In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious OthersTerry C. MuckBuddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005. 145 pp.Kristen Beise Kiblinger, who teaches in the religion department at Thiel College, has written a provocative and imaginative book. It is provocative in that [End Page 168] she appears to be doing buddhology even though she resists calling it that. She says she doesn't want to (...) take the voice of a buddhologian. She does not describe what is as a phenomenologist might or what was as an historian of religion might, or what should be as a buddhologian might. She describes what might be, as a—well, as a participant-philosopher might. She writes as an outsider taking the voice of an insider.Kiblinger chooses as her topic the relationship of Buddhists to people of other religions. She begins by noting that Buddhists themselves have not explicitly addressed this topic in their religious philosophizing, at least not to the extent Christians have. But, she suggests, implicitly they behave as if they do have a favored response to this issue. Citing a wide variety of Buddhist sources across the Buddhist spectrum, she concludes that inclusivism is the most natural position for Buddhists to take vis-à-vis the other religions. She describes that position in some detail, all the while persisting in her refusal to be considered a spokesperson in the insider sense.Kiblinger draws her examples from the way two historical figures related to people of non-Buddhist ideologies and from historical contacts Buddhism as a movement had with other religions or sects. The first historical figure is Siddhartha Gautama himself. The Buddha, Kiblinger notes, was not shy about identifying what made any religion (not just his dhamma) useful—the noble eightfold path. This path is the core of Gautama's dhamma, but it also appears in other religions in other forms. The Buddha put forth the presence of this content as the measure of a religion's usefulness (see the Mahaparinibbana Sutta). And of course the parable of the raft relativizes all religious teachings, making them true only to the extent that they enable humans to "cross the stream" of temporal existence, a common tenet of the inclusivist position in all its forms.Asoka represents a second example of Buddhist inclusivism for Kiblinger. In the seventh and twelfth of his Rock Edicts, Asoka makes clear that all members of all religious traditions are welcome to practice in his kingdom, even though he thinks Buddhism is the best position. He makes clear that both exclusivism and intolerance of other religious ideas are not acceptable positions in his way of looking at the spiritual dimension of the world. Existentially, Asoka's life story is a model of a reformed "exclusivist" finally embracing the all-truth-no-matter-where-you-find-it-is-still-truth position.Not just these giant figures model inclusivism. Buddhism as a movement has consistently, Kiblinger argues, behaved toward other movements as inclusivists would. She uses as a first example the Buddhist attitude toward Vedic sacrifice, the religious practice most liable to be cast aside by the new teaching of Gautama. We see in this example, Kiblinger says, "the technique of significant reinterpretation and new application rather than subordination" (p. 41). She also notes that a technique she calls "reinterpretation by ethicization" that does not throw out Vedic teaching altogether but claims at its root a teaching that was originally Buddhist.Evidence for the inclusivist position can also be found in the way Mahayanists treated Theravadins, or Hinayanists as Kiblinger refers to them. Scholars of Buddhism [End Page 169] have for the most part recognized that the term "hinayana," perhaps best translated as "lesser vehicle," is a pejorative term given to Theravadins by the Mahayanists, the "great vehicle" folks. Kiblinger argues that even though Mahayanists consider their tradition superior (a common trait of all inclusivists, Buddhist or not), they do so with an openness to the value of the way Theravadins approach the problem of enlightenment. Their way may not be the best, but it is a way, and in some contexts it may be an effective way. Mahayanists are able... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist LandTerry C. MuckKingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. By Alan Strathern. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 304 pp.Buddhist-Christian relationships in Southeast Asian countries have a history that goes back to colonizations of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French beginning in the sixteenth century. By studying the story of (...) those early occupations, one can predict with some accuracy the nature of the relationships between Buddhists and Christians today.In Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka, Alan Strathern, research fellow in history at Clare Hall, Cambridge, unearths a piece of the story that helps us understand the antipathy that exists today between Buddhists and Christians in Sri Lanka. As the title indicates, it is a book with a small thesis, limited geographical scope, and of short temporal duration. That is, it is a scholarly book that examines why a Christian monarchy was never established in sixteenth century coastal