Editorial Introduction, Issue 8.1
How to Cite
Hedges, P., & van Doorn-Harder, N. (2024). Editorial Introduction. Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology, 8(1), 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.32391
The study of interreligious relations and what this means continues apace within the universities but also within communities both civil and religiously affiliated. Yet, we live in a time when it appears that stresses and fractures shape our world. Conflict predominates. Some of this conflict shapes our global news stories, while others become forgotten if they are ever given attention. Into this space, studies of the nature to which this journal is dedicated arguably remain imperative. While their concern is scholarly, and often impartial surveys, they also provide stories and narratives that may impact real communities. Both scholars of interreligious studies and of course intercultural theologians (two groups which, in any case, do not make up the sole readership of the journal despite the titular nomenclature) recognize that the division of scholar and advocate, academic and practitioner are artificial and often are shaped by or enforce certain power dynamics, whether intellectual or otherwise. Nevertheless, there remain many elite, white, masculine scholars who will seek to determine what the “proper” (or “scientific,” “secular,” etc.) study of religion should be. Debates within interreligious studies as to whether it is primarily a scholarly or an activist field, or some uneasy combination of the two, remain persistent in this context. Regardless, both intercultural theology and interreligious studies, we may suggest, seek to broaden, we may say decolonize, the study of religion, theological studies, and how we explore interreligious relations. As such, we are delighted that this edition of ISIT represents many truly global perspectives.
Spanning Western contexts as well as Africa and various Asian contexts, there is no assumption that we see a normative center and various peripheries. It also reflects a number of different interreligious encounters, and in almost every article the particularities of place are significant, such that these are not merely abstract reflections about, as it were, disembodied and universal “religions,” but are sensitive to location and the placement of communities and texts.
Martha Moore-Keish opens with a comparative theological reflection on Christian and Hindu worship, looking at ways that the guest-host paradigm occurs in the Christian Eucharist and Vaishnava prasada. While there may seem to be a divergence of Christ as host in the Eucharist for Christians, and devotee as host for Vishnu in prasada, Moore-Keish shows that these relations are more complicated and transgressed for both, making the guest-host relationship more complicated and showing how we can learn from this.
Next, Marcus Tmothy Haworth takes us into the realm of Aḥmadī Muslim-Christian Relations. This is interesting both because, as a minority, the Ahmadi community are not always considered in Christian-Muslim relations, which of course raises the sensitive question as to whether other Muslims recognize them within the fold of Islam. It is also interesting because, as Haworth shows, the initial encounters were strongly polemical from both the Christian and the Ahmadiyya side, but they have interpreted this as grounds for a more irenic coexistence and dialogue since then.
The next paper takes us to Africa with Ben-Willie Kwako Golo looking at how a specifically Ghanaian form of Christianity may have resources for ecological theology, especially in relation to indigenous Akan conceptions. Golo argues for ecological eco-pneumatology as a basis for environmental sustainability that arises from this context but may be important for us all.
From Indonesia, a co-authored paper by Robby Igusti Chandra, Taryono Sukamto, A Christian Jonch, Yohanes Setiawan, and Nofia Hudaya discusses a nineteenth-century Islamic text which speaks about Jesus as the Word of God, including his death and resurrection. The Serat Centhini is regarded as a literary masterpiece but also speaks to an indigenous reverence for Jesus that combines traditional Islamic devotion and Javanese spirituality in ways that, as the authors show us, many may find surprising.
Mona Norouzi then takes us into an exploration of Jewish-Muslim relations focusing upon the stories of Aaron and Moses in the Hebrew Bible and in the Qur’an. It focuses on what is seen as Aaron’s eloquence and Moses’ speech impediment to look at complexities within the text, but also across the two scriptural texts of these traditions. Norouzi also explores some commentarial texts and shows that the narratives across the traditions may be seen as complementing one another and do so within a particular Iranian context.
Next, William I. Orbih discusses divine transcendence in both Christian and Muslim traditions, seeking to go beyond the via negativa, but also respecting, via Catherine Cornille, an epistemic humility in each tradi-tion. While engaging classical thinkers in each tradition, as well as modern commentators, Orbih also pays attention to context, and conflict between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria provides a backdrop to this article.
