Intercultural Theology vis-à-vis Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue

Dear Colleagues,

Religious traditions with their universal intent on human salvation or wellbeing have de-territorialized themselves or migrated from the place of their origin along the trade routes in the company of merchants and colonizers. Moreover, in the contemporary world, every aspect of society, namely, economic, socio-political, cultural and religious features, is de-territorialized. The intersection of the complex features of diverse cultural and religious traditions in a globalized world poses daunting challenges and innovative opportunities. Cultures can differ in their core aspect of meaning-value systems and linguistic-expressive systems, giving rise to socio-political systems and eco-economic systems that characterize a people. Likewise, religions can differ in their articulation of transcendence and immanence. They can uphold absolute transcendence (e.g., Islam, Judaism) or absolute immanence (e.g., Taoism, Confucianism), or they can take the mediating stance of immanent-transcendence (e.g., Christianity with its belief in God-incarnate, Hinduism) or transcendent-immanence (e.g., Buddhism).

Although distinction can be made between culture and religion in the modern secular context, in its origin religion is so bound to the culture, as soul to the body, that separating them would mean the decline and demise of both. The strong bond between religion and its culture of origin faces a challenge as the former enters new cultural territories. The challenge is to express and share the religious core integrating the features of new cultures through the process of inculturation/acculturation. Given that the newly encountered cultures themselves are generally animated by a religious core, the migrant religion faces the dilemma of complete isolation to preserve its identity or full immersion risking self-destructive syncretism. Hence, as a religion moves from one context into another, it necessitates a critical diachronic intercultural dialogue to maintain and develop its identity; and when it spreads out into diverse contexts simultaneously, it needs to engage in a critical synchronic intercultural dialogue to maintain its unity in diversity. Since culture is a dynamic reality, religious traditions have to engage in intercultural theology both diachronically and synchronically to maintain and progress in their understanding of the transcendental reality and be relevant to the local context and the wider world.

History of religions testifies to the inner divisions or sectarianism based on religio-cultural sensitivities. In the Christian context, this may be exemplified by the emergence of churches, such as the Coptic Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, Anglican Church, Lutheran Church, and the Roman Catholic Church. Besides the historical socio-political factors, it cannot be denied that underlying the denominational differences there are the religio-cultural and linguistic factors in understanding and expressing the Christian faith. Analogously, this is true also in the case of other religious traditions: for example, the sectarian divisions in Hinduism, like Shaivism and Vaishnavism, or the inner divisions in Islam in terms of Sunni and Shi’ah communities. A dialogue for unity in diversity among denominations or sects of religious traditions would require an interdenominational or ecumenical dialogue rendered possible by the complex process of intercultural theology. Divisions in a way point to monocultural assertion of religious truth as against intercultural exploration of the transcendental reality.

The fact that culture is enlivened by a religious core implies that one cannot engage in intercultural theology without some dialogue with the religious core of the other culture, or with its ideological core, in the case of a secular culture. Likewise, interreligious dialogue can be facilitated and furthered through intercultural theology. In this sense, intercultural theology and interreligious dialogue represent intersecting features of a complex process. Such a process can forestall further divisions and even help overcome the existing divisions both within and between religious traditions. Intercultural theology in facilitating ecumenical and interreligious dialogue can provide a deeper scrutiny of the divine mystery, a progressive consolidation of unity in diversity, a wholesome experience of cosmotheandric (Cosmic-Divine-Human) wellbeing.

The focus of the present Special Issue is to carry forward intercultural theology as a process not only for enriching the theological discourse within the context of one’s own faith-community, but as an added stimulus for engaging in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. The centrality of culture in the ecumenical and interreligious dialogue suggests that these in turn can give rise to a multifaceted intercultural theology.

In this sense, the scope of the Special Issue is to explore innovative aspects of intercultural theology in relation to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. The efforts made by scholars in this regard can help overcome the confessional or sectarian view of intercultural theology and find its full significance and rightful place in close association with ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Insofar as dialogue is the central concern, our effort can enhance the existing literature on intercultural theology by relating it to the literature on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Such an innovative effort we hope can contribute to cosmotheandric (Cosmos-God-Human) communion and wellbeing.

Theoretical and empirical studies with reference to intercultural theology are solicited from interdisciplinary perspectives of cultural anthropology, religious pluralism, ecumenism, contextual theology, religious pedagogy, etc. Authors who are interested in submitting an essay for this Special Issue are invited to send a 300-word abstract of his/her/their paper to the guest editor at [email protected] by 31th December 2021. Final manuscripts can by submitted any time before 1 July 2022. All essays will be peer reviewed.

Prof. Dr. Francis-Vincent Anthony
Guest Editor

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• Intercultural dialogue
• inculturation
• acculturation
• interreligious dialogue
• ecumenical dialogue
• contextual theology
• religious universalism
• cosmotheandric wellbeing