Sri Lanka during the one hundred years of colonial presence and rule of the maritime regions (ca. 1600–1658) by Roman Catholic Portugal.Strathern breaks new ground by delving into letters written by Portuguese churchmen, which have not previously been used in histories of this period. He ignores neither traditional Buddhist sources (the vaṃsa tradition in Sri Lanka) nor traditional Christian sources (principally Portuguese Jesuit Fernao de Queiros’s The Temporal and [End Page 221] Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon). And he is candid about his debt to the “presiding scholar” of the Portuguese period in Sri Lanka, C.R. de Silva, and also the “other expert in the field,” Jorge Manuel Flores. But the heretofore unused Portuguese letters provide the other side of the conversation that helps explain much.Strathern’s broader periodization begins with the Portuguese’s first incursions into Sri Lanka in 1505 and ends with the collapse of the Portuguese rule in the coastal regions to the Dutch in 1658. But his real focus is on the reign of the most important Sri Lankan monarch during this period, King Bhuvanekabāhu VII, who reigned from 1521 to 1551. It was King Bhuvanekabāhu’s policies regarding the Portuguese and particularly his welcoming of Christian missionaries that have created such controversy among historians of this period, both Sinhalese and Portuguese (and other Western historians). For some, Bhuvanekabāhu was weak and vacillating, for others strong and consistent. For some Bhuvanekabāhu was a captive, powerless vassal, for others a ruler of agency and foresight, making decisions that were the very best he could do given the overwhelming might of the Portuguese navy.Strathern’s conclusion, finely argued and carefully nuanced, is that Bhuvanekabāhu should be given more credit that he is usually given for wise kingship. But the pointed question that Strathern decides is key to the role Bhuvanekabāhu plays is his decision not to convert to Christianity, at an important period in Southeast Asian history when “conversion” to Christianity had become more than a religious decision—it had become a political and economic strategy of some weight, a decision that many other rulers of this period in south India and elsewhere were making as a matter of expedience. Why, asks Strathern, did Bhuvanekabāhu not make the same decision?The answer comes in three explorations that form the three parts of the book. The first is an exploration of the question of kingship in South and Southeast Asia during this period, specifically the role that kings conquered by colonial powers played. Strathern calls this the Temporal Question. The second is an exploration of what happened to these political dynamics when Christian missionaries are thrown in the mix. Strathern calls this the Spiritual Question. Third is an exploration of the overall effect on these two factors on the colonial powers, indigenous nationhoods, and the two religious institutions, Buddhism and Christianity.The TemporalThe sixteenth century in Sri Lanka was a time of unavoidable political alliances. The irresistible power of the colonizing power in Sri Lanka, beginning with Portuguese in 1505, meant that one could either fight to the death... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 181-183 [Access article in PDF] Keeping the Faith: Thai Buddhism at the Crossroads. By Sanitsuda Ekachai. Edited by Nick Wilgus. Bangkok: Post Books, 2001. 192 pp. Sanitsuda Ekachai, editorial columnist and features section editor of the Bangkok Post, writes this book in the Menckanian tradition of muckraking journalism. A collection of columns from the past decade, the book has an angry goal—the reform of a (...) corrupt Thai Buddhist sangha. Somehow, however, the author manages to accomplish the task without an angry or bitter tone. One suspects that this is because she has the goods. In thirty-six short features and twenty-one even shorter editorials, Ekachai paints a damning picture of a corrupt Theravada Buddhist sangha that has lost touch with both its religious tradition and its lay constituency.She presents overwhelming evidence of the corruption. She tells several well-publicized stories of sexual scandals involving bhikkhus and mentions a dozen more. She carefully tallies the possessions of rich bhikkhus and richer temples. She makes clear the unrepentant patriarchy of the authoritarian Buddhist hierarchy and reminds us of the un-Buddhist character of a sangha that will not allow the ordination of bhikkhunis. And she argues that the root cause of much of this drifting from Buddhist ideals is a buying into the consumerism that has gripped much of modern Thai culture.This last point—consumerism—is important. If the book has a theme—always a tall order for a collection of articles—it is the economic enslavement of Thai culture and the sangha to capitalistic values. Of course, the West is the culprit here. Since Thailand, strictly speaking, has never been colonialized, the West managed to corrupt Thailand (or Siam as some prefer) simply by being in the area. As one of Ekachai's key informants, Sulak Sivaraksha succinctly put it, "Siam is culturally and intellectually colonized because the country identifies itself closely with the West" (161). [End Page 181]A close second as a