Suchergebnisse

In addressing the topic assigned to me -- "Interreligious Dialogue, the Environment, and Power" -- I have decided to focus on the first and the last elements: Dialogue and Power. More precisely, I would like to reflect on how the question of "power" can serve as the mediating link between religion and dialogue. Many people, especially academicians, would regard such a proposal with great suspicion, if not downright opposition. For them, the vital relationship between religion and power is the problem. Precisely because religion is such a powerful force in the lives of people, precisely because the powerful can make such exploitative and violent use of religion -- precisely for such reasons many voices today are calling for a moratorium on interreligious dialogue; or they are calling for the exclusion of religion from all political or intercultural discussions. I want to take these reservations or objections as seriously as I can. I begin, therefore with some questions.

For Amaladoss, diversity is a good in itself; but it can become a greater good if it leads to harmony, dialogue, and cooperation. His book is an exploration of how that can happen. While he elaborates on political and cultural structures that will promote harmony (urging an Asian participative social democracy over the dominant American liberal democracy), his focus is on religious diversity and how it can become religious harmony. As he surveys the world of religions, he locates in claims of absolute truth the most imposing obstacle to religious harmony and a contributing cause of religious violence.

As we so often hear, Christians of every new generation, or in any new cultural context, have to answer for themselves the question Jesus posed for the first generation of disciples: "Who do you say I am?" (Mk 8:27) This is a question that can be answered only in the light of other questions—that is, the personal, social, political, scientific questions we find ourselves grappling with in our own age and experience. The meaning of Jesus "becomes flesh" again in the meaning and direction we struggle for in our own times.

With so many others, I am in deep, appreciative, and enthusiastic support of the proposals and search for a global ethic that Hans Kung and Leonard Swidler have been advancing over the past years (Kung 1991; Swidler 1992). The "Declaration of a Global Ethic" that was approved by 250 religious leaders at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago on 4 September 1993 (Kung and Kuschel 1993) represents a goal that all peoples and all religions must resolutely move toward if they are to exercise "global responsibility" in resolving the crises that face our planet as it enters the twenty-first century. (For a careful but sobering description and analysis of these multiple crises, see Kennedy [1993].) The critical remarks that follow are meant, in the fullest sense, to be a positive criticism--a support that will enable Kung, Swidler, and all of us to achieve this necessary goal of a global ethic that will ground a global responsibility. I fear that, unless the warnings and directions that I am suggesting are taken to heart, the path that Kung and Swidler are walking can either turn into a dead-end or, contrary to their intentions, lead to an end they are trying to avoid. In order to achieve a global ethic, Kung and Swidler propose an open-ended, pluralistic dialogue among all the religions and ideologies of the world. They endorse a genuinely pluralistic approach to elaborating this ethic. While I certainly agree that such pluralistic dialogue is indispensable for the formulation and acceptance of a global ethic, I want to add that indispensable to the success of such a dialogue is a clear recognition that this kind of pluralistic dialogue is as dangerous as it is necessary. To succeed in their proposal, Kung and Swidler must be aware of these dangers. I fear that they are not.

"Having spent the majority of her ninety-plus years as a member of a religious order that defines its mission as "to witness in the Church God's faithful love for the Jewish people," and having lived in Jerusalem for over thirty years and become an Israeli citizen in 1992, Sr. Maureena Fritz delivers in this book a final testament. She appeals to her fellow Christians to recognize, honestly and humbly, that the roots of the antisemitism that has persisted throughout the history of the West are to be found in the New Testament itself and in the traditional Christian theology of "supersessionism"--i.e., Christian supremacy over Judaism and all other religions. She seeks to redeem the name of Jesus by recognizing that he was and remained a faithful, though critical, Jew and that the distinctive way that he calls his disciples to follow always remained "a way that is open to other ways." She endorses recent efforts by Christian theologians to forge a pluralistic Christology that will ground both commitment to one's own tradition and dialogue with others. Such an understanding of Jesus will enable the affirmation of the irrevocability and ongoing validity of God's covenant with Israel." --