who senses the importance of his inquiry. Professor Dupré advances a thesis with implications not always easy to discern in the complex discussions that propose it. Moreover, he clearly means us to use caution in applying his interpretation to data which have not formed the basis of his thesis. He writes most about what (...) he knows best, and places his emphasis upon the Christian religion. The book is not simply a study of a particular religion, however, because the author undertakes to interpret themes that are fundamental to most religions. Followers of other religions as well as non-believers may agree with much of what he has written, but he leaves to others the manner and extent to which his views may be extrapolated to non-Christian religions. To sum up, then: the context within which he writes includes his understanding of the religious past, the plurality of world religions and the emergence of secularism; his focus is upon Christian religious experience; and his intention is to formulate a comprehensive and contemporary view of the meaning of religion in modern life. (shrink)

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment (...) of a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

I address the long-standing problem of toleration in diverse liberal societies in light of the progress of same-sex marriage and continued vehement opposition to it from a significant portion of the population. I advance a view that contrasts with recent discussions by Teresa Bejan, Mere Civility, and especially Cecile Laborde, Liberalism’s Religion. Laborde emphasizes the importance of state sovereignty in fixing the boundaries of church and state, emphasizing the priority of public authority and constitutional supremacy. I argue that emphasis on (...) priority needs to be complemented by a recognition of the importance of forms of reconciliation that go beyond ‘mere civility’. Reflections on toleration in the liberal and democratic traditions – including in the canonical discussions of Locke, Rousseau, Smith and Tocqueville, and in more recent political science – have recognized that the health of liberal democracy benefits enormously from the educative and morally formative resources furnished by religious c... (shrink)

This book argues that the othering and criminalization of Black people in times of crisis is part of the religious meaning of America that fuels the problem of mass incarceration. The author develops a religious interpretation of the significance of these images to America’s political economy the produces the very problems we punish as a society.

Accepting Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarratives” as its definition of postmodernism, and Derrida’s “openness to the other” as deconstruction’s contribution to it this essay distinguishes three species of postmodernism: minimal (we have no believable metanarratives), mainline (they are unavailable in principle), and polemical (“good riddance!”). It then argues that the religious impulse challenges all three of these contentions. Contra polemical postmodernism, metanarratives/worldviews are needed. Contra mainline postmodernism, reliable ones are possible. And contra minimal postmodernism, they already exist - in (...) the world’s great, enduring religious traditions. (shrink)

The Elementary Forms Of The Religious Life: Translated From The French By Joseph Ward Swain, M.A. This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, (...) graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING! (shrink)

William James called his classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, "a study in human nature." This volume recognizes that a fundamental feature of human nature for James is that we have a conscious and a subconscious mind and that the subconscious mind is deeply implicated in the religious life, especially in conversion and other experiences of spiritual enlightenment. In this volume, Capps addresses religious melancholy, the divided self and discordant personality, religious conversion, the saintly (...) character, and the prayerful consciousness. In addition, the cases of two clergymen--one deeply troubled, the other exemplary of the spiritual person--are also presented. A brief discussion of James's view of religion as the generator of hope concludes this introduction to his insights into the religious life. Given that James was a popular writer in his own day, this book is intended to make his insights accessible to general readers. (shrink)

Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious (...) epistemologies. In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argument by exploring St Augustine’s response to Meno’s Paradox, and his radical claim that only Christ can be called ‘teacher’. Though ancient, this view of the relationship of the teacher and student to knowledge may seem surprisingly contemporary because of its emphasis on the independence of the learner. Although our argument is grounded in classic texts of the Western tradition, we suggest that arguments could be made by drawing on similar resources in other religious traditions, such as Islam, that also draw upon the Platonic tradition and similarly emphasise the importance of communal and personal acts of worship. (shrink)

Racism is again a burning issue in our country. One may define racism as the conviction that not all humans are equal, but that some are ‘worthier’ than others. Usually those who are regarded as ‘unworthy humans’ are not treated on par with the rest. The ‘othering’ of humans in the Western world did not commence in the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th centuries. It is argued that the roots of racism in the Western world date back to the 1st (...) century CE when the early Christians severed their ties with the Jewish people and their religion, and started humiliating and denigrating them. Traces of this can be found in the New Testament in inter alia John 8:44, Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. The Jewish people and their synagogues were associated with the Devil. However, Paul also contributed to the anti-Judaism sentiments of early Christians. He argued that the gospel superseded the law. This eventually led to the conviction that Christianity superseded Judaism, and that Jews and Judaism ranked lower than Christians and Christianity. These beliefs created fertile soil for the development of racism in the Western world. The article presents a brief overview of the history of Christianity, how it developed, how it became the state religion of the Roman Empire and the dominant religion in the Western world, and how the religious convictions fed into the sociopolitical and economic policies of the Western world. The article delivers a plea for accepting the view that all religions are human constructs and that their adherents need to meet the ‘other’ on an equal footing. The Western world especially needs to look at how Christianity contributed to the way it treated other people during the course of history. (shrink)

