How other religions can help progressive Christians to think better

[The Great Open Dance]

Thinking across religious traditions holds great promise for interreligious relations.

In earlier posts, we have encountered two great images from two great traditions. The Mahayana Buddhist tradition presents us with the image of Indra’s web, that glittering network of jewels in which each jewel reflects all others, while simultaneously being reflected within all others, in one shimmering matrix of light. In that tradition, Indra’s web symbolizes the fundamental openness of the universe and the beauty that offers itself if we participate in that openness.

The Christian social Trinity presents us with the image of the dance, elegant movement through time, in which the three persons who constitute one God process with, in, and through one another, in everlasting reciprocity.

We have also encountered Ramanuja of the Hindu tradition, who teaches that all reality is divine Being in three modes: that of God, human souls, and the material universe. These three modes of God (Vishnu, in this case) are both one and three, distinguishable but inseparable, perfectly united yet never identical.

Certainly, these three visions hold promise for one another. If we can compare them, if we place them into conversation, then they will transform one another. Scholars call the deliberate comparison of thought across religions comparative theology. The novel and burgeoning discipline of comparative theology is a powerful method for gaining critical insight into our inherited worldviews.

More importantly, the critical insights gained through comparison can produce constructive theology or, in other words, revised and renewed worldviews. Through comparison, by placing our worldviews into a new context, we can ask original, unfamiliar questions of our traditions. Then, we can speculatively suggest possible answers to those questions, responding to the challenges raised. New comparisons produce new questions, new questions produce new answers, and new answers constitute new theology.This practice demonstrates the incisive power of comparative theology to generate critical tension, as well as the creative power of comparative theology to resolve that very tension.

Comparative theology responds to the times in which we live.

Religious plurality (religious “difference”) is a fact. Religions have different beliefs, different practices, different symbols, etc. Human beings respond to difference, especially religious difference, in varying ways, some helpful and some harmful. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, and as we are brought into contact with otherness more frequently, how we react to otherness will become increasingly important. Our response will affect us personally, and it will have geopolitical implications.

Some people are repulsed by religious difference and attempt to insulate themselves from it. Other people are fascinated by difference and see it as an opportunity to learn more about “the other”—the one who is different from us, the one whose very existence challenges all our assumptions. For these intellectual extroverts, otherness provides a powerful means of insight. Religiously, the other presents an opportunity to compare and contrast our beliefs, practices, and moods with different beliefs, practices, and moods, and to reform ourselves in the light of difference.

This comparative practice brings hidden aspects of ourselves to awareness. Most of our beliefs and behaviors arise from our subconscious. We are not aware of them, do not choose them, and cannot analyze them. They have been bequeathed to us by our culture, family, and personal history, and we have absorbed them unknowingly from childhood to adulthood. Since these beliefs and behaviors are unchosen, they are unfree. We are determined (unfree) whenever our thoughts or actions are instinctive rather than conscious. If we desire freedom, then we must become aware of who we are. We must bring to consciousness that which now lies hidden. Then we can analyze our beliefs and actions and revise them in accordance with consciously chosen values. This process will never be complete, but the more we do it the more free we become.

Our deepest beliefs and values tend to be associated with our religion. Here, I am using the word religion loosely. For our purposes, religion can include theism (believing in God), atheism (not believing in God), agnosticism (not knowing whether God exists or not), materialism (believing only in matter), or nontheism (rejecting belief in God but still believing in transcendence).

Everyone has an orientation toward reality, an “ultimate concern,” a worldview, a personal philosophy, etc. Much of what we believe may be vague, or we might not even know what we believe, and we may act on beliefs we are unaware of. This, sadly, is the unstudied human condition. Thankfully, comparison interrogates sameness—the familiar, the obvious, the assumed—through otherness. The other’s difference provides a contrast to our subconscious beliefs, raising them into consciousness, depriving them of their obviousness, and subjecting them to the vitalizing scrutiny of doubt.

In other words, comparative theology grants us greater awareness of our own faith by encountering a different faith. Once we have encountered this other faith, we have multiple options. We can leave ours the way it was, thankful for the increased awareness. We can revise our faith according to the challenge presented by the other. Or we can borrow aspects of the other faith and incorporate them into our own. We can even attempt to synthesize the two faiths into one. Conversion is the final option, and it must be a real option for comparative theology to be effective. Comparative theology seeks to transform theology, and transformation demands risk.

Comparative theology, by finding value in the religious other, helps us progress toward interreligious peace.

To gain a place at the table of theological method, comparative theology must become constructive, pastoral theology. It must produce new (constructive) theology that is helpful to the church—to priests, pastors, and parishioners alike. Once comparative theology achieves this, then theological method will broaden and comparative theology will become theology itself.

On first view, comparative theology might appear colonialist. It does have some similarities to colonialism. It searches the other for resources and appropriates them, usually without the permission of the other, occasionally against the will of the other. It unites other and same into one world economy of ideas, in a process of globalization that will not treat all participants equally. It enriches self by importing the other. At its worst, it merely decorates its theological drawing rooms with curios from foreign lands. For these reasons, comparative theology is condemned by some critics as an inescapably colonialist endeavor.

These critics, however, tell only half the story. Comparative theology seeks transformation of the self by the other. To achieve this transformation, comparative theology renders the self existentially vulnerable to the other—not a common practice among colonialists. Indeed, comparative theology acknowledges the other as sacred, as a legitimate revelation of the holy. As holiness relating to holiness, comparative theology seeks exchange rather than extraction. Colonialism, on the other hand, denigrates the colonized to justify their colonization.

In a sense, comparative theology reverses colonialism. Colonialism is a physical, historical invasion of native lands by foreign forces. Comparative theology is an intellectual invitation of the foreign to transform the native. When practiced hospitably it engenders a symbiotic relationship between the compared parties. No longer does only one benefit from the other. Now, both are potentially enriched through a newly established relationship of mutual challenge and mutual benefit.

To deem any beneficial relationship a colonial relationship implicitly rejects all community. If all benefit is parasitic then isolation becomes the only moral choice and even the possibility of community is denied. Comparative theology, as a practice of mutual respect and mutual benefit, seeks the construction of interreligious community. As such, it is a practice of global citizenship. Its fundamental postulate is that theology profits from comparison, so the religions are (at least intellectually) interdependent.

This interdependence is increasingly disclosing itself—we are because they are, and we become more as they become more, together. In the past, religious difference has been abominated at times, tolerated at times, sometimes even appreciated. Now, difference is becoming sacralized. At last, we are coming to see the holiness of the other. Difference is a gift of God, from the heart of God. And through comparative theology, as we have seen, difference becomes a blessing rather than a threat. At its best, comparative theology expresses the hope that we, all religions and all religious people, may become benedictions to one another. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 31-34)

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For further reading, please see:

Clooney, Francis Xavier. Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Clooney, Francis Xavier. Theology After Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Hedges, Paul. "The Old and New Comparative Theologies: Discourses on Religion, the Theology of Religions, Orientalism and the Boundaries of Traditions." Religions 3, no. 4 (2012) 1120–37. DOI: 10.3390/rel3041120.