The Challenge of Religious Pluralism: The Association Between Interfaith Contact and Religious Pluralism

This research contributes to increasing understanding of the ways in which Christians think about religious pluralism in the United States. It does so by empirically uncovering the relationship between inter-faith contact and the willingness of white Christians to support tenets of religious pluralism. To that end, this study largely intimates that religious identity reinforces a dualistic world view. For white Christians, it is likely that contact with Jews and not Muslims is salient to their religious pluralist understandings. Nonetheless, more so than other Christians, Evangelicals tend to embrace a theology that views their belief system as being in conflict and competition with non-Christians. To that end, it is plausible that even when Christians have positive contact experiences with Jews and Muslims, Evangelicals are less willing than are other Christians to recognize them as members of the American religious polity.     

宗教理解和宗教多元论问题

我们几乎都能肯定,诸宗教之问或多或少都有"排他"倾向,认为真理掌握在自己的手里,其他宗教信仰或多或少是错误的.一般宗教都在宣传自己的优越性,为自己的存在合理性寻找依据,即使是那些自认为是"非宗教的宗教"也是如此.     

Pluralism and Voluntarism in the English Religious Economy

This article reappraises what has been understood, according to secularisation theory, as the necessarily counter-productive impact of Christian pluralism and voluntarism. The complex interface between institutional religion, voluntarists, and secularisation is explored. A similar pattern of decline among institutional forms of religion in the US and England is identified and examined. This is accompanied by an unexpected trend in late twentieth-century English church attendance that indicates market share moving decisively towards the voluntarists. This shift, paradoxically, will increase secularisation in the short term, whether it is indicative of the voluntarists showing signs of late onset decline or late onset prominence. Under the post 1960s secular canopy, a free market ethos may be emerging in European Protestantism.     

Crossing Streams in the Dark: Religious Pluralism and Theological Education

Examining a presentation made to the Pacific Coast Theological Society in 1939, this essay identifies some of the enduring issues for theological and religious education created by the reality of religious pluralism. Addressing religious pluralism is a dialectic process moving between the two poles of disorienting otherness and analogies based on the already familiar. Both moments are necessary, and neither is final. Education in a religiously plural world requires enabling students to live in a state of uncertainty.     

Philosophical Implications of Religious Pluralism

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Living in multi-religious societies in almost all parts of the world, religious diversity is a fact of life for all of us in the contemporary...     

Religious Pluralism in Malaysia: the Journey of Three Prime Ministers

The challenges posed by religious pluralism have become central to any understanding of the complex dynamics of ethnically and religiously diverse societies. Malaysia is no exception. This article examines how recent Malaysian governments have handled these challenges. It situates government actions and pronouncements against the backdrop of Malaysia's colonial and pre-colonial history. The focus is on the declaratory and operational policies of three successive prime ministers (Mahathir, Abdullah and Najib). Careful analysis of this tumultuous period, which has seen the increasing assertiveness of public Muslim discourse, enables us to chart the obstacles to inter-religious harmony that policymakers have had to address. Several questions are at the core of the article: How did each of these leaders handle the emerging crisis of religious pluralism, which is closely entwined with ethnic pluralism? Did their actions match their rhetoric? Taken as a whole, this 15-year period reveals important elements of change and continuity.     

论希克宗教多元论的解构维度

终极实在是一切存在的根基,它临在于人的体验和认知之中,并通过不同的文化传统和信仰生活而得到多元化的彰显.终极实在在宗教上以多元化的方式得到体验、回应、信仰和认知就造成了事实上的宗教多样性.长期以来,宗教多样性既得不到客观的认知,也得不到善意的对待.以基督教排他主义为典型代表的宗教排他主义或者否认宗教的多样性,或者否认其他宗教的价值平等性,造成大量的宗教冲突和文明关系的对立.当代宗教多元论者适应宗教和平的历史趋势,肯认宗教多样性,谋求宗教和谐关系的建构,表现出对宗教排他主义的超越.本文具体探讨约翰-希克对基督教排他主义的拆解,说明宗教多元论的解构旨趣及方法论特色.     

Religious competence and individuality: three studies in the Roman Empire

Abstract

The theme of individuality and individualisation in religious contexts in the fairly remote past is perhaps best viewed as a heuristic device whose main value, at least in the context of Graeco-Roman history, is to question the excessive dominance of a model of religious action as essentially collective, which is perhaps proximately Durkheimian but in the Classical field goes back ultimately to early scholarship on ancient Judaism. Terminology is a basic problem in this context. Religious individuality can be defined as the construction of personal religious achievement or the practice of mastery defined by sui generis rules. In the case of the Roman Empire, five types of such achievement have been suggested: pragmatic; moral; competitive; representative; or exemplary/ reflexive. All these distinguishable types of individuality are linked, at least indirectly, to the complex and highly differentiated social, political, economic and moral structures of the Empire. Specifically religious individuation emerges only with the development of religion as a distinctive field of (social) action and thus the possibility of specifically religious distinction. If sustained over the long term, any such achievement is to be seen as individualisation under ancient conditions. This article briefly explores three types of religious distinction based on a conviction and lived practice of such individualised competence: the figure of the Weberian mystagogue in his Mediterranean forms; the figure of the practitioner skilled in Graeco-Egyptian ‘magic’; and the idealised figure of Pythagoras as projected by Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean life (c.300 CE).     

从佛教立场迈向宗教多元主义与宗教对话

本文主要从佛教思想内部寻找宗教多元主义与宗教对话的智慧,以便为当前文明对话提供思想资源。首先,佛教将佛教以外的一切宗教称为"外道",最后以真理观打破自他宗教的界限,充分表现了宗教多元主义的倾向;其次,二谛的思想模式具有终极实在与多元宗教的意义,而且二谛的相即、不二的关系,体现了宗教多元主义的真理观;最后,瑜伽行派的种姓各别与种子熏习思想,表达了宗教对话的必要性与可能性。     

"宗教多元性"、"宗教多元观"与"宗教多元论"——试论"Religious Pluralism"的三重含义

目前国内学界通常将"Religious pluralism"一词译作"宗教多元论"或"宗教多元主义"。本文通过对其内涵的深入分析,揭示出该术语三重含义:"宗教多元性"、"宗教多元观"与"宗教多元论"。文章进一步提出判断某种理论是否属于宗教多元论的标准可概括为"以相对化为途径,祛除宗教自我中心主义,在新秩序内实现宗教平等"。由此揭示出当代宗教多元论的目标在于通过建构宗教共同体建立宗教平等的"新秩序"。     

Internal Realism,Religious Pluralism and Ontology

Internalist pluralism is an attractive and elegant theory. However, there are two apparently powerful objections to this approach that prevent its widespread adoption. According to the first objection, the resulting analysis of religious belief systems is intrinsically atheistic; while according to the second objection, the analysis is unsatisfactory because it allows religious objects simply to be defined into existence. In this article, I demonstrate that an adherent of internalist pluralism can deflect both of these objections, and in the course of so arguing, I deploy a distinction between “conceptual-scheme targetability” and “successful conceptual-scheme targeting”.