theme, however, is patriarchy. Patriarchy, not Buddhism, is the root of the gender imbalance in the sangha. The Buddha embraced (a bit reluctantly to be sure) the order of bhikkhunis and made it clear his reluctance was an upayic or strategic matter, not a question of the spiritual status of women. Women are as able as men when Enlightenment is the question. Patriarchy is also at the root of Thailand's shameful sex industry—one in thirty women in Thailand is a prostitute. The culture is at fault here, a culture that sees women as objects rather than persons.Sivaraksha ties consumerism and patriarchy together when he says, "In a consumer society, the seeking for endless sensory pleasures and possessions has become the ultimate quest while Buddhism teaches about letting go" (75). The combination of testosterone-blocking celibacy and baht- driven greed has been too much for the modern bhikkhus of Thailand.Not all bhikkhus, however. Ekachai's book rises above the level of pure muckraking through the simple expedient of offering hope. She tells a dozen or more stories of enlightened (small "e") bhikkhus who are taking steps at reform. By "ordaining" (and thereby protecting) endangered trees in a forest. By teaching the dhamma instead of occultism. By showing economic restraint in the face of runaway rapaciousness. These are inspiring stories of bhikkhus named Buddhadasa, Dhammapitika, Udompatanakorn, Kutajitto, Supajarawat,Visalo, and Kabilsingh. Hope is personalized in these reformers.Reading between the lines, one can imagine a response to Ekachai's overwhelming case: the traditional Thai sangha is organized to serve rural village folk. Although the traditional village still exists in Thailand, it is becoming an endangered species in the face of the urbanized juggernaut. The sangha simply hasn't discovered the keys to reaching a changed constituency. Reading between the lines, one suspects that the author would wholeheartedly agree with this defense. Only she wouldn't consider it a defense but a reason, and a well-known reason at that. Her rejoinder would be that the current leadership must know it is out of touch, but still refuses any move... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rita Gross as Coeditor of Buddhist-Christian StudiesTerry C. MuckMy assignment is to celebrate Rita's editorial work on Buddhist-Christian Studies, the journal of our society. But I want to begin by acknowledging Rita's contributions to the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies overall. Her contributions to our society have been enormous. She was a founder and visionary at the beginning. She has, I believe, held every office in the society except for (...) treasurer. And her unfailing willingness to work on whatever needed to be worked on has been an inspiration to us all.But now I want to focus on her work on the editing of Buddhist-Christian Studies. I was chosen for this because Rita and I were coeditors of the journal for ten years, from 1995 to 2005.In one sense Rita and I were guinea pigs. For the first fifteen years of the society, David Chappell, the founding editor, edited the journal. When David retired, the board decided that it would be good to have two editors of the journal, one a Buddhist, one a Christian. It was also in keeping with society commitments that one of us was a man and one a woman.The question was whether two very different people could make a coeditorship work. Coeditorships do not always work. There are two issues. The first is choosing people who actually have the skills to do the job. Coeditorships seem like a great idea when decision makers are wrestling with the internal politics of an organization, especially the issues of proper representation among office holders. In order to avoid appearing to favor one or another identity group within an organization, office-holding choices are often made according to representation rather than skill sets.There is a second issue with coeditorships. Even when the chosen pair satisfies both the representational needs of an organization and the skill sets requirements, there is a question as to whether these two particular people can work together well enough to produce a good journal, whether their work styles mesh, whether their personalities have a reasonable chance of relating positively. In case you are thinking to yourselves, this sounds like my marriage, the analogy is apt.So I would like to spend a few moments remembering for you how this worked with Rita and me. My conclusion is that is worked very well, and I have heard Rita say that from her point of view it worked very well. And there are ten volumes of [End Page 85] Buddhist-Christian Studies sitting on many of our shelves, silent testimonies to the fact that this coeditorship worked well enough so that the journal came out, came out on time, and produced essays and reviews that furthered the aims of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies.My recollections will be in the form of personal anecdotes and stories, since to my mind that is really what made it the fun, voluntary endeavor that the work of the society has become for many of us. I will talk about Rita, I will talk about the editing process, and I will reflect a bit on the challenges and rewards of coediting.Rita GrossI first saw Rita Gross