This paper is positioned within broader scholarly debates about ritual‐religious and psychological elements underlying the phenomenon of altered states of mind in Egyptian Muslim contexts. This research examines the intricate relationships between ritual, consciousness, and the unseen/unknowable world reflected in the imagination and practices of urban and rural communities belonging administratively to the city of Tanta in Egypt. This comparative study proposes that the image of the embodied invisible Other, in both benevolent and malevolent forms, impacts the state (...) of consciousness of persons participating in two different rituals, the zikr (remembrance of God) and the zār (the exorcism of spirits). This inquiry concentrates on the transformation of the states of people's consciousness, namely the majzūb (those mystically attracted to God) and the malbūs (those possessed by spirits), through embodied engagement with the invisible Other that is made visible through participation in the ritual performances of the zikr and/or the zār. Rituals performed by Egyptians, particularly those who experience altered states of consciousness, display both a psychic (emotional) experience and an encounter with the invisible Other that may be depicted as divine or otherwise non‐divine. Each case of the zikr ritual and zār cult relates to its participants' perception of reality. (shrink)

Whilst significant research has been conducted on religious affiliation and on general levels of religiosity in the South African context, few studies specifically investigated the religious lives of South African university students in a comprehensive way. This is unfortunate as such research could significantly inform and support the effectiveness of youth and student ministries. As such, this article explored the religious lives of students at a university in the Gauteng province of South Africa, focusing specifically on students' (...) self-assessed religiosity, the maturity of their religious attitudes, their spiritual well-being, the religious practices in which they engage and the relationship between such practices and their spiritual well-being. Gender, racial and religious differences concerning these variables were also investigated. Data were collected from 356 undergraduate students by means of a structured survey consisting of the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire, the Religious Fundamentalism Scale and two other scales aimed at assessing religiosity and religious practices. Results indicated that 98.9% of participants were religious with the majority being Christian. Generally, students espoused highly fundamentalist religious attitudes but had high levels of spiritual well-being. Prayer and virtual or in-person attendance of religious gatherings such as church services were the most prevalent religious practices whereas fasting and meditation were practiced least. All practices were positively correlated with students' spiritual well-being. Based on these findings, the article concludes with several specific, practical recommendations relevant to student ministries and those working with university students in religious contexts. (shrink)

The paper analyses the relations of the Communist authorities with religious communities in Montenegro in the period 1945 - 1955. The paper separately problematises specific features of each confessional community in Montenegro, and establishes a typology of the expansion of regime control. The Communist Party did not use violent methods in the process of marginalising the religious community, but new authorities in Montenegro managed to marginalise its influence. By taking over the executive authority in the state, the Party (...) began the process of marginalising the religious communities. The process of excluding religious communities from social life started. Their activity was limited to constitutional and legal provisions and later on prohibition of all forms of religious behaviour in public life. Results of the process of secularisation were much better than in other Yugoslav republics. Montenegro had 31.5% of the population atheists, and this was significantly more than the Yugoslavian average, which amounted for 12.5% of the population. (shrink)

The article defines the nature of the Russian war against Ukraine in the context of social and state transformations of the 20th — 21st centuries. It is emphasized that this is a war of different worlds, mentalities, worldviews, ways of life, values, etc., which has been going on for many centuries in various forms (direct and mediated, open and veiled, hot and cold). The role of the religious-legal factor in the Russian war against Ukraine at various stages of Ukrainian (...) state formation (periods of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, Soviet, modern) is revealed. It is emphasized that it was during the time of the Ukrainian People’s Republic that the legal basis for the organization of the Ukrainian Local Orthodox Church, confessional differentiation and the establishment of freedom of conscience and interconfessional tolerance in Ukrainian society was created. Emphasized attention is paid to the fact that in the Soviet period, the Russian war against Ukraine continued in a new, veiled, hidden, invisible (at first glance) form with the active use of the religious factor. The results of this period have been determined, namely: rampant militant/ scientific atheism, radical extermination, Russification of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, liquidation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, etc. Special attention is paid to the Soviet secular/political religion (Marxism-Leninism) as a key basis for the implementation of an aggressive policy regarding the historical memory and cultural identity of the Ukrainian people and a manipulative tool for the destruction of Ukrainian history, culture, worldview, nation, state and law in the information, hybrid, total, full-scale and other Russia’s wars against Ukraine. The article substantiates that improved legislation with an effective legal mechanism for its implementation, a strong civil society with developed institutions, including the institution of religion (church), adequate guarantees of religious rights and freedoms are important factors in ensuring state, national, religious security and victory of Ukraine (at the current stage) in the war waged against it by the Russian Federation. (shrink)

