GREED AS VIOLENCE: Methodological Challenges in Interreligious Dialogue on the Ethics of the Global Financial Crisis

The current financial crisis is one rooted not in recent deregulation but in the breaking of ancient (religious) laws, and this crisis is one of many ethical problems today that have religious roots. The tone of this essay is informed by a document from the World Council of Churches, which affirms “greed as violence” and that Christians do not have all the answers to the problem of greed; therefore, Christians need to seek solutions with other religious communities. Furthermore, religious leaders, theologians, and ethicists, by their very station in life, are not able to effectively listen to the voices of the poor and marginalized people of the world. Self‐critically examining the mainstream traditions within Christianity for its allegiance to empires, the article calls for engaging the alternative, rather than the mainstream traditions within religions whose interpretations of Scripture have provided insights that are at variance with the mainstream. It calls those who engage in this work to be double‐headed: to examine others' beliefs from the perspective of the other—while continuing to be rooted in one's own center—and to recognize that the voices of those in poor or marginalized communities are inaccessible, unless those who are poor themselves become the mediators of dialogue.     

Restructuring Interreligious Dialogue from the Bottom Up through the Lenses of Deep Solidarity and the Multitude

Social movements and liberation theologies have addressed various forms of oppression and exploitation along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and other factors, not without tensions. What might bring them closer together without erasing differences? Addressing this question has important implications for fresh approaches to interreligious dialogue. In this contribution, notions of deep solidarity and of the multitude point the way toward restructured interreligious engagements.     

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。     

Bin Laden is one of us! Representations of religious identity at the Parliament of the World's Religions

In July 2004 the fourth Parliament of the World's Religions took place in Barcelona. As with previous modern sessions, the Barcelona event was inspired by the original Parliament, which famously took place in Chicago in 1893. This paper examines the idea of the Parliament as a significant forum for the public representation of religious identity in global context. One way this was expressed in 2004 was in relation to political violence. As one delegate exclaimed rhetorically, ‘Bin Laden is one of us!’ This anxious rhetoric highlighted the problem of how to represent religious identity in the contemporary world. Who is included and who excluded from the global community of the religious? By drawing comparison with the 1893 Parliament, the paper argues that representational strategies deployed at the 2004 Parliament demonstrate the tensions and potential ruptures that confront the idea of religious identity in the context of late modernity.     

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church and Interreligious Dialogue

This article examines how, through a pan-Orthodox synodical decision, the Orthodox Church has for the first time officially asserted its obligation to enter into dialogue with people of other cultures and religious beliefs and emphasized the value of serious and clear interreligious dialogue to promote mutual trust, peace, and reconciliation. The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church of Crete clarified that interreligious dialogue excludes both syncretism and proselytism, and that interreligious dialogue needs to be accompanied by the condemnation of fundamentalism, nationalism, and the religious justification of violence. Finally, this article makes reference to the basic principles of the Orthodox tradition regarding the promotion of interreligious dialogue and emphasizes that dialogue entails respect for other religions but also discernment.     

The Dialogue between Science and Religion and the Dialogue between People of Different Faiths: Areopagus Revisited

Christianity finds itself in a new situation, one that resembles its first-century experience in that it will be shaped by a new dominant world culture. This culture is marked by three factors-the economy, the multireligious situation, and science. The author's discussion deals with the issues that arise in this engagement with culture under three rubrics: dialogue between science and religion, globalization of the religious encounter, and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world. The major assertions are: (1) Science and religions must avoid restrictive and expansionist relationships and work for reciprocal interaction. (2) Globalization is an unavoidable, but ambiguous, historical development; religions should reject responses of "ethnification" and "primitivism" and rather engage in strategies that encourage both productive encounter and critical distance. (3) Interreligious dialogue includes dialogues of life, of intellectual exchange, of religious experience, of common action, and of confrontation; this dialogue will seek to embrace truth (which involves science) and wisdom (which includes the various religious traditions) in the reciprocal interaction that is marked by love.     