at one of the early meetings of the forerunner of the society, the Cobb-Abe dialogue group. It was at a press conference called by the organizers of the meeting to get some publicity. Rita was being interviewed along with a male scholar who shall remain nameless. I remember two things about the press conference. One was that Rita was wearing a pair of platform shoes that appeared to me to be tippy, and I remember thinking how hard it must be to balance oneself while wearing those things. The second thing I remember was the dynamics between Rita and the male scholar. The male scholar was coming across toward her as one of the most condescending people I have ever seen, and those of you who know Rita know that she does not take to patronization very well. After the second or third of these snide comments coming Rita's way from this very famous man, she just lit into him... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) iii-iv [Access article in PDF] Editorial In this issue we publish a collection of articles using a dialogue format that we began in volume 19 of Buddhist-Christian Studies. Those articles, eventually published as the book Buddhists Talk About Jesus,Christians Talk About the Buddha (Continuum, 2000), asked Christians and Buddhists to critique the founder of the other religion. The format proved successful and provoked some good (...) methodological discussion (see Ingram, p. 75 ff).Thus, in this issue we continue the format with a new question: how have you used and/or learned from the meditative and prayer practices of the other tradition? The assignment drew enthusiastic response, especially from Christians who were asked to write about their experiences of Buddhist meditation. We are publishing five articles by Frances Adeney, Mary Frolich, Paul Ingram, Terry Muck, and Bardwell Smith, along with responses by two Buddhists--Grace Burford and Robert Thurman.In our next issue (volume 22), we will publish articles by five Buddhist authors and two Christian respondents. We will be interested to see if these articles give us clues as to why Christians were more eager to take on this assignment than were Buddhists.In compiling this collection of articles, we made three observations related to good interreligious interchanges. The first is that this form of dialogue requires a good deal of trust among the participants. Talking candidly about important features of the other person's religion runs the risk of offense.Yet the way the writers and respondents--mostly longtime members of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies--wrote indicates that trust is developing.Of course, trust is essential for any kind of healthy dialogue. The reason for the development of interreligious dialogue in this century has been as a response to the level of destructive criticism so common to interchanges among adherents of the world's religions. To address this unacceptable level of conflict, it was necessary to step back and consciously adapt a stance of silent humility about and toward the religious other. As the dialogue movement developed, conversations began to punctuate the silence, conversations that hopefully demonstrated openness, understanding our mutual pasts and intertwined futures. Years of this kind of openness leading to understanding makes it possible to enter into a new era of dialogue, the era of constructive criticism made up of equal parts of honest commentary and unequivocal support.We have moved through this idealized paradigm of responses very imperfectly, of course. The level of destructive conflict is still unacceptably high, silent humility is [End Page iii] in sometimes short supply, openness drowned out by self-interest, and constructive criticism imperfectly practiced. Yet we must move forward, experiencing flashes of epiphany and enlightenment as humility, openness, and mutuality ride the wings of developing trust.The second observation--more a realization, actually--is that this form of interreligious interchange requires a high level of sophistication about religions other than one's own. It is hard to pin down the exact nature of this sophistication. It is not just knowledge about the other's religion that is required, although it is partly that. One cannot comment effectively about Buddhist meditation unless one has a certain fundamental understanding of what Buddhist meditation is. Christian prayer is not easy to define, but certain features of the practice are universally recognized among both theologians and practitioners. To conduct the kind of mutual evaluation asked for in this type of dialogue, basic levels of understanding are necessary.The dialogue as we envision it, however, goes beyond knowledge. In our letter of invitation to participants, we made it clear that we were also interested in writers who had some experience with the other religion's spiritual practice. As we received and evaluated submissions, it became clear that what gave the essays power and authority was the mixture of knowledge and experience of the others' spiritual practice. As you will see, it wasn't always the case that our writers had adapted meditative or prayer practice wholesale. But invariably their experience gained through learning about the practice led to changes: deeper, richer practice in their own tradition.This... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 115-121 [Access article in PDF] Instrumentality, Complexity, and Reason: A Christian Approach to Religions Terry C. Muck Asbury Theological Seminary I want to call into question The Paradigm, the threefold classification of Christian approaches to other religions as Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism. I call this classification The Paradigm, with a capital T and a capital P, because it is the way we have categorized Christian (...) theological approaches to the other religions ever since 1982, when Alan Race proposed this "broad typological framework within which most of the current Christian theologies of religions can be placed," in his book Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (Orbis Books). 1Race's was not the first attempt at such a paradigm. He was preceded by others, most notably Owen Thomas, who classified Christian responses to other religions under the headings of rationalism, romanticism, relativism, exclusivism, dialectic, reconception, tolerance, dialogue, catholicism, and presence. 2 But Thomas's categories have not stuck like Race's, perhaps because of the larger number and perhaps because they seem a mixture of apples and oranges, that is, a conglomeration of logical positions, emotive states, and simple demographics. Although this hodgepodge may be more true to the reality of the complex ways Christians relate to people of other faiths, Race's paradigm, simple and straightforward, has won out in the descriptive derby.I think it is time to question whether Race's paradigm should continue to be the primary way we classify the many ways Christian theologians and other Christians relate to the world's other religious traditions. I will describe why I think The Paradigm is losing its usefulness, make a proposal for a new way of looking at the other religions, and list both the losses/dangers and benefits of thinking in a new way. The Problem with the Paradigm The first sign that The Paradigm is showing its age is that very few people seem to really fit in any one of the three categories. I suspect that few of us here would be willing to say unambiguously, "I am an exclusivist," or "I am an inclusivist," or "I am [End Page 115] a pluralist." 3 And even if we were willing to identify with one or another of the options, then most likely we would in the same breath quickly say something like, "But let me tell you what I mean when I say I am an exclusivist (or inclusivist or pluralist)." That is, we quickly define the words in qualifying ways that address the objections that have been raised in reference to each of the positions:Exclusivists, for example, struggle to counter the charges of being inhumane, 4 or of making God seem inhumane, 5 or of being narrow, or of being misinformed, 6 or of being unscholarly. 7Inclusivists, for their part, struggle to counter the charges of being Christian exclusivists in disguise, 8 or of being offensive to non-Christians, 9 or of being pluralists in disguise, 10 or of holding a philosophically unstable position.Pluralists, in turn, make sure we know they are not relativists, 11 that they are not necessarily universalists, 12 that being a pluralist does not mean they are a-religious or that they consider themselves above the fray of common religious commitment. 13I don't think that this problem has just to do with the fact that the paradigm is what Max Weber called an ideal-type paradigm, where we set up ideal types as a way of clearly delineating logically possible positions vis-à-vis a presenting issue as a heuristic device. 14 Were that the case, it seems to me that we could still embrace The Paradigm as a way of talking about interreligious interchange and explicitly/implicitly acknowledge to one another that we recognize the ambiguity of the categories when it comes to applying them to complex individual adherents of complex religious traditions. 15I think dissatisfaction with The Paradigm goes beyond frustration with it as an ideal-type typology. The Paradigm has come to stand for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 115-121 [Access article in PDF] Instrumentality, Complexity, and Reason: A Christian Approach to Religions Terry C. Muck Asbury Theological Seminary I want to call into question The Paradigm, the threefold classification of Christian approaches to other religions as Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism. I call this classification The Paradigm, with a capital T and a capital P, because it is the way we have categorized Christian (...) theological approaches to the other religions ever since 1982, when Alan Race proposed this "broad typological framework within which most of the current Christian theologies of religions can be placed," in his book Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (Orbis Books). 1Race's was not the first attempt at such a paradigm. He was preceded by others, most notably Owen Thomas, who classified Christian responses to other religions under the headings of rationalism, romanticism, relativism, exclusivism, dialectic, reconception, tolerance, dialogue, catholicism, and presence. 2 But Thomas's categories have not stuck like Race's, perhaps because of the larger number and perhaps because they seem a mixture of apples and oranges, that is, a conglomeration of logical positions, emotive states, and simple demographics. Although this hodgepodge may be more true to the reality of the complex ways Christians relate to people of other faiths, Race's paradigm, simple and straightforward, has won out in the descriptive derby.I think it is time to question whether Race's paradigm should continue to be the primary way we classify the many ways Christian theologians and other Christians relate to the world's other religious traditions. I will describe why I think The Paradigm is losing its usefulness, make a proposal for a new way of looking at the other religions, and list both the losses/dangers and benefits of thinking in a new way. The Problem with the Paradigm The first sign that The Paradigm is showing its age is that very few people seem to really fit in any one of the three categories. I suspect that few of us here would be willing to say unambiguously, "I am an exclusivist," or "I am an inclusivist," or "I am [End Page 115] a pluralist." 3 And even if we were willing to identify with one or another of the options, then most likely we would in the same breath quickly say something like, "But let me tell you what I mean when I say I am an exclusivist (or inclusivist or pluralist)." That is, we quickly define the words in qualifying ways that address the objections that have been raised in reference to each of the positions:Exclusivists, for example, struggle to counter the charges of being inhumane, 4 or of making God seem inhumane, 5 or of being narrow, or of being misinformed, 6 or of being unscholarly. 7Inclusivists, for their part, struggle to counter the charges of being Christian exclusivists in disguise, 8 or of being offensive to non-Christians, 9 or of being pluralists in disguise, 10 or of holding a philosophically unstable position.Pluralists, in turn, make sure we know they are not relativists, 11 that they are not necessarily universalists, 12 that being a pluralist does not mean they are a-religious or that they consider themselves above the fray of common religious commitment. 13I don't think that this problem has just to do with the fact that the paradigm is what Max Weber called an ideal-type paradigm, where we set up ideal types as a way of clearly delineating logically possible positions vis-à-vis a presenting issue as a heuristic device. 14 Were that the case, it seems to me that we could still embrace The Paradigm as a way of talking about interreligious interchange and explicitly/implicitly acknowledge to one another that we recognize the ambiguity of the categories when it comes to applying them to complex individual adherents of complex religious traditions. 15I think dissatisfaction with The Paradigm goes beyond frustration with it as an ideal-type typology. The Paradigm has come to stand for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The BuddhaTerry C. MuckWhen I think of the Buddha, the subject of my scholarly study, the picture my mind produces is soft and blurred at the edges—out of focus but not in a way that makes it difficult to see or understand. It is more in the way a photography studio uses background and light to project the subject forward. The Buddha, in my mind’s eye, seems friendly, accessible. (...) This Buddha, my Buddha, manages to combine great warmth and great mystery.By contrast, when I think of Jesus, the object of my faith, I see clearly a well-defined personality. There is no portraiture here. It is more like a candid snapshot taken by a very good camera with plenty of natural light; a great photograph, a picture that produces a clear image, in my mind at least, of a person I know and understand. It is a picture of someone walking around Palestine doing great deeds, a father to my Buddha brother—and to me.I love both the Buddha and Jesus. I have loved Jesus since early Sunday school days in Huntington, Indiana, at the Bible Baptist Church on Lake Street. I have loved the Buddha since I first began reading about him in graduate school at Northwestern University and listening to Walpola Rahula lecture about him in classes there. Both the Buddha and Jesus were great men, doing divine things that have changed the world for billions after them. The differences my mind produces are in the realm of qualities. I love them both, but I see them differently.Why the differences? I suppose one reason is that they are different. Gautama Buddha lived in sixth-century B.C.E. India where he was the son of a king, chose a life of religious itinerancy, and died of food poisoning at eighty years of age. Jesus lived in Palestine in the first century C.E. where he was the son of a carpenter, chose a life of religious itinerancy, and was crucified by the Roman authorities after being convicted on a charge of political subversion.They both chose a life of religious itinerancy, to be sure. But the meaning of each of those traveling lives has been the subject of great debate, both within and without their respective religious traditions. Disagreements abound. In fact, in one of those [End Page 105] odd quirks of human cantankerousness, the deeper one gets into each of the traditions, Buddhism and Christianity, the more diverse and passionate are the views about the Buddha and the Christ.The diversity of views deep within each tradition