The national hero of the present-day Albania is Skanderbeg’s father, Gjon (Yuvan) Kastrioti. Despite the fact that the Albanians tried to resist the Ottomans expeditions during the reign of Gjon, they were eventually defeated. As a result of this defeat by Sultan Murad II in 1423, Gjon was forced to give his four sons as captives. The youngest of his children was Skanderbeg, who together with three older brothers was given as captive due to the defeat by the Ottomans, had (...) to reside in the palace for many years. During this time, he had the opportunity to obtain a remarkable Ottoman education and to benefit from other privileges provided for them. It is obvious that the facilities provided by the Ottomans as well as the personal abilities and skills he gained in the Ottoman Empire enabled him to achieve successes in various fields. Therefore, he was able to be promoted to important positions within the Ottoman Empire. However, some of his demands were rejected and he became deprived from some of privileges granted to him due to the promises and incentives of the opponents of the Ottomans and some small victories resulting from his father's dominance in the direction of rebellion. During this rebellion against the Ottomans, they have received both material and spiritual aid Western powers as result the warm relations they enjoyed with the Western powers. In addition, these warm relations gave the opportunity to be acquainted with the Western culture. In the course of events, it can easily be said that Skanderbeg became a renowned figure not only in the Eastern culture but also in the Western culture. After his rebellion against the Ottomans, he denounced Islam and returned to his former Christian faith. There have always been controversies about the sect he adopted related to the Christian belief whether became a Catholic or Orthodox Christian. Although he had close ties with the Pope, the greatest enemy of the Ottoman Empire, his rebellions against the Ottomans did not originate from his religion.In this study, we appealed mostly to the daily reports of the priests of the time, primarily in Albanian and Turkish and English as well. In terms of Ottoman and Turkish - Albanian relations, the issue is a very important one and therefore has occasionally been evaluated in view of the historical perspective of religions. (shrink)

Contemporary bioethics generally stipulates that public moral deliberation must avoid allowing religious beliefs to influence or justify health policy and law. Secular premises and arguments are assumed to maintain the neutral, common ground required for moral deliberation in the public square of a pluralistic society. However, a careful examination of non-theistic arguments used to justify euthanasia (regarding contested notions of human dignity, individual autonomy, and death as annihilation) reveals a dependence on metaethical and metaphysical beliefs that are not universally (...) accepted in a pluralistic society. Such beliefs function in non-theistic arguments in the same way that foundational beliefs justify moral convictions in religious frameworks of belief. This parallel is apparent when religious belief is defined broadly (_a la_ John Reeder) as ‘the search for the good in light of the limits and possibilities of the real.’ Seen through this interpretive lens, frameworks comprising Secular foundational commitments function, in ethically relevant respects, like the guiding beliefs found in the comprehensive frameworks of traditional religions. When conscientious practice in healthcare is reconsidered in light of this foundational similarity between the religious and the secular, it is clear that those who object to the foundational beliefs underpinning Secular arguments for euthanasia should not be required to provide, participate in, or refer patients for euthanasia (or other ethically controversial practices similarly dependent on contested frameworks of belief) in pluralistic societies that prize moral freedom as a primary human good. (shrink)

In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. The Parc de La Villette represents the (...) last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Bernard Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Jacques Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Peter Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, Absolute Otherness (tout autre) and the Impossibile were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others). Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

In Interpreting the Religious Experience, John Carmody and Denise Lardner Carmody attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the nature of the major religions of the world. According to the Carmodys, religion is that aspect of a person’s life which concerns the ultimate structures and values of human life. If we accept this definition for the sake of argument, it follows that a people’s religion lies at the heart of that people’s concept of themselves, their world, and their relationship (...) with other peoples; and it follows that if one understands the nature of the world religions, one will be in a position to understand the nature of international conflict; presumably the problems of the USSR in Afghanistan as well as the problems of the Middle East and Ireland. The aim of the book’s authors might seem, therefore, to be providing the reader with materials to enable him to understand world politics better, and so to understand why the world is on the brink of ecological and nuclear disaster. Tracts of that sort are familiar. But it turns out, the authors’ aim is not so commonplace. They are out to analyze the religions of the world, sift the good from the bad, and propose a new religion which would enable the peoples of the world to have a proper respect for the world and for each other. (shrink)

