The Dawn Of Religious Pluralism

Nothing like the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions had been seen in the history of the world, and nothing like it was to be seen for again for many years: a gathering of representatives of numerous world religions for an exchange of views. It was a turning point in American life, presaging the multiculturalism of a century later. This volume contains a selection of 60 representative and revealing addresses given to the Parliament, with authoritative introductions and notes. The addresses include contributions by Protestant mainstream ministers, African-Americans, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and representatives of other Asian religions. Also included are various "points of contact and contention," in which religious leaders attempted to analyze or reach out to their counterparts in other traditions.

Examines the period between 1875 and 1925 when liberal Protestant leaders abandoned religious exclusivism and leveraged their influence to affirm that all religious traditions had social value, leading to a reconsideration of ethnic, racial, and cultural differences.

This volume illustrates both theoretically and empirically the differences between religious diversity and religious pluralism. It highlights how the factual situation of cultural and religious diversity may lead to individual, social and political choices of organized and recognized pluralism. In the process, both individual and collective identities are redefined, incessantly moving along the continuum that ranges from exclusion to inclusion. The book starts by first detailing general issues related to religious pluralism. It makes the case for keeping the empirical, the normative, the regulatory and the interactive dimensions of religious pluralism analytically distinct while recognizing that, in practice, they often overlap. It also underlines the importance of seeking connections between religious pluralism and other pluralisms. Next, the book explores how religious diversity can operate to contribute to legal pluralism and examines the different types of church-state relations: eradication, monopoly, oligopoly and pluralism. The second half of the book features case studies that provide a more specific look at the general issues, from ways to map and assess the religious diversity of a whole country to a comparison between Belgian-French views of religious and philosophical diversity, from religious pluralism in Italy to the shifting approach to ethnic and religious diversity in America, and from a sociological and historical perspective of religious plurality in Japan to an exploration of Brazilian religions, old and new. The transition from religious diversity to religious pluralism is one of the most important challenges that will reshape the role of religion in contemporary society. This book provides readers with insights that will help them better understand and interpret this unprecedented transition.

In this challenging book, the leading exponents of the idea that all religions are a refraction of a truth no single tradition can exclusively reveal discuss what to make of that conviction in today's world of interreligious rivalry and strife. The authors represent a variety of faith traditions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam.

Theology of religions has defaulted in the last two decades to an epicyclic inclusivism which seeks to undermine pluralism with claims that it is covertly triumphalistic and that it mirrors the logic of exclusivism. With the exception of pioneers in the field such as John Hick and Paul Knitter, most major figures in this theological field have retreated from pluralism and promote versions of particularism and inclusivism. Pluralism: The Future of Religion argues for an apophatic pluralism that is motivated by the insight that it is impossible to secure universal assent for changeable bodies of religious teachings. This insight implies the non-finality and consequent 'departicularization' of all religious teachings and their inclusivistic defenses. These conclusions point us inevitably toward pluralism and lead us out of the inclusivistic impasse of contemporary theology in religions.

Our contemporary world is fast becoming religiously diverse in a variety of ways. Thanks to globalization and migration, to mention only two current worldwide trends, people of diverse and sometimes mutually hostile faiths are now sharing neighborhoods and encountering one another's religious traditions on a daily basis. For scholars in religious studies and theology the issue to be examined is whether religious diversity is merely the result of historical development and social interaction, or whether it is inherent in the object of belief--part of the very structure of faith and our attempts to understand and express it. The essays in this volume range from explorations of the impact of religious diversity on religious studies to examples of interfaith encounter and dialogue, and current debates on Christian theology of religion. These essays examine not only the theoretical issues posed by religious pluralism to the study of religion and Christian theology but also concrete cases in which religious pluralism has been a bone of contention. Together, they open up new vistas for further conversation on the nature and development of religious pluralism.

Religous pluralism has characterized America almost from its seventeenth-century inception, but the past half century or so has witnessed wholesale changes in the religious landscape. Gods in America brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to explain the historical roots of these phenomena and assess their impact on modern American society.