Member Publications

Buddhist and Christian Attitudes to Religious Diversity

Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Hans-Peter Großhans, Samuel Ngun Ling (eds.)
Yangon: Ling’s Family Publications 2017, 350 pages, ISBN 978-99971-0-269-0

The attitudes of Christians and Theravāda Buddhists toward religious diversity are at the center of a new publication jointly edited by Prof. Dr. Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology, and Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Großhans, Professor of Systematic Theology, from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, together with Dr. Samuel Ngun Ling, Principal of the “Myanmar Institute of Theology” in Yangon, Myanmar. “Buddhist and Christian Attitudes to Religious Diversity” has been published in February 2017 with Ling’s Family Publications in Yangon, Myanmar. “The contributions to this book inquire about the possibility to overcome such perceptions of other religions, and of religious diversity as such, which imply contempt and disdain toward other faiths,” says Professor Schmidt-Leukel. “In South Asia, this issue is currently not only getting momentum, it is becoming explosive.”

God Beyond Boundaries: A Christian and Pluralist Theology of Religions

Perry Schmidt-Leukel

Religious Pluralism and Interreligious Theology - The Gifford Lectures

Perry Schmidt-Leukel

Interreligious dialogue has encouraged many theologians in all major religious traditions to consider whether other religions may offer a different but nevertheless genuine and valid path of salvation or liberation. Perry Schmidt- Leukel, in this extended version of his 2015 Gifford Lectures, argues that this position—often called "religious pluralism"—must be developed within particular insights supplied by each of the major traditions.

The German edition appears under the title "Wahrheit in Vielfalt"

Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age
Charles Taylor and Zen Buddhism in the West

André van der Braak

In Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age André van der Braak offers an account of the exciting but also problematic encounter between enchanted Japanese Zen Buddhism and secular Western modernity over the past century, using Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age as an interpretative lens.

Imagining the Ecumenical: A Personal Journey

John D'Arcy May

Starting from the observation that theology is essentially narrative, and assuming that biography is a fundamental theological genre, the book presents a biography of the ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue movements in the form of the autobiography of an 'accidental ecumenist', whose life took him to religious contexts as diverse as Rome, Germany, Papua New Guinea and Ireland. At its centre is the encounter with Theravada and later Mahayana Buddhism and the indigenous traditions of Australia and the Pacific.

Praxisbuch interreligiöser Dialog

Martin Rötting (ed.) • Simone Sinn (ed.) • Aykan Inan (ed.)

Thomas Merton
Un veilleur à l'écoute de l'Orient

Jacques Scheuer

Les étapes de la découverte par Merton des traditions asiatiques de spiritualité, en particulier le Zen sino-japonais, la sagesse taoïste, le bouddhisme tibétain. On voit ce que, sans romantisme à fleur de peau mais non sans quelque idéalisation, il attendit et reçut d’elles pour stimuler la tradition mystique chrétienne mais aussi pour féconder les valeurs humanistes de l’Occident contemporain. Dans un second temps, sont présentées les interrogations voire les perplexités que cette rencontre suscita chez le croyant et le contemplatif chrétien qu’était Merton

Mining Truths
Festschrift in Honour of Geraldine Smyth OP – Ecumenical Theologian and Peacebuilder.

Geraldine Smyth OP has had – and continues to have – a profound influence on ecumenical dialogue in Ireland and on the conceptual development of Ecumenics as a field of studies. Her work seeks to place theological understandings in service to and in dialogue with other intellectual disciplines in such a way as to benefit human beings. Her response to ‘the troubles’ that have afflicted her native Belfast and Northern Ireland has shown in particular how a focused, open-minded, peace-directed consciousness can be a balm for a troubled society.

Religion and Social Cohesion
Western, Chinese and Intercultural Perspectives

André van der Braak (ed.), Dedong Wei (ed.), Caifang Zhu (ed.)

Both in the West and in China, it is increasingly recognized that religion is not merely an individual matter, but a social force that has an important impact on society. And whereas the focus in the media today is often on the potential negative social impact of religion (the threats of fundamentalism, violence and terrorism), religion has also often been an important factor in the arising of social capital and social cohesion.

