One, Many or None: Religious Truth-Claims and Social Perception of Religious Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-174
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Zaprulkhan Zaprulkhan

Articulation of religion in the public sphere of Indonesia is still much to be exclusive and puritan, unilateral in monopolizing the truth claims of religious truth, and intolerance towards various religious disagreement. Whereas in the context of a pluralistic Indonesian nation, whether of race, ethnicity, culture, class, and religion, religious messages should be delivered by inclusive proselytizing. Anyone who would articulate religious discourses in the public sphere of Indonesia, should ideally be through inclusive proselytizing. In the context of inclusive proselytizing, Islamic values such as justice (al-'adl), human rights, freedom (Hurriyah), democracy (Shura), universal benevolence (Khoir), egalitarian (Musawah), tolerance (tasamuh), balance ( tawazun), social ethics (morals), universal humanity (an-nas), as well as peace and safety contained in the doctrine of principle Islam but those are inclusive. Inclusive priciples could embrace all people regardless of race, culture, race, class, and even religion. This article is going to discuss the significance of Nurcholish Madjid‟s inclusive proselytizing for pluralistic Indonesian society.


Author(s):  
Mark H Grear Mann

In this paper I attempt to reassess the age-old problem of conflicting religious truth-claims by utilizing the fundamental metaphysical insights of William Desmond. I first outline and critique ways that philosophers have traditionally attempted to address this issue, focusing my critique on the standard model (viz., exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism) used to describe different ways of making claims about truth. I then develop Desmond’s "fourfold sense of being" (the univocal, equivocal, dialectical and metaxological) as an alternative approach. My conclusion is that Desmond’s metaphysics provides a constructive model for addressing conflicting truth-claims, while also avoiding the pitfalls inherent in the traditional typological approach.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
Christof Sauer

SUMMARYChristians in Europe face challenges regarding freedom of religion or belief which differ in magnitude or character from those facing Christians elsewhere. The 51 states associated with geographical Europe are predominantly Christian but denominationally diverse and in part highly secularised. Those which cause highest concern in global religious freedom surveys are on the fringe of Europe: populous Russia and Turkey and less populous Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Yet numerous western countries also give cause for concern. Problems identified are stereotyping, vilification and hate speech; violence against people and objects; state control of religious practices; excluding religion from public life; and suppressing conscience, traditional Christian ethics and truth claims. Christian responses to such challenges include descriptive, legal and spiritual approaches, such as litigation, political lobbying and campaigning, cooperative strategies, intellectual engagement and attempts at shaping culture.ZUSAMMENFASSUNGChristen in Europa stehen vor Herausforderungen im Blick auf Religions- und Weltanschauungsfreiheit, die sich in Ausmaß und Charakter von denen unterscheiden, denen sich Christen anderswo gegenübersehen. Die 51 Staaten, die mit dem geographischen Europa assoziiert werden, sind überwiegend christlich, aber konfessionell vielfältig und zum Teil stark säkularisiert. Diejenigen, die in globalen Erhebungen zur Religionsfreiheit am meisten Anlass zur Sorge geben, liegen am Rande Europas: die bevölkerungsreichen Länder Russland und Türkei sowie die weniger bevölkerungsreichen Aserbaidschan und Kasachstan. Aber auch zahlreiche westliche Länder geben Anlass zur Sorge. Als Probleme werden Stereotypisierung, Verunglimpfung und Hassreden, Gewalt gegen Menschen und Objekte, staatliche Kontrolle religiöser Praktiken, Ausschluss der Religion aus dem öffentlichen Leben und die Unterdrückung des Gewissens, der traditionellen christlichen Ethik und der Wahrheitsansprüche genannt. Christliche Antworten auf solche Herausforderungen umfassen beschreibende, rechtliche und geistliche Ansätze, wie Prozessieren, politische Lobbyarbeit und Kampagnen, kooperative Strategien, intellektuelles Engagement und Versuche die Kultur zu gestalten.RÉSUMÉEn Europe, les chrétiens font face à des problèmes en matière de liberté religieuse et de liberté de conscience, dont la nature et l’ampleur diffèrent de ceux que rencontrent les chrétiens dans d’autres parties du monde. Les cinquante-et-un États constituant l’Europe géographique sont majoritairement chrétiens, mais en même temps très divers au plan confessionnel, et en partie très sécularisés. Ceux qui suscitent le plus de préoccupations selon les enquêtes mondiales sur la liberté religieuse se trouvent à la périphérie de l’Europe : la Russie et la Turquie, très peuplées, ainsi que l’Azerbaïdjan et le Kazakhstan, moins peuplés. Cependant, la situation dans de nombreux pays d’Europe de l’ouest est également préoccupante. Parmi les problèmes constatés figurent les stéréotypes, la diffamation, les discours haineux, les actes de violence contre les personnes et les biens, le contrôle exercé par l’État sur les pratiques religieuses, l’exclusion de la religion de la sphère publique, les atteintes à la liberté de conscience et la mise en cause de l’éthique chrétienne traditionnelle et de la revendication de vérité. Pour y faire face, les chrétiens peuvent avoir recours à des approches descriptives, juridiques et spirituelles, telles que les procès, le lobbying, les campagnes politiques, les stratégies de coopération, la présentation argumentée de leurs positions, et les tentatives de façonner la culture.


