Dogma, praxis, and religious perspectives on multiculturalism

Millenium

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 741-759

  Lynch, Cecelia ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0007722103     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. Quoted in David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minnesota, MN: Univesity of Minneapolis Press, 1998), 1.
2. Jeffrey Goldberg, 'The Education of a Holy Warrior', New York Times Magazine, 25 June 2000, 36.
3. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 26.
4. Orientalism, according to Edward Said's seminal work, is a Western academic tradition, a style of thought, and a discourse 'by which European culture was able to manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period'. See Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 3f.
5. See also Fred R. Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1996)
6. Richard King, Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India, and 'The Mystic East' (London: Routledge, 1999).
7. This is of course an oversimplification of Marx's arguments about alienation. See, for example, Daniel Pals, Seven Theories of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 137-38.
8. Said, Orientalism, 61.
9. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 249.
10. Todorov thus questions the capacity of 'perspectivalists' who assume the necessary plurality of truth, to commit to religious belief, a debatable position that this article treats later. See The Conquest of America, 189-90.
11. Charles Taylor with K. Anthony Appiah, Jürgen Habermas, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
12. Charles Taylor with K. Anthony Appiah, Jürgen Habermas, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, 1994. Ibid.
13. For sophisticated treatments of the debate in IR, see Nicholas Rengger, Political Theory, Modernity, and Postmodernity: Beyond Enlightenment and Critique (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)
14. Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).
15. William E. Connolly, 'Pluralism, Multiculturalism, and the Nation-State: Rethinking the Connections', Journal of Political Ideologies 1, no. 1 (1996): 61.
16. See also Campbell, National Deconstruction, 161.
17. Campbell, National Deconstruction, esp. chap. 6.
18. K. Anthony Appiah, 'Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproductions', in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, 150.
19. Most students of religion who use these distinctions focus on the first three. See, for example, Harvard Indologist and theologian Diana Eck's, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Boseman to Banaras (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).
20. Syncretism is much more contested as a legitimate category, especially among Christian theologians. Korean liberation theologian Chung Hyun-Kyung calls for a 'survival liberation-centred synretism'. See, for example, Struggle to Be the Sun Again, Introducing Asian Women's Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994).
21. Campbell, National Deconstruction, 213.
22. Tone Bringa quoted in ibid., 213.
23. Ibid., 208.
24. Goldberg, 'The Education of a Holy Warrior', 34
25. Goldberg, The Education of a Holy Warrior 34 Ibid.
26. For example, Goldberg takes the instructors' distinction between dar-al-Islam (the Islamic world, or zone of peace) and dar-al-harb (the rest of the world) as a sinister and simplistic justification for ongoing military campaigns against the West. Yet Sohail Hashmi points out that this type of rigid bifurcation misreads recent Muslim thinking and takes no account of the multiple interpretations within Islamic fundamentalism. See Goldberg, 'The Education of a Holy Warrior', 64
27. Sohail H. Hashmi, 'Interpreting the Islamic Ethics of War and Peace', in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 158-59.
28. Goldberg, 'The Education of a Holy Warrior', 70.
29. This is of course a reference to the argument made infamous by Samuel Huntingdon, 'Clash of Civilizations?', Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22-47. John Esposito asserts that such attitudes are an example of transference of the fear of communism during the Cold War to the fear of Islam today.
30. See The Islamic Threat, Myth or Reality?, 3d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 218.
31. African Traditional Religion (ATR) is a composite name for the 'host' religions of Africa (non-Islamic and non-Christian). ATR, 'Christianity, and Islam all vigorously claim the allegiance of Africans, while African Traditional Religion continues to be a major source of meaning and receives formal acknowledgment as a living religion'. See Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 110
32. Emmanuel Martey, African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 39.
33. Chung sees these categories as applying primarily to 'the encounter between Christianity and other religions and cultures of the world'. See The Wisdom of Mothers Knows No Boundaries, Women's Perspectives: Gospel and Cultures, pamphlet 14 (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 1996), 30. Here I apply it more broadly, following the popularisation of the typology in inter-religious dialogue.
34. See, for instance, Todorov, The Conquest of America
35. Théo Tschuy, Ethnic Conflict and Religion (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 1997).
36. Goldberg, 'The Education of a Holy Warrior', 34.
37. Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible.
38. See Guidelines on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 1993), 22.
39. S. Wesley Ariarajah, Gospel and Culture: An Ongoing Discussion within the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 1998), 7
40. Ariarajah, Gospel and Culture, 4-7, 14-15.
41. Quoted in Raghavan Iyer, ed., The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 149.
42. See also Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 'Extracts from My Experiments with Truth', in Christianity Through Non-Christian Eyes, ed. Paul J. Griffiths (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1996).
43. In the postwar years the World Council of Churches (WCC) attempted to 'define the right attitude of the [Christian] church to other religious traditions', initiating a study on 'The Word of God and Men of Other Faiths'. From this study came the idea that the WCC should 'develop the concept of "dialogue" as the primary mode of relating to people of other faith traditions'. See Guidelines on Dialogue, v.