This study aims to determine the motive that led to the establishment of Juche by Kim Il Sung amidst the influence of communism and its transformation into religion in North Korea. North Korea is a communist country dictated by Kim Jong-Un of the Kim dynasty and known for its cruelty. The country underwent several changes from Marxism-Leninism to familism to determine its strength in Juche. This ideology that acts as a religion was influenced and strengthened Kim Jong Il to Kim (...) Jong-Un and built by shifting the concept of marxism-Leninism to construct a new understanding of Juche. It will be demonstrated that this ideology was influenced by Confucianism, Christianity, Nationalism, Chinese Communism, and Russian Communism. In the modern era, imperialism was used as an ideological tool to restrict backwardness. This theory allegedly helped Kim Il-Sung establish a unitary, one-person rule over North Korea. ‘It will be examined whether Juche ideology is a tool the state has used to convince people of their government. Pronouncements, an intentional religion in which the people were to believe that their Ruler was a supreme human or an ideology that morphed into a religion’. It will be demonstrated that, when they started honoring Kim as their god, no other religion was permitted.Contribution: This research offers readers an understanding of the value of humanity in the binding ideology of Juche. However, the Juche Ideology can serve as a missiological bridge towards mission goals, which require the experience of spiritual, physical, and social liberation. (shrink)

At the turn of the millennium, the problem of its further existence, of the realities of existence within the next millennium coordinate system, is of particular importance to man. It is becoming increasingly clear that the crisis experienced by modern culture is primarily the manifestation of anthropological crisis, a crisis of man and that type of consciousness based on its consumer attitude to the world and to other people. Awareness of this implies a change in ideological and value paradigm, (...) which, in turn, requires a thorough study of those traditions of philosophical, ethical and religious thought, which can become an important component of the formation of the spiritual and moral basis of national culture. (shrink)

Religious communities often discourage disagreement with religious authorities, on the grounds that allowing it would be epistemically detrimental. I argue that this attitude is mistaken, because any social position in a community—including religious authority—comes with epistemic advantages as well as epistemic limitations. I argue that religious communities stand to benefit epistemically by engaging in disagreement with people occupying other social positions. I focus on those at the community’s margins and argue that religious marginalization is (...) apt to yield religiously important insights; so their disagreement with religious authorities should be encouraged. (shrink)

Politics and the Religious Imagination is the product of a group of interdisciplinary scholars each analyzing the connections between religious narratives and the construction of regional and global politics, combining a set of theoretical and philosophic insights with several case studies that represent varied geographies and religious customs. The past decade has seen increasing interest in the links between religion and politics, and this edited volume seeks to take religion seriously as a motivator of action. Few studies (...) have attempted to bring together the multi-disciplinary work in this burgeoning field of study and this work takes a global perspective, using a variety of contexts including East-West relations to analyze the following key themes: the constructive and destructive hermeneutics of religious stories the relevance and importance of religion as a dominant political narrative the rise of new stories among groups as agents of change the way that religious narratives help to define and constrain the Other the manipulation of religious stories for political benefit This work argues that it is insufficient to judge the relationship of religion and politics through mere institutional or quantitative lenses, and this collection proves that while this promise of the narrative part of the social imaginary has been recognized in political theory to a certain extent, its influence in the realm of empirical political science has yet to be fully considered. Combining the work of a wide range of experts, this collection will be of great interests to scholars of politics, philosophy, religious studies, and the literary influence of religion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Religious Background of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN IT IS AN EXCEEDINGLY GREAT PLEASURE tO participate in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of the Journal of the Historyof Philosophy.The editor, Professor Makkreel, offered me the opportunity to discuss the rationale for my present research, which I hope has some relevance for future research in the history of philosophy. At a symposium at the American Philosophical Association meeting in (...) Washington in December x985, I argued for taking the historyof philosophy seriously, that is, understanding thinkers and ideas in their actual historical contexts, instead of detaching them into some ahistorical ethereal realm. I argued that one could not make sense of a philosopher's thought detached from his time and circumstances. His ideas could not be understood unless one took account of the language, the usages, the issues and the concerns of the thinker and his time. The all too frequent "reconstruction" of philosophers ' thoughts sees them instead as logical machines, simply moving from clearly stated premises to their logical consequences. As many of us have sought to show, this often grossly distorts what Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz and others might have actually thought, and misses much of what they were probably thinking about. I should like to carry this theme further by examining the need to take seriously the religious aspect of philosophizing. I will center on the intellectual scene of the seventeenth century, which I am currently working on though I believe many of the same points could be made about any period in the history of philosophy. Among historians of science there is an ongoing debate about whether the history of the subject should be studied internally or externally. The [:35] 36 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY internalists examine a set of ideas presented by scientist A, and trace their use or development by scientist B. The study that results is primarily the tracing of the course of a set of ideas through a time period. Background data about the scientists, their problems, and their place in society are regarded as of little relevance. The externalists insist that one cannot understand why various questions became important, why various individuals tried to solve them, why they used certain kinds of possible solutions instead of others, etc., unless one knows the external conditions of the time. This has spawned a lot of interesting research into the way scientific studies went on, who supported them, who did them, how they got accepted, and so on. The sociology and even anthropology of science is now a thriving research area, yielding many amazing studies about the scientific world and how it functioned. In so doing, scholars have not just examined the great successful scientists, the Keplers, Galileos, Harveys, and Newtons, but also the small fry, the mediocre, the poor scientists, and even the incompetent ones. They have examined why wrong-headed theories were supported, and accepted, while evidence supporting other theories was readily available. Their concern with the actual course of scientific development as an ongoing part of intellectual history is vital to understanding the scientific world of today, which plays such an overwhelming role in our society. So, some people study the education of the good, the mediocre, the bad scientists; their relative social statuses, incomes, and so on. The religious concerns are, of course, an obvious part of the story from Copernicus to Kepler to Newton to Darwin to Freud to Einstein. The scientists were involved in an ongoing religious world that influenced the role of science. The above named scientists had their religious or irreligious views that were involved with their scientific concerns. And, as we know too well, the impact of their work on religion has been of great importance to the broader intellectual world, and the impact of religion on the acceptance of their science has been and is part of the ongoing intellectual world. This interest amongst historians of science in the sociology, psychology, and anthropology of science has hardly rubbed off on the historians of philosophy. Most of the leading scholars of the last few decades in this work are hardly known and rarely cited in studies in the history of philosophy. We... (shrink)