can be stunning to the average Buddhist and Christian on the street, who tend to have a rather homogenized view of each other—kind of a standard life story that could be easily summarized in the pages and pictures of a comic book. But deep within the traditions, Buddhists argue about Buddha nature, Buddha veneration, and the role the Buddha plays in human liberation. Christians argue about Jesus’ divine and human status, his uniqueness, and the role he plays in human salvation. One good thing about all this disagreement: it makes my musings about the Buddha and Jesus pale in comparison.Still, I would like to understand better. Why do I see the Buddha and Jesus differently?Socialization and HistorySurely the most important reason can be summarized in one word: socialization. I was raised to love Jesus, to believe in him. Here’s how I was raised to see Jesus: Jesus is God’s son, born to a woman named Mary and a man named Joseph. God sent Jesus to help human beings lost in a morass of bad deeds, psychological confusion, and social injustices. This melange of evil is so pervasive among human beings that solutions can only come from someone outside the system, willing to enter into the system and guide others out, both by what he says and by what he does—how he lives his life.What Jesus said, what Jesus did, and who Jesus was—all are unique. Others of us can try to live like Jesus—indeed, we should. But none of us, not one, can... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri LankaTerry C. MuckTheravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By Elizabeth Harris. London: Routledge, 2006. 274 pp.Of all the facets of the multifaceted interactions among Buddhists and Christians, the one sure to generate the most heat is mission: Christians spreading the gospel, Buddhists spreading (...) the dhamma, Christians preaching and Buddhists preaching at the same time in the same places. This is the central topic of Elizabeth Harris’s Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By throwing light on this crucial encounter, Harris greatly reduces the heat generated by these competing missions and makes greater understanding possible. At least, that would be one hoped-for outcome.Harris challenges the standard postcolonial critique (SPC) of what happened to Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists when Christian missionaries, riding on the coattails of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialists, invaded the peaceful and pristine island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. SPC posits Western colonial missionaries gaining power through their political proxies, shaping Western understandings of Theravada Buddhism to fit their Puritan and rationalistic preconceptions, and then attempting to destroy this made-in-the-West Buddhism, using aggressive and triumphalistic mission tactics that not only failed, but generated such a backlash that still, today, Buddhist-Christian relationships in Sri Lanka are poisoned almost beyond remedy.Harris challenges the SPC not by denying the obvious truths embedded in the various elements of this version of the sad story, but by convincingly showing us that the SPC is only one side of a very complex story. The SPC, Harris argues, needs to be complexified by realizing that not all British in nineteenth century Ceylon fit the stereotypical missionary model, that Sri Lankan Buddhists had agency in shaping what became known as Protestant Buddhism in the twentieth century Buddhist revival, and that the Buddhist mission effort that corresponded to the Christian mission effort led to a system of competing mission efforts that must be factored into any attempt to understand the influence of the nineteenth century on the twentieth—and the twenty-first.British ChristiansHarris uses three paradigms to show the diversity of British interlocutors with Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Buddhists. The first paradigm is an early (1796–1830), middle (1830–1870), late (1870–1900) periodization that corresponds to parts 1, 2, and 3 of the book. By means of this paradigm Harris shows that development took place in British understandings of Buddhist precept and practice. The earliest observers made mistakes, even when they based their observations on texts and [End Page 188] practicing Buddhist informants. As with most such developments, the changes and depths of understanding were uneven, with later commentators sometimes repeating the howlers and biases of the earliest commentators, even as they in some areas went far beyond them in depth of understanding. Later was not always better, but it usually was.The second paradigm one might call vocational. The British did not all come to Ceylon for the same reason. Some came as political overseers for the colonial government. Some came as merchants, looking for a way to turn the island’s abundant natural resources into pounds in their bank accounts back home. Some came simply as “tourists” looking to find out more about what was in the nineteenth century a very exotic culture indeed to European eyes. Some came as missionaries to spread the Christian gospel story. And a trickle of scholars seeking data for research topics gradually turned into a fairly broad stream by the end of the century. Each of these five groups came asking slightly different questions. Because Buddhism was so ubiquitous among the people of Ceylon, Buddhism was always part of the answer to the different questions politicos, businesspeople, travelers, Christians, and professors asked, but the different questions produced different products: statements of public policy vis-à-vis Buddhism, Southeast Asian versions of Weber’s observations about religion and economics, diaries and travelogues, theologies of religion, and... (shrink)

