Dialogue and Method in the Study of Religion
Diana L. Eck, Director of the Pluralism Project
Outline of Essay
- Religion~ comparative, historical, dialogical
- Comparative and historical are not as reifying as they are thought to be. Dialogical religion and the question of voice – to whom? Response from whom? What communities and “tables”? And which voice or voices (academic, theological, political, civic) do we involve (and thus which tables are we a part of)? Being clear about location, intention, and voice. (p.132)
- A Comparative Perspective: The Interweaving of Traditions.
- “In the late twentieth century the migration of peoples both as refugees and immigrants has sharpened our awareness that traditions are not isolated from one another, but increasingly and inextricably interrelated. This is our new global, geopolitical, and, I would say, “georeligious” reality.” (132)
- LA as an example of immigration’s effects on societies, communities, and religions.
- Describing religious persons. Christian-Buddhists, Jewish Yogis, syncretism, hybridization, mongrelization, mestizaje, conversion, convergence…
- “To be a student of religion looking at the late-twentieth-century world is to recognize that religious communities do not exist in isolation, but in interrelation with one another, and must be studied in that dynamic interrelation.
- The “essentializing eye” of other fields of study: 1994, Samuel Huntington. Post-Cold War geopolitical reality as the opposition of “the West and the rest,” proposing that “civilizational [religious] idenitity” will have a major role in the coming political realignment. (134)
- BUT are religiously based civilizational blocs possible? religions are internally complex and geographically dispersed. “The map of the world cannot be color-coded as to its Christian, Muslim, Hindi identity… Not incidentally, the inner world of much of human kind today inevitably participates in the marbling, mixing, and hybridization of this complex georeligious reality.” (135)
- Not a historically unprecedented, if much more intense, reality. Indian Historian Romila Thapar and the “tyranny of labels,” monolithic religious identities, and religious taxonomy. (135)
- A Historical Perspective: The Dynamic Change of Traditions. (136)
- Religious change, revolution, and resurgence (Ex. Issues of race, gender, geographical majority, and sexual preference in religious communities. Americanization vs Japanization of Buddhism.)
- Religions as “dynamic movements” that should be studied “in all their historical dynamism, multiplicity, and multivocality.” (137)
- A Dialogical Perspective: Attention to Voice. (138)
- Interreligious Dialogue
- Dialogue as a method of study. The increasing importance of self-critical awareness…
- …As opposed to the authority of the imperialistic study of the other. Orientalism.
- “Dialogue is the discipline of thought that enables us to gain clarity about our own situatedness, our own form of questioning our own position—whether methodological, political, religious, secular, even antireligious—so that our own subjectivity, our own language, and our own categories are not privileged and universalized unwittingly in our work.” (138)
- Associations of “dialogue” to amiable interfaith dialogue and religious harmony. (141)
- Rather, exploring the terrain [in the hopes of avoiding?] misinterpretation, stereotype, or violent conflict.
A few pages left…
Thoughts:
- Nothing new. A repetition of basic principles. Blah.
- Protestant fears of globalization? Made a search on Hollis and found nothing at the
- The comment on dialogue as self-questioning is itself an example of scholarly assumption of privilege, and thus a statement filled with the self-endorsed authority of imperialism study!
Words:
Main Entry: pro·lix
Pronunciation: prO-'liks, 'prO-(")
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French prolix, from Latin prolixus extended, from pro- forward + liquEre to be fluid -- more at LIQUID
1 : unduly prolonged or drawn out : too long
2 : marked by or using an excess of words
synonym see WORDY
- pro·lix·i·ty 
/prO-'lik-s&-tE/ noun
- pro·lix·ly adverb
Main Entry: 1har·bin·ger
Pronunciation: 'här-b&n-j&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English herbergere, from Anglo-French, host, from herberge camp, lodgings, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German heriberga
1 archaic : a person sent ahead to provide lodgings
2 a : one that pioneers in or initiates a major change : PRECURSOR b : one that presages or foreshadows what is to come
Main Entry: elide
Pronunciation: i-'lId
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): elid·ed; elid·ing
Etymology: Latin elidere to strike out, from e- + laedere to injure by striking
1 a : to suppress or alter (as a vowel or syllable) by elision b : to strike out (as a written word)
2 a : to leave out of consideration : OMIT b : CURTAIL, ABRIDGE
Main Entry: re·ify
Pronunciation: 'rA-&-"fI, 'rE-
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): re·ified; re·ify·ing
Etymology: Latin res thing -- more at REAL
: to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing
