Pragmatic Pluralism: Arendt,Cosmopolitanism, and Religion

Pragmatic pluralism denotes a particular approach to problems of international human rights and protections that departs from conventional cosmopolitan approaches. Pragmatic pluralism argues for situated and localized forms of cooperation between state and non-state actors, particularly religious groups and organizations, that may not share the secular, juridical understandings of rights, persons, and obligations common to contemporary cosmopolitan theory. A resource for the development of such a model of pragmatic pluralism can be found in the work of Hannah Arendt. Arendt's early dissertation "Love and Saint Augustine" affords a model of religious community and obligation that can be read productively alongside her later political writings. The possibilities inherent in a cooperative reading of these two parts of her work can be illustrated in relation to an issue of particular concern to cosmopolitan theorists: the international refugee crisis.     

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.     

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”.

The Space Between: Exploring How Religious Leaders Reconcile Religion and Politics

Religious leaders, across religious traditions and demographic backgrounds, engage in politics in America. However, making sense of this is not an easy task, especially when their religious and political positions do not align. In these instances, they must somehow reconcile their incongruous positions. This article draws upon interview conversations with black religious leaders to explore how this is achieved. It is revealed that respondents bridge the space between their religious and political positions mainly by deploying three mechanisms: religious sequestration, issue minimization, and selective denial. This study contributes to our understanding of how religious leaders make sense of privileging civic and political positions over religious orthodoxy. It outlines the implications of this for black religious leaders specifically and the role of religious leaders in civic and political spheres more broadly.     

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.     

Anecdotal Pluralism,Total Evidence and Religious Diversity

Philosophia - My main claim is that, contrary to the assumptions of mainstream literature, epistemic religious diversity is not a matter of an abstract comparison among the belief systems of...     

Religion,Truth and Religious Education

The main questions discussed are (1) what we are to count as ‘religion’, and what kind of propositions are central to religious belief, and (2) in particular, how can religious belief be sustained without a superstitious belief in the supernatural? R.M. Hare's views are first examined, and in part rejected: religious belief involves more than ‘commitment’, and is primarily concerned to assert that certain features of the world are worthy of worship. We need to consider how such assertions may be verified or falsified.     

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。