December 3, 2020
The Theology Without Walls Group met on December 3 at the (Virtual) AAR Annual Meeting under the session title, “The Transreligious Imperative Meets its Readers.” This initiative is coordinated by Jerry Martin and recently published its first book with Routlege to define this burgeoning subfield of interreligious studies titled Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative. This session showcased some of the authors with time for Q & A at the end. Jeanine Diller (University of Toledo) and Linda Mercadante (Methodist Theological School, Ohio) presided the session. Hans Gustafson began the session with a pre-recorded message questioning the relationship between Theology Without Walls (TWW) and other similar antecedent movements such as comparative theology. Hugh Nicholson (Loyola Chicago) then echoed this concern, partly based on his excellent historical JAAR article from 2009. Perry Schmidt-Leukal (Muenster) then provided an interpretation largely based on John Hick followed by Jeannie Hill-Fletcher’s (Fordham) gender and body critique. After that, Jeanine Diller communicated her impressive on-the-fly attempt to sketch out TWW’s sources and targets vis-à-vis comparative theology and interreligious theology. Finally, John Thatamanil asserted that theological isolationism should be contested but indicated that political commitments exist which resist the way authority works within religion. There was much discussion to these speakers, but one comment that stood out was by Wesley Wildman who mentioned that sustaining a movement such as TWW is a complex challenge requiring social engineering, institutional support from several locations, and articulate political defense on multiple fronts. To sum up, it seemed as though TWW has significant promise for the future but may need a number of individuals to “catch” the vision and demonstrate how and why it is needed as either a competitor or a complement to other existing ideologies.
December 2, 2020
The Comparative Theology Unit met on December 2, 2020 at the virtual AAR meeting with the long title of “The Whence, Whither, and Wherefore of Comparative Theology: A Conversation Across Generations, Schools, Traditions, and Continents.” Catherine Cornille (Boston College) presided the session. Panelists included her student Katie Mahowski Mylroie, Bin Song (Washington College), Axel Marc Oaks Takacs (Seton Hall), Nougoutna Litoing (Harvard), David Maayan (Boston College) and Yongho Lee (Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome) with Francis Clooney (Harvard) responding. Several scholars were scheduled to be part of the session but were unable to attend: Jerusha Rhodes (Union), Bethany Slater (Boston College), and Daniel Soars (Cambridge). Cornille was a great choice for a presider as her definitive work on the subject was released by Wiley in 2019, Meaning and Method in Comparative Theology. Her introductory remarks indicated that comparative theology revolved around the idea that normative religious engagement with the religious other was important in order to enrich and enhance one’s own religious beliefs and practices. This includes an endless possibility of comparisons – any text, teaching or practice. Highlights from the session included Bin Song suggesting alternative sources to the Anselmian model of faith seeking understanding, Litoing’s ethnographic work in Africa (ways of relating to the sacred and translation issues in foundational tribal narratives) and both Takacs and Maayan’s opposing pushes towards praxis on the one hand and text and data on the other. In his responsive remarks, Clooney suggested that home should not be considered a reified tradition but rather the idea that everyone comes from somewhere. Yet since Lee questioned the difference between confessional and contextual traditions, Clooney acknowledged that this problematizes the concept of home and there may not be a one-size-fits-all model available. Overall, it was a robust session providing some much-needed international perspectives in the comparative theology landscape.
November 30, 2020
John Thatamanil's new book release, Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity (Fordham, 2020), was the subject of a session at the virtual AAR on November 30, 2020. The text presents a furthering of the argument from his first major work from 2006, The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament with the Tillichian and Shankaran themes still predominating. The online event occurred in the Sacred Texts, Theory, and Theological Construction Unit. Jacob Erickson from Trinity College, Dublin presided over the session. Presenters included Mark Heim (Yale), Michelle Voss Roberts (Emmanuel College, Toronto), Anant Rambachan (St. Olaf), and Catherine Keller (Drew) who all highlighted important facets of the book as well as provoking some thoughts for future consideration. These included the need for a more robust account of religious diversity, questions about the relationship to the entire Hindu tradition, the boundedness to Shankara, and discovering the next steps. Thatamanil communicated his indebtedness to his former teachers, Robert Neville and Francis Clooney, as well as humbly acknowledging the intellectual sparks his work has elicited. At the Q & A time near the end of the session Thatamanil delivered one of the more poignant statements of the entire meeting in his response to Voss Roberts’ question concerning confessional barriers and exclusivism by asking how can one love the other while simultaneously dismissing everything the other holds dear religiously? He then added that one must come to know the neighbor and not caricature the other. These remarks closed out the session on a very positive note.