Introduction
It’s a little difficult to provide an overview of the contemporary history of interreligious studies from the mid 20th century to the present without leaving out a lot of the story. Yet, there are a number of important sub-movements, figures, and landmark books which can be highlighted in order to demonstrate the big picture over time. In doing so, another issue emerges, namely, regarding the location of interreligious studies in the larger taxonomy of the academic field of religion. There seems to be a little overlap between interreligious studies and the somewhat larger concentric circle of comparative religion, which tends to (but not always) possess the characteristic of neutrality on the part of the subject (i.e., the investigator), which often seems to not be the case with interreligious studies. There are also ways to tell the story differently from the perspective of many of the major religious traditions, but that would take a nearly Herculean task to assemble. In Western history, specifically Europe, one could trace the hints of questioning near the start of the Modern Philosophy era in the late 1600’s with Spinoza’s writings, but it really didn’t get off the ground until Schleiermacher in the early 1800’s. This thread continues into the early 1900’s with Ernst Troeltsch, an important early figure in world religion inquiry, and then further takes off after the hermeneutic philosophers of Gadamer and Ricoeur significantly widened the door to new methodologies of explaining interpretation. With that in mind, the following is a brief overview of interreligious studies.
Religious Pluralism’s heyday, 1960’s-1990’s
The key thinkers in the religious pluralism movement are primarily Raimon Panikkar, W. C. Smith, John Hick, and Paul Knitter. One could also add John Cobb, Jr. to include a process theology model, but that is more of its own tangential niche (which later led to the open and relational theology paradigm). Panikkar’s The Unknown Christ of Hinduism and The Intrareligious Dialogue were two books which established the importance of the internal-external character of interreligious understanding. W. C. Smith provocatively asked that even though Christians could explain the fact that the Milky Way is there by the doctrine of creation, how do they explain the fact that the Bhagavad Gita is there, a key Hindu text? All who are interested in the history of interreligious studies should especially read his Meaning and End of Religion which describes his idea of a cumulative tradition. Hick’s “Copernican Revolution” in religion decentered specific religious referents such as Allah, God, or Brahman for more neutral terminology, while Knitter put the focus on praxis. In all of these efforts the issue of what is truth and where is truth became a key concern.
Theology of Religions as a theme, 1980’s-1990’s
The religious pluralism movement continued into the late 20th century. This was overlapped by more of a theology of religions approach. How was a religious adherent supposed to view an adherent from another religion? Religious scholars tried to develop ways in which to describe the possible options for interpreting other religions within the standpoint of their own. In 1983, Alan Race published Christians and Religious Pluralism which defined what would become a very popular model of categorizing religious relationships: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Mark Heim wrote a landmark work, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion in 1995 which critiqued Hick’s (and others’) views while countering with more of a perspectival depiction of religion. Were the meaning and truth of religion relative to culture? Several challenges emerged such as the nature of religious communities and institutions, the doctrinal dimension of faith, and the social and political aspects of religion relating to public platforms and power dynamics. This became particularly clear through Diana Eck’s popular work, A New Religious America, exposing and inquiring how the diversity of religion had affected and changed American culture. All of these ideas led to the further wedging of such opposing categories as individual/community, diversity/uniformity, liberalism/conservatism, and public/private divides.
Comparative Theology comes to the forefront, 1990’s – present
From the late 1990’s and into the 2000’s, a new way of explaining and understanding interreligious studies arose largely through the work of Francis Clooney at Boston College (now Harvard) along with James Fredericks at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Comparative theology abandoned the idea of one religion entirely explaining another religion through its own lens and narrowed the focus considerably. Instead of taking on the largely impossible task of comparing two cumulative traditions over millennia, one could rather focus on one small aspect that one finds in common, such as Mary in the New Testament and the Qur’an, or forms of prayer and meditation in Judaism and Buddhism. The goal is to gain insight into oneself and one’s understanding of one’s tradition by learning from another tradition through such specificity of investigation. Yet it did not end there. Many of the previous themes and figures from prior decades still remained active. Robert Neville produced a philosophical theology which continued the ideology of Paul Tillich’s “ultimate concern” framework from a previous generation. Perry Schmidt-Leukal continued to refine John Hick’s model though his fractal interpretation of religious diversity. Catherine Cornille has continued as an important leading expositor and interpreter of nearly all models of interreligious studies while John Thatamanil’s hard work and sagacious wit has created a hybridity of Clooney and Neville’s work. The element of praxis has not gone unnoticed either. Interfaith scholars and movements abound all over. Marianne Moyaert is an academic leader in interfaith rituals and participation while Eboo Patel’s organization, Interfaith Youth Core, focuses on educating interfaith leaders on college campuses and beyond. Lastly, Jerry Martin has initiated a yet further method to pursue interreligious relations with transreligious theology.
As the field of interreligious studies grows and expands, new faces and ideas will further shape how the interaction of religious adherents interpret and understand both each other, and the wider scope of their religious traditions.