In this article, I critically examine the religious argument for the existence of God, which Palmquist formulated from Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. After showing the structure of the argument, I point the problematic point of the argument and focus on the concept of Gesinnung. The privateness of Gesinnung is problematized in the analysis of it, and I briefly suggest that an alternative account of the Gesinnung is possible. Yet I emphasize the advantage that this argument (...) has compared to other competing arguments. (shrink)

The main theses of the article show the ways that various groups, whether ethnic, racial, religious or even ideological fall prey to monological positions without recognizing their own limitations. Thus they assume a “universal” position as all inclusive and true to reality itself. Those who hold such a position are not cognizant that without dialogical engagement there would not be a position. In this sense, the dialogical encounter allows one to have a position and its limitation. Moreover, monological positions (...) tend to define others in such a way, that the others accept such definitions and become part of a specific monologue. The article is designed to show the ways of extricating oneself from monological posturing. (shrink)

This paper provides analysis of Kant's Categorical Imperative and its relevance to religion. I discuss what the concept of a categorical imperative implies about self-transcendence, and what this understanding of self-transcendence indicates about the self's relation to God and others.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christian Identity and Genuine Openness to the Religious Beliefs of OthersSchubert M. OgdenNot the least important thing I have learned from my participation in the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter is that genuine interreligious dialogue is possible only under certain conditions. Specifically, I am now confirmed in the assumption I made in beginning my participation that one can enter into such dialogue only if one can somehow claim truth (...) for one's own religious beliefs without thereby denying, explicitly or implicitly, that others' religious beliefs also may possibly be true. But how is it possible to claim that one's own beliefs as a Christian are true while allowing for at least the possible truth of others' beliefs as well?This is how I, as a Christian, formulate the question—or, at any rate, one of the questions—that I took to be raised by the topic discussed at the most recent meeting of our group: "Religious Identity and Openness in a Pluralistic World." One implication of this formulation, obviously, is that, in my view, a necessary aspect of Christian identity, as of religious identity generally, is the confession, or profession, of certain religious beliefs, together with the claim that these beliefs are true. Moreover, by "true" in this context I understand not merely "substantially true," in the sense of agreeing in substance with any other true religious or existential beliefs, but also "formally true," in the sense of providing the norm with which any other religious or existential beliefs must agree in order to be true beliefs. With this understanding, then, the question I propose to pursue really asks, "How is it possible to be a Christian and to claim formal truth for one's own religious beliefs while allowing that others' beliefs also can be formally true?"This explains, in turn, why the other operative term in the title of my paper is not simply "openness," but "genuine openness." One might possibly think—or be thought—to be open to the religious beliefs of others simply because one allowed that their beliefs could indeed be true provided only that they substantially agreed with Christian beliefs taken as the norm for judging their truth. But on my analysis of the claim that others themselves make for the truth of their beliefs, one would [End Page 21] not be genuinely open to their beliefs at all. For their claim is that their beliefs are formally true and therefore themselves the norm with which all other religious or existential beliefs, including Christian beliefs, must agree if their own claim to be true is a valid claim. My test of "genuine openness," then, is openness to at least the possibility that the religious beliefs of others are formally true in the same sense in which I as a Christian claim my own religious beliefs to be so.The other thing to note about my formulation of the question is what it does and does not ask. It does not ask whether it is possible to claim formal truth for my beliefs as a Christian while allowing that others' religious beliefs also can be formally true; rather, simply assuming that it is possible, somehow, to do this, it asks how it is possible. In other words, what are the necessary conditions of the possibility of claiming formal truth for one's own religious beliefs as a Christian while allowing that others' religious beliefs also can be formally true?With this clarification of our question, I now want to indicate how I, as a Christian and a theologian, answer it. This I propose to do by briefly developing my answer against another that is currently being given to it by what appears to be a growing number of other Christians and theologians.I refer to those who are commonly called—and call themselves—"religious (or Christian) pluralists," or simply "pluralists." According to these Christians and theologians, the monistic claim traditionally made for the truth of Christian beliefs, to the effect that they alone among religious or existential beliefs are formally true, can no longer be defended and should be given up. Far from being the only true religion, Christianity is in fact... (shrink)

