Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

Religious pluralismâ 441â

Sullivan, Francis (1992), No Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response, London: Chapman.

Surin, Kenneth (1990), ‘A Certain “Politics of Speech”: “Religious Pluralism” in the Age of the McDonald’s Hamburger’, Modern Theology, 7.1; pp. 67–100.

Swidler, Leonard (ed.) (1987), Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

——(ed.) (1990), Death or Dialogue? From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue, London: SCM. Talal Asad (1993), Genealogies of Religion, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Toulmin, Stephen (1990), Cosmopolis: the Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Tracy, David (1981), The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, London: SCM.

——(1990), Dialogue with the Other: the Inter-religious Dialogue, Louvain: Peeters Press; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

——(1994), On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics and Church, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Troeltsch, Ernst (1921), The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, SCM: London. Wainwright, William (2nd ed. 1999), Philosophy of Religion, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Ward, Keith (1990), ‘Truth and the Diversity of Religions’, Religious Studies, 26; pp. 1–18. Williams, Rowan (2000), On Christian Theology, Oxford: Blackwell.

Yandell, Keith (1999), Philosophy of Religion, London: Routledge.

Suggested reading

Barnes, Michael (2002), Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Outlining the terms of a theology of dialogue.

Cheetham, David (2003), John Hick: a Critical Introduction and Reflection, Aldershot: Ashgate. Accessible, straightforward yet judicious overview of Hick’s philosophy of religion.

Clooney, Francis (1993), Theology After Vedanta: an Experiment in Comparative Theology, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

One of the first examples of the author’s approach to comparative theology with excellent introduction.

Cottingham, John (2005), The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Values, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A refreshingly different approach to the ‘traditional’ topics of philosophy of religion.

Dupuis, Jacques (2002), Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Catholic theology of religions.

Griffiths, Paul (1990), Christianity through Non-Christian Eyes, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Invaluable collection of texts on Christianity from other faith perspectives.

Griffith-Dickson, Gwen (2005), Philosophy of Religion, London: SCM.

Unique approach to philosophy of religion from a consciously interreligious angle.

Hick, John (1989), An Interpretation of Religion, Basingstoke: Macmillan. The most important of all Hick’s texts on religious pluralism.

Part 3

Religions in the modern world

Chapter 26

Religion and politics

George Moyser

One of the most interesting features of the study of religion in recent years has been the resurgence of interest in its relationship with the political world. Many scholars now recognize that earlier assumptions, at least in Western academic circles, about the fading of religion from political life have not been borne out (Westerlund 1996). To the contrary, instead of a gradual marginalization and privatization of religion, in many parts of the world the opposite has occurred. Even in the West, religion has retained or even reasserted its presence in public debate, not least in the United States.

The result has been a substantial reassessment of the relationship of religion and politics in the modern world. Studies have appeared examining the way in which religious phenomena

– ideas, symbols, individuals, institutions – influence the whole system of governance at local, national and international levels. Equally, attention is now being given to the ways in which the political system – leaders and institutions – respond to these religious claims. In short, the issue of the relationship between religion and politics is now a matter of serious academic attention. There is a growing recognition that religion and politics are not now, and in fact never have been, separate and hermetically sealed spheres of human thought and action. In the modern world, albeit in different ways from earlier times, religion and politics continue to combine in important ways to shape the public arena in which the many issues about the human predicament are debated and acted upon.

‘Religion’ and ‘politics’

The intertwining of religion and politics, both as a descriptive reality and as a subject for prescriptive reflection, has an exceedingly long history that extends back to the earliest eras of intellectual discussion. This reflects the inherent qualities of ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ that seemingly inevitably drive them together into a complex, varied and dynamic relationship. From an historical point of view, as Finer points out, in the earliest times, religion formed part of a ‘vast cosmology … into which all things are fitted’ (Finer 1997: 23). This cosmology included matters religious, having to do with the divine, and matters political, having to do with the exercise of power. Within this context, those who monopolized political power also typically claimed religious authority. This arrangement appears, in various forms, in many ruler cults and sacral kingdoms across the ancient Middle East, Asia, and South America, as well as in Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome. In this way, a pattern evolved bringing religion into the most intimate association with politics, the two forming a single or monistic whole.