The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue

The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue PDF Author: Muthuraj Swamy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474256422
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue

The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue PDF Author: Muthuraj Swamy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474256422
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue

The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue PDF Author: Muthuraj Swamy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474256406
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

The Faiths of Others

The Faiths of Others PDF Author: Thomas Albert Howard
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300249896
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The first intellectual history of interreligious dialogue, a relatively new and significant dimension of human religiosity In recent decades, organizations committed to interreligious or interfaith dialogue have proliferated, both in the Western and non-Western worlds. Why? How so? And what exactly is interreligious dialogue? These are the touchstone questions of this book, the first major history of interreligious dialogue in the modern age. Thomas Albert Howard narrates and analyzes several key turning points in the history of interfaith dialogue before examining, in the conclusion, the contemporary landscape. While many have theorized about and practiced interreligious dialogue, few have attended carefully to its past, connecting its emergence and spread with broader developments in modern history. Interreligious dialogue--grasped in light of careful, critical attention to its past--holds promise for helping people of diverse faith backgrounds to foster cooperation and knowledge of one another while contributing insight into contemporary, global religious pluralism.

Interfaith Dialogue

Interfaith Dialogue PDF Author: Edmund Kee-Fook Chia
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137596988
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This book addresses issues central to today’s Catholic Church, focusing on the relationship between various religions in different contexts and regions across the world. The diverse array of contributors present an inclusively interfaith enterprise, investigating a wide range of encounters and perspectives. The essays include approaches from the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Bahá’í traditions, in a variety of geographic contexts. Contributors reflect on Muslims in the West, Christian-Buddhist social activism, and on Chinese, Indian, and Japanese religions. The volume also explores the experiences of communities that are often marginalized and overlooked such as the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia and the Karen tribal peoples of Thailand. Contributors examine the works of the Focolare, Gülen, and Risshō Kōsei-kai movements, and integrate the vision of Raimon Panikkar and Ken Wilber. Chapters incorporate discussions of dialogue documents such as Nostra Aetate and Dabru Emet, and methodologies such as Receptive Ecumenism, Comparative Theology, and Scriptural Reasoning. Among other goals, the book seeks to offer glimpses into interfaith dialogues across the world and examine what Christians can learn from other religions and global contexts.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue PDF Author: Catherine Cornille
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119572592
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
This comprehensive volume brings together a distinguished editorial team, including some of the field’s pioneers, to explore the aims, practice, and historical context of interfaith collaboration. Explores in full the background, history, objectives, and discourse between the leaders and practitioners of the world’s major religions Examines relations between religions from around the world, moving well beyond the common focus on Christianity, to also cover over 12 major religions Features a wealth of case studies on contemporary interreligious dialogue Charts a long-term shift away from a competitive rivalry between belief systems, and a change in focus towards the more respectful, cooperative approach reflected in institutions such as the World Council of Churches Includes up-to-date commentary on the growing dialogue of recent years, written by some of the leading figures working in the field of interfaith discourse

Religious Issues and Interreligious Dialogues

Religious Issues and Interreligious Dialogues PDF Author: Charles Wei-hsun Fu
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN: 0313232393
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A monumental collection--essential for academic and seminary libraries and highly recommended for public libraries as well. Library Journal An important new voice in contemporary philosophical- theologial discourse, this book highlights a number of issues that have been of particular concern to scholars, religious leaders, politicians, and the general public since the end of World War II. The contributors' purpose is to force a reexamination of basic concerns in religion, religious beliefs, and religious studies -- and to encourage both a reshaping of entrenched attitudes and a continuation of meaningful dialogue among different religious groups. To this end, they address a wide range of topics, from the perplexing problem of relativism and the issue of feminism in the church to questions of Muslim identity and Hindu-Christian dialogue. Divided into two principal parts, the book begins by exploring a broad spectrum of religious issues. Norbert Samuelson analyzes theism and atheism in Western religious philosophy, Ernest Stoeffler focuses on the parallel trends of conservatism and liberalism in American Protestantism; Gustavo Benavides examines religion and modernization in Latin America. Additional papers address a universal theology, Christianity and sociopolitical thought, postwar neo-Confucian philosophy, among other topics. In the second section, the contributors turn to interreligious dialogues, examining the ways in which various religions have attempted to forge deeper mutual understanding -- often in the face of rising sociopolitical tensions. Taken together, these essays offer an eloquent testimonial to the critical importance of interreligious dialogue in contemporary society. Religious Issues and Interreligious Dialogues will be an important addition to the reading list for studies in world religions, contemporary religious issues, and comparative religion.

Explorations In Global Ethics

Explorations In Global Ethics PDF Author: Sumner B Twiss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429969171
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. The contributors draw from both communities of discourse in addressing questions of method and theory and global moral issuessuch as human rights, distributive justice, politics of war, international business, the environment, and genocidein a cross-cultural context. }Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. Its design is premised on two important insights. First, interreligious dialogue offers to comparative religious ethics a new, more persuasive rationale, agenda of issues, and practical orientation. Second, comparative religious ethics offers to interreligious dialogue an arsenal of critical tools and methods which will enhance the sophistication of its practical work. In this way, both theory (a dominant concern and strength of comparative religious ethics) and praxis (a dominant concern and strength of interreligious moral dialogue) are joined together in mutual effort, each contributing to the benefit of the other.The volumes contributors share this vision of collaboration, drawing explicitly from both communities of discourse in a manner that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries to deal creatively and constructively with important methodological and global moral issue. Although theory and practice cannot easily be separated in such a collaborative project, for the purpose of clarity, the volume is divided into two main parts. The first specifically engages questions of method, theory, and the social role of the public intellectual; the second, on substantive moral themes and issues, many of which were raised at the 1993 Parliament. Taken together, the volumes essays articulate and illustrate new ways of approaching contemporary moral concerns cross-culturally yet with a rigor appropriate to our complex and pluralistic world.

Interreligious Dialogue

Interreligious Dialogue PDF Author: Martin Forward
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
ISBN: 9781851682751
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the point at which one faith first became aware of an other, there has been inter-religious dialogue: a dialogue that can lead to a positive and rewarding exchange of ide as between different religious traditions, as Martin Forward shows in his lucid introduction to the topic. Drawing on a wide array of sources, this accessible guide examines the past, present and future possibilities of inter-religious dialogue. Covering everything from the global ethic to the position of women in the community, and drawing on the words of individuals from Socrates to John Wesley, Forward examines many of the world faiths and their varying contributions to the field.

Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue

Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue PDF Author: Anna Körs
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030318567
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This edited volume offers solutions on the challenges of religious pluralisation from a European perspective. It gives special attention to interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations as specific means of dealing with plurality. In particular, the contributors describe innovative scientific approaches and broad political and social scopes of action for addressing the diversity of beliefs, practices, and traditions. In total, more than 25 essays bring together interdisciplinary and international research perspectives. The papers cover a wide thematic range. They highlight how religious pluralisation effects such fields as theology, politics, civil society, education, and communication/media. The contributors not only illustrate academic debates about religious diversity but they also look at the political and social scope for dealing with such. Coverage spans numerous countries, and beliefs, from Buddhism to Judaism. This book features presentations from the Herrenhausen Conference on "Religious Pluralisation - A Challenge for Modern Societies," held in Hanover, Germany, October 2016. This insightful collection will benefit students and researchers with an interest in religion and laicism, interreligious dialogue, governance of religious diversity, and religion in the public sphere.

Challenges of Interreligious Dialogue

Challenges of Interreligious Dialogue PDF Author: Edmund Emeka Ezegbobelu
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783631589939
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)-Univ. Frankfurt (Main), 2009.