THEO 220 — World Religions and Christian Engagement
THEO 220 introduces the major religions of the world from a position of informed respect. It begins by learning how to listen: what religion is, how diverse every living tradition is from the inside, and a method for describing any faith fairly. Then it walks the religions one at a time, describing each in its own texts and its own voice, with Christian judgment deliberately held back: Hinduism and Buddhism, the further living traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, and indigenous peoples, and then the two other Abrahamic faiths nearest to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Only after the religions have been heard does the course turn to engagement. The course is honest about where it stands. It is written from an ecumenical-Christian view, not from a pluralist one, and it says so; but it keeps describing a faith distinct from assessing it, and it holds that genuine respect and genuine difference belong together. After the survey, a closing movement takes up the Christian theology of religions, presenting exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism each at full strength and in register without rendering a verdict, and then the principles, the practices, and the real limits of interfaith dialogue. Its signature skill, taught at the start and practiced through every religion, is to listen from the inside: to name the diagnosis a faith offers of the human problem, the solution or goal it sets, its authoritative texts, and its lived practice, held to one test, that a sincere believer of that faith would recognize the description as fair. Throughout, each religion is allowed to speak in its own scriptures, quoted from public-domain scholarly translations: the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Analects and the Tao Te Ching, the Guru Granth, the sayings of the Jewish sages, and the Qur’an. The companion courses THEO 201–202 set out Christian doctrine and THEO 210 Christian ethics; this course turns outward, to the neighbors of other faiths and to how a Christian may meet them with both conviction and respect.
Learning outcomes
- Listen to any religion from the inside: name its diagnosis of the human problem, the solution or goal it offers, its authoritative texts, and its lived practice, so that a sincere believer would recognize the description — the signature method of the course
- Explain why and how a Christian studies the world religions, and distinguish describing a faith from engaging it
- Describe the Indian-origin traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism, in their texts, beliefs, and practices, and account for their internal diversity
- Describe the further living traditions, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, and indigenous religions, within the honest limits of a survey
- Describe Judaism as a living faith after the Temple, Rabbinic and modern, and name and resist the long history of Christian anti-Judaism
- Describe Islam from the inside, the Prophet, the Qur’an, tawhid, the Five Pillars, and its diversity, and refuse the caricatures
- Weigh the Christian theology of religions, exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, in register and without rendering a verdict
- Practice interfaith dialogue with informed respect, and engage an unseen religious text by listening from the inside and then responding honestly from the Christian standpoint
Listening to the Religions
Before any single faith is described, the work is to learn how to listen. What does the word “religion” even name, and how diverse is every living tradition from the inside, where there is no one Hindu or Christian or Muslim view but many? The four-facet method introduced here is the instrument the rest of the journey will use, listening for a faith’s diagnosis of the human problem, the solution or goal it sets, its authoritative texts, and its lived practice, held always to the test that a sincere believer would recognize the description as fair. The standpoint is named plainly, an ecumenical-Christian one rather than a pluralist one, and so is the reason a Christian studies other faiths at all, keeping the work of describing a faith distinct from the later work of engaging it.
Hinduism
Hinduism is less a single religion than a vast family of traditions, and it is described here in its own texts and on its own terms. The Vedas and the Upanishads speak of Brahman, the one ultimate reality, and of atman, the self that the great saying tat tvam asi, “that art thou,” declares to be one with it. The diagnosis is bondage to samsara, the wheel of birth, death, and rebirth turned by karma, and the goal is moksha, release; the Bhagavad Gita sets out three paths toward it, the way of knowledge, the way of devotion, and the way of action. Krishna’s counsel to Arjuna and the immense diversity of belief and practice within Hinduism are allowed their full range, neither flattened into one view nor reduced to the exotic.
Buddhism
Buddhism begins with a man, Siddhartha Gautama, who left a sheltered life to face suffering and woke to what his followers call the truth about it. His first sermon sets out the Four Noble Truths: that life is marked by dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness running through it; that craving is its origin; that it can cease; and that a path leads to its ceasing. That path is the Eightfold Path, and along it lie the teachings that most distinguish Buddhism, anatta or no-self and the hard-won peace of nirvana, voiced in the verses of the Dhammapada. The tradition is heard in its breadth as well, from the elder way of Theravada to the great vehicle of Mahayana with its compassionate bodhisattva, and the wordless directness of Zen.
Other Living Traditions
Four further traditions are described within the honest limits of a survey. Confucius and the Analects teach ren, the human-heartedness that orders a person and a society, and li, the rites and propriety that give life its form; Laozi and the Tao Te Ching point instead to the Tao, the way that cannot be named, and to wu wei, action that does not strain against the grain of things. Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak, confesses one God, ik onkar, and treasures the hymns gathered in the Guru Granth. The world’s indigenous religions are described rather than quoted, as a wide family of living oral traditions, with honesty about the harm Christian mission has done to indigenous peoples and without either romanticizing or belittling them.
Judaism
Judaism is described as a living faith, the religion the Jewish people have practiced and developed for two thousand years since the Temple fell, not the background to another story. When the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the faith found its center in Torah, synagogue, and study, and Rabbinic Judaism took shape in the Mishnah and the Talmud, in halakhah and the festival year, in the Shema and the daily life of the commandments. Its modern forms are described too, the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements, and the weight of the Shoah and the State of Israel are named without a verdict. The long history of Christian anti-Judaism is named plainly and refused, supersessionism is not assumed, and the debt the Christian faith owes to the Jewish people is acknowledged with gratitude.
Islam
Islam is described from the inside, as the more than a billion Muslims who profess it understand it. At its heart is tawhid, the absolute oneness of God, proclaimed in the Qur’an, which Muslims receive as God’s own speech revealed through the Prophet Muhammad. The Five Pillars give a Muslim life its shape, the confession of faith, the five daily prayers, the giving of alms, the fast of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca, lived within the worldwide community of the ummah. The tradition’s real diversity, Sunni and Shia and the mystical path of Sufism, is represented honestly, the caricature of Islam as a religion of violence is named and refused, and the genuine differences from Christian faith are stated as plain description rather than polemic.
The Christian Theology of Religions
Here the work turns from describing the religions to engaging them, asking how Christians have understood the faiths of their neighbors before God. It reads the biblical data that bears on the question, Paul among the altars of Athens, what Romans says the nations know of God, and the narrower words of John 14:6, Acts 4:12, and 1 Timothy 2. Then it lays out the three great positions in register and at full strength: exclusivism, that salvation comes through explicit faith in Christ; inclusivism, that Christ may be the ground of a grace reaching beyond the visible church; and pluralism, that the religions are several valid ways. Faithful Christians have held each, and the three are presented fairly, with their strongest cases and chief representatives, without rendering a verdict.
Interfaith Dialogue, and Your Engagement
The closing movement turns the practice of listening toward real encounter. Interfaith dialogue is taken up for what it is and is not, with its real goods of understanding, friendship, peace, and honest witness, and its real limits, for it is neither the erasure of difference nor a bargaining away of conviction; respect and witness are held together rather than traded against each other. The capstone then meets an unseen religious text directly, the Opening of the Qur’an, the most-recited prayer in the world, listening through the four facets before responding honestly. That final engagement holds together the genuinely shared worship of one merciful God and the real differences that remain, conviction and respect kept together to the end.