2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-288
Author(s):  
Ryan R. Holston

AbstractA small number of scholars have noted T. S. Eliot's anticipation of the hermeneutical theory later articulated by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. Eliot similarly concerns himself with the epistemological assumptions of positivism in the human sciences and the implications of objectivizing texts and other cultural phenomena by adopting the attitude of the scientific observer. For both thinkers, this represents an approach to social life which either distorts or altogether misses the truth claims of those whose ideas are to be interpreted. Furthermore, Eliot develops a theory of understanding that is similar to the historicizing of interpretation that one finds later in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. However, among those who have observed these affinities, a key difference has been neglected. In his effort to confront such secularizing forces in the human sciences, Eliot comes to embrace an intellectualist philosophy of history, which relies on a tenuous dualism between the metaphysical and the physical, while Gadamer's philosophy of history collapses the dichotomy between the world of ideas and the existential realm. Thus, Eliot ultimately identifies what transcends history exclusively with the realm of the spirit. This essay argues that as the mature Eliot struggled with the empirically reductive tendencies of the human sciences and aimed to save religious truth from their deterministic assaults, he increasingly retreated to an intellectualism that misconceived the ultimate basis of religious truth. Consequently, the existing literature neglects the intellectualism that defines Eliot's understanding of truth within history and the more concrete understanding of that encounter that one finds in Gadamer's thinking.


Author(s):  
Aaron Langenfeld

Aaron Langenfeld reflects on how the discipline of comparative theology should be related to the normative grounds for religious truth claims to which theology as a whole is committed. Confirming a fundamental characteristic of comparative theology, he proposes that this challenge cannot be met if the question of truth is neglected; rather, it must be preserved as the central focus in concrete comparative work. To justify this proposition, in his Christian-Muslim work on salvation Langenfeld elaborates a fundamental insight regarding the Muslim critique of Christian anthropology, particularly regarding the concept of original sin, which is presumed in the Christian understanding of salvation and redemption. Langenfeld suggests we can see more easily how comparative theology really does proceed like other substantive forms of theology and thus is fairly measured by familiar theological standards, even if breaking new ground interreligiously.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Peterson ◽  
Emery J. Hyslop-Margison

2021 ◽  
pp. 003776862110174
Author(s):  
Olga Breskaya ◽  
Giuseppe Giordan ◽  
Siniša Zrinščak

The measures and correlates of religious freedom constitute a comparatively new area of study eliciting research at the level of state agency and judicial institutions. The article adds to this the individual level of analysis by introducing a five-dimensional concept of the Social Perception of Religious Freedom (SPRF). It discusses results of its testing on a convenience sample of 1035 Italian University students. We examine the predictive power of ‘passive’ and ‘assertive’ secularism and patterns of state-religion relations vis-à-vis SPRF. While ‘passive’ secularism has a significant positive influence on four of five dimensions of religious freedom, the ‘assertive’ secularism has no effect on it. Findings suggest that the models of an endorsed Catholic Church and state control over religion have mostly negative effects on the SPRF. Moreover, individuals with stronger religious identity are more supportive of the endorsed models of state-religion relations while politically engaged respondents do not favor them.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Peter Jonkers

One of the most important features of contemporary Western societies is the rise of (religious) pluralism. Whereas (philosophical) theism used to serve as a common ground to discuss the truth-claims of religion, this approach seems to have lost much of its plausibility. What I want to argue in this article is that philosophy of religion as a critical intellectual activity still cannot do without the notion of religious truth, but also that it needs to redefine this truth in an existential way, i.e. by interpreting religions as concrete ways of life. In this paper I develop this idea of religious truth by interpreting religions as traditions of wisdom, being a kind of truth that is able to orientate humans’ lives without being swayed by the issues of the day. In order to substantiate my interpretation I discuss three fundamental aspects of wisdom, viz. the fact that it rests on a broadened idea of reason, the way in which it discovers the universal in the particular, and the insight that all life-orientations are based on a principle that is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate (Kant).


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