Both Paul Knitter and John Hick rely heavily on the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist paradigm. In a world that has become increasingly suspicious of missionary activity, moving beyond this paradigm calls for a bigger theology, wider methodology, and deeper missiology characterized by participant theologizing.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Pluralism and Christian TruthJoseph S. O’Leary has been named recipient of the 1998 Frederick J. Streng Book Award for his 1996 volume, Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth. Dr. O’Leary was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1949. He studied literature, theology, and philosophy in Maynooth, Rome, and Paris. After teaching briefly in the United States (University of Notre Dame and Duquesne University), he moved to Japan in 1983. He (...) has worked in association with the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and currently teaches English literature at Sophia University (with special emphasis on Joyce and the modernist period) and a course on Japanese values at International Christian University.He has been working on a trilogy in fundamental theology that has taken on an increasingly interreligious character. The first volume is Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston/Seabury, 1985), reviewed in Buddhist-Christian Studies in 1987; a French version is in preparation. The second volume appeared first as La verite chretienne a l’age du pluralisme religieux (Paris: Cerf, 1994) and then as Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (Edinburgh University Press, 1996). Joseph O’Leary is also coeditor of Heidegger et la question de Dieu (Paris: Grasset, 1980) and Buddhist Spirituality (vols. 8 and 9 of World Spirituality, New York: Crossroad, 1993 and 1999).Terry Muck: Why did you write this book?Joseph O’Leary: My earlier book, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition, advocated deconstruction of the Greek and Hebrew elements in Christian theology—the need for a radical retrieval of the tradition in the spirit of Heidegger’s “step back” from metaphysical systems to the original phenomena. In Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth, I broadened the horizon to see all religion as historical, cultural constructs growing and changing through mutual interaction. Living in Japan brought me a liberating sense of historical and cultural relativity and with it the sense that the Christian tradition should be thought of as an essentially incomplete project, always reaching out to other traditions in search of a fuller vision.But that discovery did not mean giving up on the Christian tradition.No. Rather than sitting back and enjoying the pluralism, I found myself more and more concerned with the question of truth. Followers of Jacques Derrida assured me that “truth” has been exposed as a historical myth. Struggling with Derrida I found rather a recontextualization of the value of truth. Moreover, the “situated truth” (always relative to a given context in culture and praxis) of historically formulated dogmatic propositions turned out to be quite defensible despite Derrida’s demolition [End Page 239] of notions of truth as totality (Hegel) or truth as presence (Heidegger). Christianity has nothing to fear from opening itself up to its historical relativity. Buddhism has long accepted the provisionality of all religious expressions. I focused especially on the notion of skillful means and on the theory of the two truths (conventional and ultimate) in Madhyamaka Buddhism.What does this “opening up” do to traditional Christian doctrines?The notion of God is not only compatible with such a relativized view of the status of religious language, but demands it. The biblical discourse about God consists in a constant deconstruction of old images of God by new ones. As for the role of Jesus Christ, Incarnation is an ongoing event in that the historical significance of Jesus is still unfolding. The uniqueness of Jesus resides not in some ontological amalgamation of divinity and humanity but in the specifics of his historical role. God’s Word is spoken in other ways elsewhere, indeed is spoken in all things, and its specifically “fleshly” (human and historical) and “eschatological” manifestation in the unfolding of the Jesus story should not be divorced from these wider contexts.How have these ideas been received?The most flattering response has come from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in granting me the Frederick J. Streng Book Award. Streng’s book, Emptiness, which I read in Pittsburgh in 1982, opened my eyes to the world of Madhyamaka thought.Any criticisms?Predictably, the book has come under fire from two opposing camps. The Revue Thomiste reviewer claimed that I could... (shrink)