Buddhologie und Christologie - Unterwegs zu einer kollaborativen Theologie

John D'Arcy May

In the light of increasing co-operation between Buddhists and Christians in areas such as meditation practice and social justice, the book explores the possibility of a theological basis for such co-operation, now that Buddhists too are prepared to use the term 'theology'. Both traditions have erected impressive doctrinal structures over the centuries. The question is whether, over and above dialogical and comparative theology, there could be a genuinely 'collaborative' Buddhist-Christian theology.

L'Inde, entre bouddhisme et hindouisme
Quinze siècle d'échanges

Jacques Scheuer

Religious Diversity in Chinese Thought

Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Joachim Gentz (eds.)

This collection of essays by major scholars analyze the religious diversity in Chinese religion, bringing together topics from traditional and contemporary contexts and Chinese religions' encounters with Western religion.

Christianity and the Notion of Nothingness
Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue from the Kyoto School.

Muto Kazuo (author), Dr Martin Repp (ed.)

This book introduces the thoughts of the Japanese Christian philosopher of religion Muto Kazuo (1913-1995), who was a student of Tanabe Hajime and a colleague and close friend of Nishitani Keiji at Kyoto University, both important representatives of the Kyoto School. Hence he was fully recognized as a Christian member of this predominantly Buddhist school of philosophy.

Zen

Raquel Bouso

¿Qué razones explican la fascinación que ejerce el zen en el mundo occidental? ¿Son las mismas que han mantenido viva esta tradición secular en los países asiáticos?

What reasons explain the fascination of Zen in the Western world? Are they the same ones that have kept this secular tradition alive in Asian countries?

Buddhism and Religious Diversity

Perry Schmidt-Leukel ed.

Perry Schmidt-Leukel ed.

Buddhism is—and has been—as much convinced of its own superiority as any other faith, and has also been involved in various inter-religious tensions and violent conflicts. The ways, however, in which Buddhists have thought about the religious ‘other’, and practically dealt with it, display peculiar features, which do indeed differ profoundly from what we find in the Abrahamic faiths. Yet today, Buddhism must address the question whether it can arrive at a genuine appreciation of religious diversity, and recognize other religions as different but nevertheless equally valid.

Religion in Bewegung

Martin Rötting

"Religion in Bewegung" bietet einen Verstehensrahmen interreligiöser Lernprozesse. Grundlage hierfür sind empirische Forschungen des Institutes OCCURSO. Sechs Dialog-Typen werden bestimmt: Spiritueller Pilger, Sozialer Beweger, Religiös-Kultureller Demokrat, Kultur-Harmonisierer, Orthodoxer Adapter und Humanitär-Religiöser. Sie ermöglichen es, gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen und theologische Konsequenzen anzuzeigen.

Mondō to ronsō no bukkyō – Shūkyō-teki komyunikēshon no shatei.
(Didactic conversations and disputations in Buddhism – The range of religious communications).

Martin Repp, Yoshiyuki Inoue (eds)

This publication derives from an interdisciplinary research project at the Research Center for Buddhist Culture at Ryukoku University (Kyoto) which was organized by the editors.

Nietzsche and Zen
Self-overcoming without a Self

André van der Braak

Andre Van der Braak's Nietzsche and Zen: Self-overcoming Without a Self is a thoughtful meditation on doing intercultural philosophy in a Nietzschean way. Nietzsche ultimately seeks a 'way-knowing' more similar to Buddhism and Daoism than the truth-seeking of his own philosophical tradition. This book situates Nietzsche in an intercultural context

En douze brefs chapitres, autant d’explorations, selon un mouvement d’aller et de retour, comparable au travail du tisserand qui croise et recroise les fils. À chaque étape, une parole, une parabole, une image ou encore un personnage de la tradition bouddhique convie à la découverte d’une facette de ce monde spirituel.

Le lecteur est alors renvoyé à lui-même : à son identité fragile d’Occidental dans le tourbillon de la modernité ‘avancée’, à sa compréhension toujours inachevée du chemin spirituel tel que le propose la foi chrétienne.

Buddhism for a Violent World: A Christian Reflection.

Elizabeth J. Harris

Fusing autobiography, conversations with Buddhists and academic research into Buddhism, this book explores what Buddhist thought and practice can offer a fractured world. Elizabeth studied Buddhism for nearly eight years in Sri Lanka during the country's ethnic war and uses this experience to reflect on Buddhism's message in contexts of violence and suffering. In the last chapter, she reflects on Buddhist-Christian mistrust in Sri Lanka and some of the pioneering initiatives by Sri Lankan Christians to change mistrust into trust.