Do Interritual Practices Demonstrate Religions’ Theologies of God? Toward a Critical Assessment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.20563Keywords:
Interritual participation, Interreligious prayer, Theologies of God, Epistemic trajectoryAbstract
Can people of different faiths worship the same God and pray inter-religiously? Can this worship demonstrate that the religions believe in the same God? Does the participation in interreligious prayer verify that the participants believe in one God? The essay tackles these inquiries by pointing to theological voices claiming that Christian-Muslim interreligious worship is a reliable basis for concluding that Christianity and Islam believe in the same God. It also offers an assessment in light of a personal interreligious worship experience. The essay shows whether or not there is an authentic, open, epistemic trajectory between religions and their followers’ religiosity, and whether the data collector can certainly rely on this relationship to construct a reliable epistemological perception of the religion’s interpretation of God. In sum, it examines critically whether it is the case that interreligious worship is always a reliable epistemic medium of the religious faith of the worshipping subjects.
References
Ariarajah, W. 1999. Not Without my Neighbor: Issues in Interfaith Relations. Geneva: World Council of Chuches.
Augustine of Hippo. 1984. Concerning the City of God: Against the Pagans. Translated by Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin.
Awad, Najib George. 2018. “From Pre-dialogue into Interreligious Dialogue: Interreligious Theologization as the Starting Point of a Reliable Religious Education.” Journal of Religious Education 66(1), 2018: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-018-0053-0
Awad, Najib George. 2014. “At the Dawn of ‘Practice’ or Re-thinking the Nature and Role of Theology and Doctrine in the Church.” Journal of Reformed Theology 8: 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1163/15697312-00801001
Awad, Najib George. 2018. Umayyad Christianity: John of Damascus as a Contextual Example of Identity Formation in Early Islam. Piscataway: Gorgias. https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463240219
Badham, Paul. 1980. Christian Beliefs about Life after Death, London: SCM.
Chapman, Colin. 2008. Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam. Second Edition. Westmont: InterVarsity.
Cragg, Kenneth. 1959. Sandals at the Mosque: Christian Presence Amid Islam. Oxford Oxford University Press.
———. 1970. Alive to God: Muslim and Christian Prayer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1977. The Christian and Other Religion: The Measure of Christ. London: A.R. Mowbray.
Cornille, Catherine. 2013. “Multiple Religious Belonging and Interreligious Dialogue.” In Understanding Inter-religious Relations. Edited by David Cheetham, David Pratt and David Thomas, 324–340. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cornille, Catherine. 2016. “Empathy and Otherness in Interreligious Dialogue.” In Dynamics of Difference: Christianity and Alterity. A Festschrift for Werner G. Jeanrond, edited by Ulrich Schmiedel and James M. Matarazzo Jr., 221–229. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
Galli, Mark. 2016. “Wheaton, Hawkins,: Let Us Reason Together, Please: How Might a Christian Handle a Controversy that Threatens to Undo It?” Christianity Today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/january-web-only/wheaton-hawkins-let-us-reason-together-please.html
Fredericks, James. 1995. “A Universal Religious Experience? Comparative Theology as an Alternative to a Theology of Religions.” Horizons 22(1): 67–87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0360966900028942
Graham, Ruth. 2016. “The Professor Wore a Hijab in Solidarity – then Lost Her Job.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/magazine/the-professor-wore-a-hijab-in-solidarity-then-lost-her-job.html
Griffith, Sidney H. 2008. The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400834020
Grimes, Ronald L. 1996. Readings in Ritual Studies. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Gustafson, Hans. 2016. “Is Transreligious Theology Unavoidable in Interreligious Theology and Dialogue?” Open Theology 2: 248–260. https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2016-0020
Gustafson, Hans. 2015. Finding All Things in God: Pansacramentalism and Doing Theology Interreligiously. Eugene: Pickwick.
Heck, Paul L. 2009. Common Ground: Islam, Christianity and Religious Pluralism. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Hedges, Paul and Alan Race. 2008. SCM Reader: Christian Approaches to Other Faiths, London: SCM.
Hughes, Aaron W. 2012. Abrahamic Religions: On the Use and Abuse of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199934645.001.0001
Hütter, Reinhard. 2000. Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice. Translated by Doug Stott. Grand Rapids and Cambridge: W.B. Eerdmans.
Kerr, David. 2009. “Political Theology. Christian Engagement with Islam in the Global South.” In Plural Voices: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Interreligious Issues, edited by Patrick Fridlund, Lucie Kaennel, and Catherina Stenqvist, 55–70. Leuven: Peeters.
Kirkland, Ann. 2016. “Professor ‘Flabbergasted’ over Wheaton’s Plan to Fire Her over Worship Comments.” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/05/wheaton-is-planning-to-fire-professor-who-said-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5faac996d593
McGuire, M.B. 2008. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moyaert, Marianne. 2015. “Introduction: Exploring the Phenomenon of Interreligious Ritual Participation.” In Ritual Participation and Interreligious Dialogue: Boundaries, Transgressions and Innovations, edited by Marrianne Moyaert and Joris Geldhof, 1–16. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Moyaert, Marianne. 2014. “Inapparopriate Behavior? On the Ritual Core of Religion and its Challenges to Interreligious Hospitality.” Journal of the Academic Study of Religion 27: 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.v27i2.222
———. 2011. Fragile Identities: Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Paulsell, Stephanie. 2013. “Faith Matters: Devotional Difference.” Christian Century 129(2): 35.
Pui-Lan, Kowk. 2005. “Interfaith Encounter.” In Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, edited by Arthur Holder, 532–549. Malden: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9781405102476.2005.00032.x
Ralston, Joshua. 2016. “The Same God, or the One God? On the Limitations and Implications of the Wheaton Affair.” ABC Religion and Ethics http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/01/12/4386793.htm
Schleiermachr, Friedrich. 1958. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultural Despisers. Translated by John Oman. San Francisco: Harper Torshbooks.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1928. Christian Faith. Second Edition. Edited by H.R. Mackintosh and translated by J.S. Stewart. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Schmidt-Leukel, Perry. 2017. God Beyond Boundaries: A Christian and Pluralist Theology of Religions. Münster: Waxmann.
Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1989. Towards a World Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religions. Maryknoll: Orbis.
———. 1997. Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective. Edited by J.W. Burbidge. Albany: State University of New York.
Stroumsa, Guy. 2015. The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198738862.001.0001
Sydnor, Jon Paul. 2017. “Interformation: The Ethics of Interreligious Ritual Participation.”Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology 1(2):187–205. https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.33604
Thiselton, Anthony C. 2007. The Hermeneutics of Doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Vanhoozer, Kevin. 2005. The Drams of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Volf, Miroslav. 2011. Allah: A Christian Response. New York: Harper-Collins.
Volf, Miroslav and Dorothy C. Bass. 2002. Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Williams, Bernard. 1963. “Tertullian’s Paradox.” In New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Macintyre, PAGES. London: SCM.
