Revisiting the Antecedents of Interreligious Dialogue

This article looks critically at the trend to connect contemporary interreligious dialogue with certain events and developments that took place in Europe and India during the 19th and early 20th centuries: (i) the comparative study of religion, (ii) the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, (iii) three World Missionary Conferences in the first half of the 20th century, (iv) renascent Hinduism in India, and (v) Indian Christian efforts for inculturation. These events/developments are often perceived as the formative factors of dialogue. But this essay argues that they had their own complexities, agendas, and targets and rarely had interreligious dialogue as their objective or focus. Uncritical reading of the history of interreligious dialogue ignores how colonialism and imperialism have shaped these “antecedents.”     

Pluralism,Postmodernism and Interreligious Dialogue

Interreligious dialogue does not take place in a vacuum, nor is it a matter of casual conversation. Dialogue is a contested phenomenon, advocated and embraced on one hand, eschewed and discarded on the other. By way of an exploration of the fact of plurality, the notions of modernism and postmodernism, and a brief discussion of select pertinent issues (unity, truth, and the very idea of theology), the paradigmatic context of pluralism will be critically discussed. Contemporary engagement in interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations requires to be underpinned by a carefully thought-out conceptualising of the context in which it can authentically occur. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the context of and for interreligious dialogue.

Interreligious prayer between Christians and Muslims

This article distinguishes various ways in which the term ‘pray together’ might be understood and focuses on ‘interreligious prayer’, by which is meant here praying together using the same words with two religious groups united in heart and mind, rather than ‘multireligious prayer’, which refers to prayer in the presence of another religious group. The article argues that, in the early literature on the matter, there is a danger of conflating the two different types, and then shows that some Catholic communities, following the initiatives of Pope John Paul II, have reached a consensus that interreligious prayer is problematic, while multireligious prayer is not. The article goes on to consider an essay by Joseph Ratzinger, which discusses the preconditions for interreligious prayer and is very sceptical about its possibility, except perhaps for Christians and Jews. Finally, one of Ratzinger's preconditions for interreligious prayer is used to examine the possible grounds for interreligious prayer between Christians and Muslims, and the article argues that the door is as yet neither closed nor open.     

Interreligious contact and media: introduction

ABSTRACT

Religious pluralisation entails interreligious contacts of different kinds and at various levels. At the same time, an increasing mediatisation affects the perception of and encounter with other religious traditions and their adherents. These relations between interreligious contact and media have not yet been subject to extended research from the study of religion perspective. This issue wants to fill this gap by presenting different case studies and systematising considerations on constellations of interreligious contact/dialogue/encounter and media: specifically (a) the influence of mediated discourses on interreligious contact, (b) media extensions of local and global interreligious dialogue, and (c) the digital – and especially social – media as a platform for interreligious dialogue or encounter. This introduction gives an overview on concepts, questions and topics of this field of research, drawing on the case studies within this special issue.     

Interreligious dialogue groups and the mass media

ABSTRACT

Interreligious dialogues have received attention since they were introduced as a security policy and social pacification measure after the attack on 9/11. This essay examines the development of interreligious dialogue in Germany as well as the influence of media discourses on interreligious dialogue and asks to what extent they affect the motives, goals and modes of communication of both Muslim and non-Muslim participants. This analysis leads to the thesis that the mass media’s frequent security-policy framing of Islam within issues of integration, violence, and threat has developed interreligious dialogue groups as a space of face-to-face coping processes with the imagined religious conflict. Muslims attend it in order to put Islam in a different and positive frame. For the Christian participants this also presents the opportunity to reach a new relevance of religion in the public secular space.     

论五种宗教对话观

宗教对话是国际宗教学界的一个热门话题、一个前沿领域。本文概要评述了五种最有影响的宗教对话观,即排他论、兼并论、多元论、兼容论和实践论,并力求对它们加以比较性的方法论反思。作者认为,这五种宗教对话观不仅各有不可忽视的理论根据,而且均有值得深思的理论得失。因此,从神哲学方法论上反省它们之间的学术论争,并权衡它们之间的理论张力,将有助于我们进而探索宗教对话领域的疑难问题及其理论突破点。     

Interreligious Encounter Group: A Psychospiritual Experience for Faith Development

The therapeutic potential of using the traditional group psychotherapy format for the specific purpose of helping religious and faith development in spiritually troubled clients is examined. Included is a review of the concept's historical, philosophical, and theoretical foundation. The dynamics of the group process are also explored.     

Constructive Dialogical Pluralism: A Context of Interreligious Relations

This article presents current philosophical reflections on religious diversity and concomitant attitudes towards the interreligious situation. The motive behind this presentation is to show that in order to deal more efficiently with the phenomenon of religious plurality, there is a need for a development of the philosophy of religion, where new perspectives are opened up and explored. The very concept of religion as a belief system is put into question, since it has caused philosophical reflections on religious diversity to be confined to certain metaphysical and epistemological concerns. Instead of focusing on the noun ‘religion’, the article suggests a way to understand the adjective ‘religious’ and view religious plurality as a plurality of ways of being religious. This opens up a certain context of interreligious relations and interreligious dialogue, where this very dialogue itself can contribute to the development of philosophical tools, concepts and categories for dealing with the fact of plurality. I call this context constructive dialogical pluralism.     

The big friendly counter-space? Interreligious encounter within social media

ABSTRACT

Research on interreligious dialogue mostly focuses on face-to-face meetings, however, it also takes place in other contexts. Among them is the huge space of interactive media, where adherents of different religious traditions meet, e.g., in interreligious groups on Facebook, boards or commentary sections – but so far little has been researched on this field. The article is an explorative attempt to sort the field of interreligious dialogue and encounter in social media, drawing on a comparative perspective on the field of offline interreligious dialogue. For this purpose, it first gives a systematizing overview of the existing research on interreligious encounter in social media as well as on (offline) interreligious dialogue, identifying key questions and issues on interreligious encounter. Examples from different social media platforms then allow conclusions about commonalities and differences between online and offline interreligious encounter and suggest crucial aspects to follow up on in future research on this field.