While unionization rates have steadily declined in the United States, there has been a renewal of grassroots labor organizing—in many cases connected in some way with religious communities. Attending to such organizing efforts holds the potential to deepen religious-ethical reflection on questions of labor, and these religious-ethical reflections hold the potential to enrich on-the-ground organizing efforts. These opportunities have largely been overlooked. On the one hand, while scholars have recently explored connections between religious ideas and economic (...) ideas, they have often neglected questions of labor. On the other hand, labor studies scholars have often ignored the role of religion, although this is beginning to change. In this introduction we limn the resources available for religious-ethical reflection on questions of labor and we propose a direction that the field could take, bringing together engagement with religious traditions and attunement to grassroots organizing. (shrink)

In this exploratory qualitative study, the open-ended responses of 71 Turkish–Muslim university students regarding their religious socialization experiences were coded by NVivo 8. Results indicate that both parents play a major role in their offspring's religious socialization. However, participants perceive their same-sex parents in particular as being more influential. Parents’ methods for transmitting religious values and practices include having religious talks with their children, answering their questions about Islam, sending them to mosques, reinforcing and/or punishing their (...) behaviours. Peers, siblings, and cousins are other important religious socialization agents whom the participants generally perceive as partners in religious activities. Some religious peer groups, same-sex siblings and cousins play a significant role in the participants’ religious learning. In Turkish–Muslim families, the oldest siblings exert a major influence on the religious socialization of their younger brothers and sisters as do grandparents, aunts and uncles. (shrink)

_A scholarly and deeply sensitive study that explores how religion and secularism are tightly interwoven in the major works of modernist literature_ Matthew Mutter provides a broad survey of modernist literature, examining key works against a background of philosophy, theology, intellectual and social history, while tracing the relationship of modernism’s secular imagination to the religious cultures that both preceded and shaped it. Mutter’s provocative study demonstrates how, despite their explicit desire to purify secular life of its religious residues, (...) Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, and other literary modernists consistently found themselves entangled in the religious legacies they disavowed. (shrink)

The Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network organized a major international conference at Georgetown University, Washington National Cathedral and Marymount University, in 2015, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. The council, one of the most important events in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, initiated a process of renewal, transition, and openness that affected not only Catholics, but all Christians, adherents of other religions, and the secular world. The Washington conference received worldwide (...) media attention, with highlights including keynote addresses by several cardinals, archbishops, and bishops as well as eminent scholars from a wide and diverse range of backgrounds in terms of geography and expertise alike. This second of three volumes emerging from this event assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. It begins with a contribution from the late President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, followed by a section devoted to exploring the impact, relevance, and promise of the Council's Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate. The volume turns next to explore how Vatican II in general has influenced and helped develop method in both interfaith dialogue and in the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the post-conciliar decades. The final thematic section of this volume is devoted to a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican II’s opening to other faiths. The volume draws toward its conclusion with a moving and evocative reflection from one of the leading pioneers in contemporary comparative theology, Jesuit Francis X. Clooney. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social ArtifactDuane R. BidwellIt is somewhat paradoxical to write or speak about identity formation in two religious traditions that ultimately deny the reality of any identity that we might claim or fashion for ourselves. In the Christian traditions, a person’s true (or ultimate) identity is received through God’s action and grace in baptism; to foreground any other facet of (...) the self, or to anchor identity in anything but baptism, could be considered a form of idolatry. In the Buddhist traditions human identity is empty, woven not from an inherent or externally granted essence but through the interdependent arising of all things; 1 to cling to self and to identity as independent, enduring, immutable, or autonomous signals a mistaken understanding of reality.2 Indeed, as religious scholar Alice Keefe has written, “belief in the self as independent and self-existent is our fundamental delusion and root poison.” 3Yet day by day most of us experience our identities, including our religious, cultural, and social identities, as neither empty nor erased. On the contrary: they seem to be inscribed with enduring meaning. Knowledge has been chiseled into them through our participation in the rituals and relationships of the world. At times the very fullness of our identities can feel on the verge of overflowing. This sense of dynamic presence and fullness causes our identities to serve as important (and perhaps essential) tools for negotiating the hurly-burly of experience and relationship in the mundane, finite, material world.4 From this perspective, our religious identities are social artifacts, entities and meanings formed in between, or on the margins of, biological selves that are related to one another through communities of practice.5 These communal artifacts may then be interiorized by individuals as resources that can be employed in or offered back to the world—performed, if you will—through particular (and sometimes disciplined) practices.6The primacy of social process in creating and maintaining religious identity implies that community remains central to the process of fashioning the religious self in contemporary Buddhist and Christian practice. If this is true, it raises, of course, important questions about our understandings of ecclesiology and the nature of the sangha, theological anthropology and Buddhist understandings of the person. These questions [End Page 3] deserve to be answered, but they are too broad to be addressed here. My more modest intention is to contribute to generative conversation about religious identity formation by illustrating how my own religious identities as Buddhist and Christian have been practiced and performed as social artifacts in two particular instances. In a secondary sense, this essay serves as a reflection on pastoral work in a multifaith context, something “much needed in the Buddhist-Christian studies milieu.” 7Given the diverse academic approaches to Buddhist-Christian studies, it seems wise to begin by describing my own background and approach. By training I am a pastoral theologian, someone who seeks to understand critically the richness and complexity of human experiences and then to respond with appropriate, faithful, and effective acts of care. The psychological meta-theory of social constructionism serves as a primary conversation partner for my work; it invites me to ask “not what goes on ‘inside’ people, but what people go on inside of.” 8 For pragmatic reasons I tend to utilize David Tracy’s mutual critical (or revised) correlational method,9 and in the dialectic between understanding human experience and responding to it, I privilege liberationist theologies and religio-ethical norms of justice, love, and wisdom. My practice as a spiritual director and pastoral counselor seeks to promote practices of freedom for all people.10As a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) I am accountable to the Reformed tradition of Christian theology. My formal theological education occurred in the ecumenical context of a divinity school affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and at a diocesan seminary affiliated with the contemplative Anglican tradition. My informal training in Buddhist philosophy and practice occurred in the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia, primarily through five years of participation in an immigrant congregation and weekly study with Thich Phap Nhan, a Vietnamese monk... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious OthersTerry C. MuckBuddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005. 145 pp.Kristen Beise Kiblinger, who teaches in the religion department at Thiel College, has written a provocative and imaginative book. It is provocative in that [End Page 168] she appears to be doing buddhology even though she resists calling it that. She says she doesn't (...) want to take the voice of a buddhologian. She does not describe what is as a phenomenologist might or what was as an historian of religion might, or what should be as a buddhologian might. She describes what might be, as a—well, as a participant-philosopher might. She writes as an outsider taking the voice of an insider.Kiblinger chooses as her topic the relationship of Buddhists to people of other religions. She begins by noting that Buddhists themselves have not explicitly addressed this topic in their religious philosophizing, at least not to the extent Christians have. But, she suggests, implicitly they behave as if they do have a favored response to this issue. Citing a wide variety of Buddhist sources across the Buddhist spectrum, she concludes that inclusivism is the most natural position for Buddhists to take vis-à-vis the other religions. She describes that position in some detail, all the while persisting in her refusal to be considered a spokesperson in the insider sense.Kiblinger draws her examples from the way two historical figures related to people of non-Buddhist ideologies and from historical contacts Buddhism as a movement had with other religions or sects. The first historical figure is Siddhartha Gautama himself. The Buddha, Kiblinger notes, was not shy about identifying what made any religion (not just his dhamma) useful—the noble eightfold path. This path is the core of Gautama's dhamma, but it also appears in other religions in other forms. The Buddha put forth the presence of this content as the measure of a religion's usefulness (see the Mahaparinibbana Sutta). And of course the parable of the raft relativizes all religious teachings, making them true only to the extent that they enable humans to "cross the stream" of temporal existence, a common tenet of the inclusivist position in all its forms.Asoka represents a second example of Buddhist inclusivism for Kiblinger. In the seventh and twelfth of his Rock Edicts, Asoka makes clear that all members of all religious traditions are welcome to practice in his kingdom, even though he thinks Buddhism is the best position. He makes clear that both exclusivism and intolerance of other religious ideas are not acceptable positions in his way of looking at the spiritual dimension of the world. Existentially, Asoka's life story is a model of a reformed "exclusivist" finally embracing the all-truth-no-matter-where-you-find-it-is-still-truth position.Not just these giant figures model inclusivism. Buddhism as a movement has consistently, Kiblinger argues, behaved toward other movements as inclusivists would. She uses as a first example the Buddhist attitude toward Vedic sacrifice, the religious practice most liable to be cast aside by the new teaching of Gautama. We see in this example, Kiblinger says, "the technique of significant reinterpretation and new application rather than subordination" (p. 41). She also notes that a technique she calls "reinterpretation by ethicization" that does not throw out Vedic teaching altogether but claims at its root a teaching that was originally Buddhist.Evidence for the inclusivist position can also be found in the way Mahayanists treated Theravadins, or Hinayanists as Kiblinger refers to them. Scholars of Buddhism [End Page 169] have for the most part recognized that the term "hinayana," perhaps best translated as "lesser vehicle," is a pejorative term given to Theravadins by the Mahayanists, the "great vehicle" folks. Kiblinger argues that even though Mahayanists consider their tradition superior (a common trait of all inclusivists, Buddhist or not), they do so with an openness to the value of the way Theravadins approach the problem of enlightenment. Their way may not be the best, but it is a way, and in some contexts it may be an effective way. Mahayanists are able... (shrink)