44. Guidelines on Dialogue, 12.
45. Chung, The Wisdom of Mothers Knows No Boundaries, 30.
46. David Gitomer, 'Tell Me One Thing, Krishna: A Personal Reflection on Catholic Faith and Religious Pluralism', in As Leaven for the World: Catholic Reflectionson Faith, Vocation, and the Intellectual Life, ed. Thomas Landy (Franklin, WI: Sheed and Ward, forthcoming 2001).
47. David Gitomer, Tell Me One Thing, Krishna: A Personal Reflection on Catholic Faith and Religious Pluralism As Leaven for the World: Catholic Reflectionson Faith, Vocation, and the Intellectual Life, 2001. Ibid.
48. Guidelines on Dialogue, 13.
49. Guidelines on Dialogue, Ibid., 11.
50. Emerito Nacpil, quoted in Ariarajah, Gospel and Culture, 20.
51. Griffiths states that his conception of apologetics 'is directed against an underlying scholarly orthodoxy on the goals and functions of inter-religious dialogue. This orthodoxy suggests that understanding is the only legitimate goal; that judgement and criticism of religious beliefs or practices other than those of one's own community is always inappropriate; and that an active defence of the truth of those beliefs and practices to which one's community appears committed is always to be shunned'. See An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1991), xi.
52. An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue ( Ibid., 49.
53. Apologetics should be an occasional, not systematic, practice of religious spokespersons and occur only when doctrines are challenged from the outside, it should not threaten violence, it should not be part of a 'program of military, economic, or cultural imperialism', and it should not be based on an 'assumption of ethnic or cultural superiority'. See An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue ( ibid., 78.
54. An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue ( Ibid., 79.
55. An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue ( Ibid., 62.
56. An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue ( Ibid., xi.
57. Scholars of religion as well as anthropologists debate the degree to which this fact disrupts the orientalist argument of Said. For an excellent treatment of this issue, see Richard King, Orientalism and Religion.
58. Jean-Marc Ela, African Cry (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986).
59. The book was originally published as Le Cri de l'Homme Africain (Paris: Librarie-Editions L'Harmattan, 1980).
60. Emmanuel Martey, in African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation, argues that both function symbolically.
61. Guidelines on Dialogue, 14.
62. Guidelines on Dialogue, Ibid., 14-15.
63. Quoted in Jeffrey Carlson, 'Crossan's Jesus and Christian Identity', in Jesus and Faith: A conversation on the Work of John Dominic Crossan, eds. Jeffrey Carlson and Robert A. Ludwig (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 35-36. The Catholic Church's recent statements on the superiority of Catholicism would also seem to harm such 'real ecumenism', however.
64. Ariarajah, Gospel and Culture, x-xi, 47-50.
65. Chung, The Wisdom of Mothers Knows No Boundaries, 30-31.
66. It is also a reality of life in a world in which migration levels are continually on the rise. For example, the 'ethnic composition' of the population of Orange County, California, has shifted tremendously in the past two decades, and the student body of University of California, Irvine reflects this shift 'Higher Education in Orange County', Orange County Profiles, (Fullerton, CA: Center for Demographic Research, CSU, 1998). A number of students in my international relations course testified to the hybridity of their own religious identities, stemming from both the colonial experiences of their parents (primarily in Asia) and the experience of migration to the United States: one was a Muslim educated in Catholic schools, another vacillated between Buddhism and Christianity, another's family was 'bom-again', but retained Shamanist practices, etc.
67. Chung, The Wisdom of Mothers Knows No Boundaries, 28-29.
68. Carlson, 'Crossan's Jesus and Christian Identity', 38.
69. Both should be distinguished from the debate in anthropology about syncretism as a type of biogenetic necessity. Neither the notion that religious identity is inevitably a product of the historical interpenetration of identities, nor the ethical stance that legitimises culling what are deemed 'positive' religious and cultural beliefs and practices, necessarily implies any biological understanding of hybridity. On this debate in anthropology, see William Maurer, Recharting the Caribbean (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 10-11
70. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London: Routledge, 1995).
71. Other anthropologists criticise concepts of hybridity and syncretism for presupposing an underlying, 'essential' version of religion. For an excellent overview of this debate, see Charles Stewart, 'Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture', Diacritics 29, no. 3 (1999): 40-62.
72. Chung, The Wisdom of Mothers Knows No Boundaries, 33.
73. Carlson, 'Crossan's Jesus and Christian Identity', 42.
74. Carlson, Crossan's Jesus and Christian Identity Ibid., 42.
75. Chung, Struggle to be the Sun Again and Carlson, , 42.
76. See Jean Bethke Elsthtain, Meditations on Modern Political Thought (New York: Praeger, 1986);
77. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1995);
78. Michael Loriaux, 'The Realists and Saint Augustine: Skepticism, Psychology, and Moral Action in International Relations Thought', International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1992): 401-20;
79. Richard Falk, Explorations at the Edge of Time (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992);
80. William E. Connolly, Why I am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999);
81. William E. Connolly, The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality (Newberry Park, CA: Sage, 1993).
82. See, for example, Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
83. Talid Asad, 'Modern Power and the Reconfiguration of Religious Traditions', Stanford Humanities Review [http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/asad.html] (2 December 2000).