4. How religion has changed

“How religion has changed,” looks at how the past shapes the present, and how responsible citizenship today requires some sense of history. Too often public discussions of the religious dimensions of policy issues either overlook the past or highlight recent years. But this shortened perspective makes it difficult to see what is new and what is not—and which problems, like climate change, economic inequality, and interreligious violence, are entangled in a longer past. Religion emerged long ago and has played a role in some of the big lifeway transitions—from foraging to farming to factories. There are four altered ways of imagining (new metaphors), making (new technologies), performing (new rituals), and gathering (new communities)—and the with these, there are challenges that accompanied each new religious habitat.

Introduction

This chapter explains and theorizes anti-Christian discrimination and violence in India, including the global rise in anti-Christian hostility or increase in antireligious hostility and interreligious violence over the last decades. It highlights the vast majority of violence in contemporary India that targets Christians, such as the large-scale and deadly riots in Kandhamal. It also cites the occurrence of several small-scale incidents of violence against India's Christians every year. The chapter looks at the everyday forms of violence against Christians that go unnoticed, as well as the anti-Christian violence that garner international media attention and shock or mystify observers. It recounts the attack on half a dozen Catholic institutions in Delhi in December 2014 and January 2015 where several cases had anti-Christian sentiment as the prime motivation.

“No synagogue shall be constructed from now on”

In the early fifth century, anti-Jewish legislation and other pressures on Jews increased. Stories of attacks on Jewish synagogues—and other interreligious violence—proliferated in the suspect Lives of Christian saints, like Salsa, Marciana, Sergius, and especially Barsauma. In Alexandria, a Christian mob murdered the philosopher Hypatia. The city’s Nicene bishop, Cyril, expelled Jews after an alleged attack on Christians. A few inscriptions and a Jewish marriage contract from Antinoopolis may allude to these events. Theodosios’s wife, Eudokia, a convert to Nicene Christianity, seems to have been sympathetic to Jews. His sister, Pulcheria, may have orchestrated a law banning construction of new synagogues and helped demote the Jewish patriarch, Gamaliel VI. Accused of illicit synagogue construction, owning Christian slaves, and other crimes, his downfall may relate to events on Minorca only two years later. Not long after, Honorius expelled Jewish men from all branches of the state service. An ominous new law protected “innocent” Jews from arson and vandalism, but cautioned them against anti-Christian acts.

The Shaykh and the Others - Sufi Perspectives on Jews and Christians in Late Ayyubid and Early Mamluk Egypt

This paper focuses on Sufi attitudes towards Jews and Christians in Late Ayyubid and Early Mamluk Egypt, as reflected in hagiographic literature of the time. This will shed further light on interfaith relations in a society where Jews and Christians lived under Islamic rule in the condition of ahl al-dhimma (lit. “protected people”), implying an overall condition of social and juridical inferiority. With this in mind, works by four prominent Sufi authors have been analyzed: al-Risāla by Shaykh Ṣafī l-Dīn ibn Abī l-Manṣūr (d. 1283), al-Kitāb al-waḥīd by Shaykh Ibn Nūḥ al-Qūṣī (d. 1308), Laṭāʾif al-minan by Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī (d. 1309), Durrat al-asrār by Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh (fl. 1320s). This first survey shows a wide variety of attitudes towards Jews and Christians, ranging from interreligious violence to dialogue for converting and also to mutual respect, while adhering to the principles of dhimma and maintaining hierarchical relationships between Islam and other religions.

Structures of Violence and the Denigration of Law in Christian Thought

This article examines three major patterns of violence in Christian theological thought traditions: supersessionism (the idea that Christianity replaced Judaism), realized eschatology (the presentation of a promised future of reconciliation as basically already present in the world today), and inclusivism (the Christian impulse to integrate others as a universalist aim). Previous scholars have examined these patterns separately, but they have not previously been discussed in a comprehensive effort to analyze Christian thinking habits of degrading others, in particular Judaism.The author's inquiry into structures of thought suggests methodologically that interreligious violence is a highly complex phenomenon that can actually be reduced or increased. Indeed, much progress has been made in the last third of the twentieth century by mainstream churches to renounce supersessionism. But while the discourse with regard to realized eschatology and inclusivism still needs to be developed, one of the key findings here is that all three patterns entail a denigration of law, which in itself still remains at play in Christianity’s relation to Judaism but also in its relation to Islam.

An Admixture of Tragedy and Triumph

This chapter charts the travel and work of black theologian William Stuart Nelson and his wife, social worker Blanche Nelson, in India in 1946–1947, when they witnessed Gandhi’s failure to curtail fierce interreligious violence in Bengal. Dean of Howard University’s school of religion, Nelson shared with his friends Howard Thurman and Benjamin Mays an abiding interest in the Indian independence movement. But during his sojourn in India, Nelson was confronted by Gandhi’s pessimism and extensive violence throughout the subcontinent. Nelson’s year in India revealed the obstacles to sustaining a nonviolent movement in the face of continued colonial pressure and communal violence. Through the American Friends Service Committee’s work of providing direct service to communities in Bengal and his intellectual engagement with Bengali academics, Nelson became convinced that interreligious learning could be a key feature of social movements.

Religions in Times of Peace: Conceptualizing the Practice of Interreligious Dialogue in the Post‐ Conflict Environment

The article makes the case of collaborating the notion of interreligious dialogueand the concept of the zone of peace in an attempt to provide a more practical yeteffective channel of reconciliation in the context of post‐interreligious violence. There arethree critics implied throughout the article. First, that the current state of most ofinterreligious dialogue in post‐conflict settings is lack of two things, namely, the inclusivestructure that would allow non‐scholars and non‐clergies to engage in the theologicaldialogue, and a coherent structure for the currently diasporic efforts in interreligiousdialogue. Second, that the concept of zone of peace is severely limited, particularly due toits dependence on material modalities in forging the path of reconciliation toward peace.And third, that the elusive and elitist nature of interreligious dialogue in post‐conflictsettings, and the limited material modalities of the zone of peace can be expanded bycollaborating the two notions into an applicable zone of interreligious peace. Lastly, thepaper will take the case of the village of Latta in Maluku to present a practical context forthe zone of interreligious peace.Keywords: interreligious dialogue, zone of peace, post-interreligious violence