The problem of the immanentization of the religious ideal is explicated in the context of cultural history as a synchronous "movement" from idea to ideal and from ideal to idea. In the process of realizing the idea of the transcendent within the framework of the Christian tradition, its immanentization takes place – reduction to ultimate forms that can be considered based on the intuition of potential infinity (ancient tradition) and based on the intuition of actual infinity (Christian philosophy). The (...) intuition of actual infinity is actualized in the eschatological relation to the Other, and the intuition of potential infinity in the principle of hierarchy, universal for the Christian tradition. The synthesis of these intuitions, with the predominance of one of them, is a tragedy for the Christian tradition, which determines the peculiarities of the spiritual searches of thinkers. The reflection of this tragedy in the works of Alexander Schmemann suggests a return to the "attitude" characteristic of early Christianity for the future, correlating with the preserved tradition based on hierarchy. At the same time, the philosopher's spiritual quest reflects the process of devaluation of the hierarchical principle in Christian culture, stimulating the inversion of the hierarchy, when transcendence can be realized through low-ranking humor and foolishness. The work uses the method of historical and philosophical reconstruction, which allows to identify the features of the interaction of the transcendent and immanent in certain philosophical and religious concepts. The synchronic method explicates the mutual correlations between philosophical and religious concepts belonging to the same historical period. The diachronic method makes it possible to actualize the features of the immanentization of the religious ideal in the work of thinkers belonging to different historical periods. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the combination of reflection on the relationship between the transcendent and the immanent, carried out on a rational basis by European philosophy and the study of the experience of transcendence described by specific Christian writers and thinkers (in particular St. Augustine). Thanks to this combination, the study realized the possibility of considering the relationship of the transcendent and immanent in the history of European philosophy using the logic of the symbol by A.F. Losev, when the structure of the interaction of the symbolized and the symbolizing is extrapolated to the correlation of the transcendent and immanent, and the scope of the concept of "transcendent-immanent" becomes equivalent to its content. The process of immanentization of the transcendent is considered simultaneously from the outside (from the point of view of the dialectic of concepts) and from the inside from the point of view of changing the paradigm of religious life in culture, which allows us to take into account its features. (shrink)

Ouyi Zhixu was an eminent Chinese Buddhist monk who, contrary to his contemporaries, believed karma could be changed. Through vows, divination, repentance rituals, and ascetic acts such as burning and blood writing, he sought to alter what others understood as inevitable and inescapable. Drawing attention to Ouyi's unique reshaping of religious practice, _Living Karma_ reasserts the significance of an overlooked individual in the modern development of Chinese Buddhism. While Buddhist studies scholarship tends to privilege textual analysis, _Living Karma_ promotes (...) a balanced study of ritual practice and writing, treating Ouyi's texts as ritual objects and his reading and writing as religious acts. Each chapter addresses a specific religious practice--writing, divination, repentance, vows, and bodily rituals--offering first a diachronic overview of each practice within the history of Chinese Buddhism and then a synchronic analysis of each phenomenon through close readings of Ouyi's work. This book sheds much-needed light on a little-known figure and his representation of karma, which proved to be a seminal innovation in the religious thought of late imperial China. (shrink)