scholarly journals A CATHOLIC VIEW OF INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE IN THE TIME OF POPE FRANCIS

2019 ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Mato Zovkić

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) drew the attention of Catholics to human dignity of non-Christian believers who have right to their religious identity. After the Council Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI established and supported the Pontifical Council for Interreligious dialogue with the task to study other religions as they perceive themselves and to organize friendly encounters with their representatives. Pope Francis, elected on 13 March 2013, brought into his ministry the experience of a Church leader in South America. This is why in his teaching documents, encounters and discourses he points out the social role of religion (Evangelii Gaudium, nos 176-258), the need for preserving environment as our common home (Laudato si, 199-245) and special pastoral care of couples in mixed marriages as believers who can practice interreligious dialogue by persevering in their religious affiliation (Amoris Laetitia, 247-248). On his apostolic journeys to Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Egypt he met representatives of civil authorities and Muslim religious leaders. Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al Tayeb gave him the opportunity to address the Muslim participants at the Peace Conference in Cairo on 28 April 2017. Pope Francis’s acts and speeches can inspire Religious Education teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina to develop respective religious identities in their students by preserving shared values and introducing them to universal ethics.

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor A. Shnirelman

Interest in the social role of religion, including religious education (RE), is on the increase in the European Union. Yet whereas Western educators focus mostly on the potential of religion for dialogue and peaceful coexistence, in Russia religion is viewed mostly as a resource for an exclusive cultural-religious identity and resistance to globalization. RE was introduced into the curriculum in Russia during the past ten to fifteen years. The author analyzes why, how, and under what particular conditions RE was introduced in Russia, what this education means, and what social consequences it can entail.


Author(s):  
Melanie Prideaux

Abstract The English context for interreligious dialogue is shaped by the presence of an established church which is inclusive, geographically spread, and engages with the state. This article will trace the ways in which the presence of an established church, and the particular model of church-state settlement, provide a context to legitimise particular types of interreligious activity. The social role of religion, the representative function of religion, and religion as an inclusive category, will be highlighted as key elements in the role of religion in English public life and in how interreligious organisations have developed. This observation is analytically useful as it assists an understanding of how and why interreligious dialogue and other activity has at various points become significant for the state’s governance of religious diversity, how success is understood and managed, and what non-engagement with interreligious activity might indicate.


Exchange ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 334-360
Author(s):  
Kor Grit

Abstract As an organization working in a context that seems increasingly Islamized and marked by religious conflict, the Christian Study Centre (CSC) in Rawalpindi has tasked itself with facilitating “interfaith harmony” and “co-existence” between Christians and Muslims. The organization has a large and diverse network of Christian, Muslim and non-affiliated partner organizations, groups and actors, who participate in CSC’s interreligious dialogue activities. These participants differ from CSC in their perceptions about the role of religion in society at large and in facilitating interreligious coexistence in particular. As a result, the participants bring a variety of, sometimes opposing, expectations and attitudes to the interreligious dialogue encounter. In order to facilitate harmony and peace in its dialogue activities CSC carefully navigates the communication about religious identity between Christians and Muslims. This article will explore the strategies employed by CSC to navigate communication about religious identity in interreligious dialogue.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Janusz Węgrzecki

The article analyzes the content of the Pope’s speeches discussing, reconstructing and interpreting the concept of two dominant western cultures and their mutual relationships to the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI, who calls them the culture of radical enlightenment and the culture of humanism that is open to transcendence. The article identifies fundamental contentious issues including: anthropological issues, human dignity, political anthropology, freedom, reason, its rationality, and the role of religion in the public sphere. Thus, the article provides a positive answer to the question of whether the perspective of the clash of cultures outlined by Samuel Huntington can be cognitively used in interpreting the contrast of cultures presented from the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI. However, contrary to Huntington, who describes the clash of western cultures with other, non-western cultures, Pope Benedict XVI claims that there is a clash between two dominant western cultures.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110203
Author(s):  
Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati ◽  
Prithvi Sinha ◽  
Sneha Garg

This essay aims to understand the role of religion in the social work of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922). By focusing on a twenty-five-year period commencing with her conversion to Christianity in 1883, we argue that religion constructed a political framework for her work in Sharada Sadan and Mukti Mission. There is a lacuna in the conventional scholarship that underplays the nuances of religion in Ramabai’s reform efforts, which we try to fill by conceptualising faith and religiosity as two distinct signifiers of her private and public religious presentations respectively. Drawing on her published letters, the annual reports of the Ramabai Association in America, and a number of evangelical periodicals published during her lifetime, we analyse how she explored Christianity not just as a personal faith but also as a conduit for funds. The conversion enabled her access to American supporters, concomitantly consolidating their claim over her social work. Her peculiar religious identity—a conflation of Hinduism and Christianity—provoked strong protests from the Hindu orthodoxy while leading to a fall-out with the evangelists at the same time. Ramabai shaped the public portrayal of her religiosity to maximise support from American patrons, the colonial state, and liberal Indians, resisting the orthodoxy’s oppositions with these material exploits. Rather than surrendering to patriarchal cynicism, she capitalised on the socio-political volatilities of colonial India to further the nascent women’s movement.


1969 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Burnham ◽  
John F. Connors ◽  
Richard C. Leonard

Numen ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Rinehart

AbstractThe Punjabi poet Bullhe Shah (1680-1758) is revered by Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. In the extensive body of interpretive literature devoted to his life and work, scholars have contested his religious identity, characterizing Bullhe Shah in various ways, e. g. as a Sufi, a Vedantic Sufi, or a Vai ava Vedantic Sufi. This article examines the nature of the debates about Bullhe Shah's identity, and how these debates have shaped the varying portrayals of Bullhe Shah's life, the corpus of his poetry, and the characterization of his religious affiliation. I argue that a series of unexamined assumptions — about the nature of biography and its relation to the development of a worldview, about the categorization of religious identity, and about the nature of authorship — have created these conflicting portrayals of the poet and his work, making Bullhe Shah a kind of "portable" figure who is placed in widely divergent contexts. I conclude by arguing that Bullhe Shah's portability, or his placement within different contexts (for different purposes), is itself a useful topic for analysis, and provides the basis for a potentially more fruitful study not only of Bullhe Shah's life and work, but also of his audiences and their responses to him.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Michael Smith

The concept of social capital and its use as a sociological tool has received considerable attention and continues to provide insights into various aspects of community life. Social capital offers a means to study beneficial and detrimental aspects of relationships away from economic or rationalist reduction. Although social capital and religious affiliation has seen significant attention in the literature, there has been little research into the relationship between theology and social capital. In this article, theology and social capital is explored through a qualitative ethnographic study of an Australian faith-based organisation. It is argued that ordinary theology, defined as the beliefs found in the language of believers without scholarly religious education (Astley 2002) mediates social capital. The ordinary theology of the volunteers, which I callaction-driven theologywas found to mediate bridging social capital with refugees through developing theologically significant relationships.


Author(s):  
A. Sh. Sharipov ◽  

This article analyzes the role and place of religion in Uzbek-Turkish relations. In both countries, the Sunni sect of Islam is predominant. In Uzbekistan, religion is separated from the state, and religious activity is fully controlled by the state. The ruling party in Turkey makes extensive use of Islamic elements in governing. Mirziyoyev's rise to power in Uzbekistan marked the beginning of religious cooperation. In Uzbekistan, where religious control has been strong for many years, various forms of religious education, such as Islamic finance and foundation work, have been inactive. Today, after Saudi Arabia and Iran, Turkey claims to be a leader in the Islamic world. The extent to which Turkey's experience in religion and state relations is relevant to Uzbekistan is important.


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