An Ethnographic Turn in Comparative Theology?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-215
Author(s):  
Ken Chitwood
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions

Abstract This review essay analyses three books of comparative theology between Christian and Hindu traditions in South Asia in order to address two interrelated questions: 1) do they hint at an ‘ethnographic turn’ in comparative theology? And 2) if so, what might that mean for both ethnographic theology and comparative theology as they continue to develop as disciplines? Through an interpretive, exegetical review of these works, the article observes how an evolving appreciation for ethnography in comparative theology – and an attendant and analogous turn toward comparison in ethnographic theology – could bring more texture and critical reflection to the comparison of theologies across religious traditions, a more expansive capacity to ethnographic theology, and bring both fields into more fruitful dialogue. It argues that such developments are needed in a world where the lived navigation of hyper-diversity and multiplying difference are increasingly the norm.

Teaching Interreligious Encounters

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religiously Affiliated ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Multidisciplinary Group ◽  
And Migration

Teaching Interreligious Encounters is a volume of essays that explores various issues related to practical and theoretical facets of teaching across multiple religious traditions, including comparative theology and theologies of religious pluralism. This volume brings together an international, multireligious, and multidisciplinary group of scholars who address teaching interreligious encounters in a variety of teaching contexts: undergraduate and graduate, divinity schools and seminaries, secular and religiously affiliated, and traditional and online settings. This volume will be a unique and useful resource for those who encounter religious pluralism in their courses, a topic of pressing importance in our age of globalization and migration.

How to Do Comparative Theology

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Spiritual But Not Religious ◽  
Younger Generation

How To Do Comparative Theology contributes to the maturation of method in the field of comparative theological studies, learning across religious borders, by bringing together essays drawing on different Christian traditions of learning, Judaism and Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, the wisdom of senior scholars, and also insights from a younger generation of scholars who have studied theology and religion in new ways, and are more attuned to the language of the “spiritual but not religious.” The essays in this volume show great diversity in method, and also—over and again and from many angles—coherence in intent, a commitment to one learning from the other, and a confidence that one’s home tradition benefits from fair and unhampered learning from other and very different spiritual and religious traditions. It therefore shows the diversity and coherence of comparative theology as an emerging discipline today.

The Classification of Smells and the Order of the Senses in Indian Religious Traditions

Numen ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 374-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McHugh
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
The Senses

AbstractIn the course of producing complex analyses of sensory experience, traditional Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist scholars in South Asia examined the nature of smell. These scholars were most often interested in the fundamental qualities of smells, i.e. how many types of odor there are. Faced with this difficult task, the three sectarian groups initially produced three different accounts, though in later works most scholars adopted very similar classifications of smell. In part, this may be because of the difficulties involved in classifying smells, but the article also suggests that it was mutually beneficial to abandon contentious material in less significant parts of a system in order to focus discussion on more central issues. Amongst all the sense-objects, odors were most consistently defined by terms implying an aesthetic value. The article also examines the place of the sense of smell within the three different orders of the senses that these three schools of thought used. These sense-orders reflect divergent classificatory principles, and the place of smell in relation to the other senses highlights different aspects of the sense of smell. Unlike their stance on the classification of odors, the three schools of thought always maintained distinct orders of the senses, which must have been a regular reminder of difference in philosophical priorities.

scholarly journals The Dynamics of Islamic Ideology with Regard to Gender and Women’s Education in South Asia

Asian Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Forkan ALI
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Women's Education ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Asian Society ◽  
Historical Practices

The article presents an investigation on certain anthropological-social aspects and the social organization of women with a focus on female education and women’s rights in Islam in South Asia, and especially in the subcontinent. It starts with the Moghul period and then turns to the colonial era and contemporary developments. Through the movement for independence from colonial rule of Britain, the Muslim identity in the South Asian region rose in a state of transformation, reform and development. This occurred due to several factors that encouraged the regeneration and reviewing of Indian society in response to the condemnation, discrimination and chauvinism of their colonial rulers and their deep-seated legacy. Women of the society, who were censured to be subjugated by the native men as entitled by colonial rulers, empowered this transformation by taking direct and indirect participation in it even though patriarchal norms and mind-sets have been a durable feature of South Asian society, cutting across faith communities and social strata, including the Hindu, Buddhist and other non-Islamic traditions on the subcontinent. While religious arguments are generally used in efforts to preserve the asymmetrical status of men and women in economic, political, and social arenas, this investigation attempts to show that religious traditions in South Asia are not monolithic in their perceptions of gender and women’s education. The structure of gender roles in these traditions is a consequence of various historical practices and ideological influences. Today, there is a substantial variability within and between religious communities concerning the social status of women. At different times and in different milieus, religious points of view have been deployed to validate male authority over women and, in opposition, to call for more impartial gender relations. 

Cognitive Metaphor Theory Integrated into Comparative Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Yesudasan Remias
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Metaphor Theory

Abstract The emergence of the new comparative theology in the west has greatly benefitted from Indian Vedic texts and related ones. Despite their extensive use for western theological reflection, comparative theology, however, has not come to the limelight in India, since most of the western initiatives have been perceived to be camouflaged missionary efforts. This paper proposes the cognitive metaphor theory as a fitting supplement to comparative theology. I argue that combining both has much to offer to study, learn, and relate religions in the multi-religiously coexisting context of India. I explore its possibilities and challenges and address how new comparative theology stays distinct from its nineteenth-century efforts in terms of bridging religious traditions by learning from them. This paper draws much from my own experiences, insights, and studies as a native of Indian culture, brought up in Christian tradition. My studies and researches are focused on comparative theology developed through the lens of cognitive metaphor theory.

A Catholic Comparativist's View of Scriptural Reasoning in the Anglican Context

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis X. Clooney
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Comparative Theology ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Common ◽  
Scriptural Reasoning ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis article is a response to the essays in this issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies on scriptural reasoning in the Anglican context, from the perspective of a Roman Catholic theologian, and one who is engaged in another kind of interreligious study, comparative theology. It sets out in general terms the distinctive character of comparative theology as an inquiry that crosses the borders between religious traditions. It draws attention to some of the common ground between comparative theology and scriptural reasoning and the character of each as theological disciplines, even while drawing out some of the distinctive marks of comparative theology. In this way it aims to shed light on how scriptural reasoning, even in its general form, is similar to other sustained efforts at interreligious learning, yet possessed of distinctive characteristics that make it interestingly different from the close reading that is comparative theology.

Shared Virtue: The Convergence of Valued Human Strengths across Culture and History

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Dahlsgaard ◽  
Christopher Peterson ◽  
Martin E. P. Seligman
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Moral Behavior ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Positive Traits

Positive psychology needs an agreed-upon way of classifying positive traits as a backbone for research, diagnosis, and intervention. As a 1st step toward classification, the authors examined philosophical and religious traditions in China (Confucianism and Taoism), South Asia (Buddhism and Hinduism), and the West (Athenian philosophy, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) for the answers each provided to questions of moral behavior and the good life. The authors found that 6 core virtues recurred in these writings: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence. This convergence suggests a nonarbitrary foundation for the classification of human strengths and virtues.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document