Lutheran perspectives on interfaith relations: Theological trajectories of study processes in the Lutheran communion

The global Lutheran communion has been engaged in theological reflection on interreligious relations for several decades. In the 1960s, the Lutheran World Federation embarked on theologically reflecting on its relations to the Jewish people. This led to a critical assessment of Luther's writings on Jews. 1984, the LWF established a desk to engage theologically with religious pluralism. Starting off from a theology of religions' approach the engagement of the global communion has become more contextual, dialogical, and collaborative over the years. This has led to a dialogical public theology which affirms dialogue and theology as sisters in a critical‐constructive engagement with one's own and other communities. Raising epistemological and theological questions in dialogue in view of religious actors' public accountability can help to prevent faith from mutating into ideology or manifesting itself as idolatry.     

The Future of Multilateral Ecumenical Dialogue

This article offers an overview of work undertaken in multilateral ecumenical dialogue, as it has been conducted at the international level by the commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches (WCC), to clarify the issues discussed in this dialogue and the methods used. In particular, the article analyzes the statements on unity made at various WCC assemblies. While they demonstrate a certain continuity regarding the key points of church unity they identify, they clearly mark a shift in the overall understanding of how unity is conceived. The second part of the article examines the current ecumenical situation and its importance for this dialogue, to show how Faith and Order has responded and what further progress in multilateral dialogue might look like.     

The Challenge of Global Ethics: Learning and Organizing

This is a response from the point of view of religion to three articles—by Ewert Cousins, David Loye, and Solomon H. Katz—that together call for a decisive new moral grounding for the human race. This commentary calls on science, as the dominant power in society today, to initiate a new partnership with religion. It goes on to advocate for an urgent mutual-learning endeavor in which science and religion will derive needed information and understanding from each other. The commentary finds a common thread in the three articles—that religion informed by science is the principal force capable of stimulating a global moral transformation—and ends by proposing a series of concrete action steps.     

All on the Same Side: Reflections on the Dialogue Between Science and Religion

The 'war' between religion and science is winding down, creating new opportunities for fruitful dialogue. The foundations of indirect religion-science dialogue, where the perspectives of the two disciplines illuminate some third subject, are not well established. A detailed comparison of the Roman Catholic bishops' dialogues and a similar program within the American Association for the Advancement of Science illustrates the variety in formalscience-religion interactions and reveals much about the promise, achievements, and limitations of different approaches. Success depends in large part on controlling the diversity of the dialogue group, choosing topics carefully, and adopting positive and cooperative attitudes.     

A Note on the Frequency and Sources of Close Interreligious Ties

As the religious landscape of the United States becomes increasingly diverse, understanding how individuals of different faiths relate to each other and the consequences of those relationships presents a significant issue for research. Research studying such faith‐bridging interactions has been limited and primarily focused on interfaith marriage. Using social network data from the 2004 General Social Survey we examine the dynamics underlying the frequency of interfaith ties of all types. We then analyze how interreligious ties differ in strength from intrareligious ties.     

Me,myself and the other. Interreligious and intrareligious relations in neo-conservative online forums

ABSTRACT

The Internet can be a place for exchange, but also foster echo chambers of closed world views. This poses interesting questions for the possibility of interreligious dialogue online. The article examines the cases of German Evangelical and Salafist Internet forums which mainly target a specific religious denomination, but nevertheless provide spaces for contact between different religions and denominations. For the study, a combination of quantitative and qualitative text analysis is applied. Quantitative analysis makes it possible to gain an overview of the discussed themes from a large body of text and serves as a basis for sampling smaller textual units for close examination using qualitative content analysis. The analysis yields two primary results: First, intrareligious dialogue plays a particular role for the negotiation of religious identity. Second, interreligious relations reflect the societal positions of both religious groups.     

World Religions Paradigm,legal system and education. The case of the Czech Republic

The article deals with the concept of religion in the laws which regulate access of religious organisations to public education in the Czech Republic. The analysis of the laws reveals that the World Religions Paradigm (WRP) is applied here. Religious organisations representing ‘important world religions’ have a privileged position in accessing public education. Mostly Christianity-based churches have access to public education through the legal notion of ‘special rights’ granted by the state. The article provides a concise review of the key points of criticism of the WRP. The paradigm is criticised as ethnocentric, inherently theological, developed with colonialism, undefinable in practice, highly abstract, essentialist and ahistorical. Its historical development is related to the process of reification as defined by W.C. Smith. The concluding part relates the criticism of the WRP to the concept of religion in the laws regulating the access of religious organisations to public education in the Czech Republic. The application of the WRP leads to restrictions of religious pluralism.     

