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The challenges and changes that take place when religions move from one cultural context to another present unique opportunities for interreligious dialogue. In new cultural environments religions are not only propelled to enter into dialogue with the traditional or dominant religion of a particular culture; religions are also invited to enter into dialogue with one another about cultural changes. In this volume, scholars from different religious traditions discuss the various types of dialogue that have emerged from the process of acculturation. While the phenomenon of religious acculturation has generally focused on Western religions in non-Western contexts, this volume deals predominantly with the acculturation in the United States. It thus offers a fresh look at the phenomenon of acculturation while also lifting up an often implicit or ignored dimension of interreligious dialogue.
This book presents contemporary scholarship on the Yoga Sūtra. It revisits Patañjali’s philosophy by bringing it into dialogue with contemporary concerns across a variety of topics and perspectives. Questions regarding the role of the body in the practice of classical yoga, the debate between the realistic or idealistic interpretation of the text, the relation between Yoga and other Indian philosophical schools, the use of imagination in the pursuit of self-knowledge, the interplay between consciousness and nature, the possibilities and limitations of using it as a therapeutic philosophy, the science of meditation, and overcoming our fear of death probe the many dimensions that this text continues to offer for thought and reflection.
The six lectures that make up this book were delivered in March 2011 at London University’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies as the Jordan Lectures on Comparative Religion. They revolve around the intersection of two ideas, nothingness and desire, as they apply to a re-examination of the questions of self, God, morality, property, and the East-West philosophical divide. Rather than attempt to harmonize East and West philosophies into a single chorus, Heisig undertakes what he calls a “philosophical antiphony.” Through the simple call-and-response of a few representative voices, Heisig tries to join the choir on both sides of the antiphony to relate the questions at hand to larger p...
Since the Enlightenment, the churches have progressively suffered a severe loss of status because of their belief that revelation is realized only in Christianity. The suggestion that Christian revelation might be truer than other so-called revelations seems to be preposterous. This book argues that this insistence has often remained unnuanced and simplistic, with the consequence that not only unbelievers as well as believers of other religions, but even numerous Christians no longer agree with the primacy of a truth revealed in Jesus Christ. The book addresses the difficulties affecting the interpretation of belief, given modernity's concerns. The volume sets out a provisional synthesis on ...
The Dialogical Spirit II is a second collection of essays that demonstrates the dialectical contours of Amos Yong's critical pentecostal theology. It is a montage of constructive engagements with various thinkers and ideas in the promotion of theological plurality for the third millennium. With essays on Hegelian dialectics, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, pneumatic missiology, etc., voice is generated for the renewal of relationality and the revival of imagination. Free from the imposition of traditional boundaries, Yong makes his way across differing landscapes of truth in a global environment, gleaning from the activities of reflection and understanding therein. Providing snapshots of Yong's theological development over decades of work, The Dialogical Spirit II further evidences the vitality of pentecostal theology to emerging conversations in constructive and comparative venues.
This Companion to Comparative Theology offers a survey of historical developments, contemporary approaches and future directions in a field of theology that has experienced rapid growth and expansion in the past decades.
In Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age André van der Braak offers an account of the exciting but also problematic encounter between enchanted Japanese Zen Buddhism and secular Western modernity over the past century, using Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age as an interpretative lens. As the tenuous compromises of various forms of “Zen modernism” are breaking down today, new imaginings of Zen are urgently needed that go beyond both a Romantic mystical Zen and a secular “mindfulness” Zen. As a Zen scholar-practitioner, André van der Braak shows that the Zen philosophy of the 13th century Zen master Dōgen offers much resources for new hermeneutical, embodied, non-instrumental and communal approaches to contemporary Zen theory and practice in the West.
Relationships between peace, politics and religion are often controversial, and sometimes problematic. Religion is a core source of identity for billions of people around the world and it is hardly surprising that sometimes it becomes involved in conflicts. At the same time, we can see religion involved not only in conflict. It is also central to conflict resolution, peace-making and peacebuilding. Religious involvement is often necessary to try to end hatred and differences, frequently central to political conflicts especially, but not only, in the Global South. Evidence shows that religious leaders and faith-based organisations can play constructive roles in helping to end violence, and in some cases, build peace via early warnings of conflict, good offices once conflict has erupted, as well as advocacy, mediation and reconciliation. The chapters of this book highlight that religion can encourage both conflict and peace, through the activities of people individually and collectively imbued with religious ideas and ideals.
The most crucial task facing Christian theology today is the furtherance of dialogue with the religious traditions of the world great and small and with the scientific worldview. The starting premise of this book is that the two dialogues need to be carried on simultaneously and equiprimordially, despite the risk of undermining the traditional foundations of the Christian faith. The author argues that such a crisis can be averted by breaking through its core and opening faith to an experience of nothingness. He draws on the Buddhist philosophy of the Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji to propose new paths toward a theology of religious pluralism grounded in a Huayan Buddhist vision of reality.
Though women have been objects more often than subjects of interreligious dialogue, they have nevertheless contributed in significant ways to the dialogue, just as the dialogue has also contributed to their own self-understanding. This volume, the fifth in the Interreligious Dialogue Series, brings together historical, critical, and constructive approaches to the role of women in the dialogue between religions. These approaches deal with concrete examples of women's involvement in dialogue, critical reflections on the representation of women in dialogue, and the important question of what women might bring to the dialogue. Together, they open up new avenues for reflection on the nature and purpose of interreligious dialogue.