Religious history as religious studies

What is the relationship between religious studies and religious history? Academic historical thinking emerged in part to repudiate ecclesiastical traditions of history, making the difference between religious history and histories of religion a question of denominational rivalry more than a difference in sect. Scholars working in the academic study of religion and the academic study of history have increased self-consciousness of this contingency but have not developed an account for the consequence of history as the primary mode for our thinking. As a result, scholars of religion frequently fall silent in the wake of postcolonial critiques of religious subjects, believing their work is adequately buttressed when this history (the history of the relationship between colonial oppression and religious classification) is acknowledged. Yet this is only the beginning of our work. Religious history cannot evade the methodological challenges of religious studies precisely because to identify an object as religious is to begin an inquiry into the subject of religion itself. Using the example of the year 1893, the author seeks to demonstrate how scholars of history might justify their subjects as religious, and how scholars of religion might consider their concept of history.     

Concluding Dialogue: Challenging the Past, Grasping the Future

Abstract. A dialogue between the outgoing and incoming directors of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science took place as part of the inaugural symposium. In their conversation they speak of the past and present challenges and goals of the Center, outline what is foremost in their minds, and offer glimpses into what they see as the Center's priorities for future work.     

‘Dear Hindu Friends’: official Diwali greetings as a medium for diplomatic dialogue

ABSTRACT

This article discusses greeting messages as a genre of interreligious communication. Greeting messages are defined as official communication issued by religious institutions and addressed to the members of another religious community on the occasion of specific feast days or anniversaries. Drawing on the insights of politolinguistic analysis, this article treats these messages primarily as a form of public diplomacy. The case study analyses the messages issued on the occasion of the Hindu festival Diwali/Deepavali by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and World Council of Churches between 2015 and 2017. Distributed through the social media and posted on the institutional websites, the Diwali messages seek to speak as a Christian voice to all Hindus. Beyond the official addressee, the messages also potentially face the scrutiny of the global public sphere, especially an internal Christian readership. This article analyses what language strategies are used to deal with these varied demands.     

Austrian MEPs: between privatisation and politicisation of religion

This contribution investigates the role of religion in the work and attitudes of Austrian members of the European Parliament (MEPs). It is based on the Austrian results of a large-scale survey of MEPs, RelEP, and on the analysis of parliamentary questions. The study argues that the attitudes of Austrian MEPs to religion are characterised by two seemingly contradictory phenomena: the privatisation and the politicisation of religion. The privatisation of religion expresses itself in the MEPs’ refusal to disclose information about their religiosity and in the absence from the political agenda of topics related to the role of churches and majority religions within European societies. By contrast, human rights abuses against Christian minorities abroad, the religious dimension of Turkey’s candidacy to the European Union and the difficulties of integrating Islam in Europe are all highly politicised topics. In short, the religion of the Other is politicised, while the religion of the majority is privatised. In this context, it is the attribution of religious belonging to the Other which serves the symbolic function of drawing identity boundaries, whereas the Self is envisaged as secular.     

Re‐viewing Christian Theologies of Religious Diversity

While Christian theology of religions fundamentally revolves around the questions of revelation and salvation, as some scholars have shown, context also plays an important role in dialoguing/engaging with other religions. However, these context‐sensitive perspectives, which focus on common socio‐economic‐ecological concerns and multiple identities that cut across religious boundaries, generally seem to promote a pluralistic position (for commendable reasons). But this need not always be the case. In contexts (like that of rural Dalit Christianity) where communities are marginalized and threatened, it might be necessary and justifiable to make claims of exclusivism; although what is (verbally) professed could be quite different from what is actually practised. Reflecting on these observations, this essay suggests the need for theologians of religions and dialogists to be (self‐)aware of the critical and complex role that socio‐political contexts play in terms of influencing and determining (their) theological approaches toward other religions.