The Asia-Pacific is not only a geopolitical and multicultural area, but an interreligious context. All the world\u2019s major religions originated in Asia; the Pacific rim embraces virtually every known type of indigenous tradition. Modern means of travel and communication put these religions in contact as never before. The resulting interreligious relationships exemplify all that is good and bad about \u2018religion\u2019: admirable attempts at reconciliation and peace-building on the one hand, the fomenting of ethno-nationalist conflicts on the other. These developments have global implications \u2013 including theological implications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At\nthe Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the two Declarations that were most\nbitterly contested till the end of the very last session were Dignitatis Humanae<\/em> on tolerance and\nhuman rights and Nostra Aetatae<\/em> on\nthe Church\u2019s relations with other religions. This controversy is symptomatic\nfor theological resistance to pluralism. Both documents were unprecedented and\nstruck at the heart of theological absolutism and meliorism, though their full\nimplications have still not been recognised. Read together, they suggest that\ninternational relations between open, democratic societies and interreligious\nrelations between ecumenically-minded faith communities are intimately connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though\nit was not articulated at the time, the context for both these emerging themes\nwas what we now call civil society. Civility is indeed the indispensable basis\nfor democracy, and the prospect of real democracy is what troubled both the\nCatholic Church in the centuries after the Reformation, and the authoritarian\npolitical regimes of recent centuries. Civil society is a space of freedom\nwhich mediates between the private and the public spheres, between the family\nand the state. In recent decades it has become increasingly threatened, not\nonly under autocratic rulers who have never known true democracy, but in the\nestablished democracies of the West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For\nbetter or for worse, this is the context in which all the world\u2019s religions now\nparticipate. Some political scientists have proposed that a global<\/em> civil society is taking shape, in\nwhich groups and movements who were previously ignorant of or indifferent to\none another\u2019s existence now communicate, either to compete with one another for\ninfluence or to co-operate with one another in contributing to human and\necological wellbeing. I should now like to explore, referring very briefly to\nexamples from the Asia-Pacific region, ways in which the religions are engaged\nin processes of mutual transformation, doing theology not against but with one\nanother in order to make theology global, globalisation ethical and civil\nsociety humane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nhis history of democracy John Keane identifies three forms that democracy has\ntaken in its long development. We associate assembly\ndemocracy<\/em> with the acropolis in Athens, where citizens (who were male\nproperty owners) voted on candidates for office and important decisions such as\ngoing to war. There are much earlier examples of such proto-democracies around\nthe Aegean and indeed the Mediterranean world, but they did not survive the\nRoman conquests and the transition from republic to empire. The Buddha is said\nto have been the son of one of the rulers of a clan-based \u2018republic\u2019 with\ncollective and accountable leadership, an experience which is reflected in his\nlater teaching on social justice. The Islamic Caliphate was anything but\ndemocratic, but it was Muslim thinkers who used terms equivalent to \u2018civil\nsociety\u2019 and \u2018democracy\u2019 and insisted that those in power be accountable,\nthereby keeping the idea<\/em> of democracy\nalive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nnext phase, which only emerged centuries later, Keane calls representative democracy<\/em>, and he points\nout that the church had an important role in establishing it. The Council of\nConstance (1414), faced with three pretenders to the papal throne, took upon\nitself the role of electing a new pope, thereby implicitly placing the\ncouncil\u2019s authority over that of the pope. The party that urged this solution\nbecame known as conciliarists, and they came close to establishing a precedent\nfor the future governance of the church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nthis they were thwarted, but the principle of representation remained:\ndelegates chosen by their dioceses \u2013 later, constituencies \u2013 re-present their\ncommunities in the decision-making bodies of councils and eventually\nparliaments. At the Reformation, more democratic forms of church governance\ndeveloped, such as Presbyterianism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nthe contemporary world of mass communication and citizen activism, finally,\nKeane suggests that we are seeing the rise of monitory democracy<\/em>, in which civil society scrutinises the state\nand its institutions, calling out corruption and contributing to policy\nformation. But civil society in this sense is increasingly fragile and\nthreatened in a world where autocratic demagogues are seizing power in\n\u2018illiberal democracies\u2019 such as Turkey, Hungary and even India. The present struggle in Hong Kong is perhaps\nthe most dramatic example of both the power and vulnerability of civil society.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Authoritarian\nrulers such as Putin, Xi Jinping and Assad are terrified of granting the people\nreal freedom; for them democracy is a form of lunacy which no leader who wants\nto remain in power could contemplate. In this they are at one with Plato, Kant\nand the Founding Fathers of the United States, for whom democracy was a form of\nmob rule: the republic was the only stable form of government. Democracy, in\nthe eyes of many rulers in the so-called Third World, is Western \u2018secularliberaldemocracy\u2019\nand therefore alien to their cultures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nWest, which arose out of the fusion of Greek and Hebrew traditions in the\nuneasy religious and political synthesis of Medieval Christendom, is the object\nof both envy and fear by traditional societies outside Europe because it\npurports to transcend religious and ethnic allegiances in the name of science\nand secularism. Although it may well be true that in the age of colonialism the\nsecular \u2018civic space\u2019 of Western political structures was arbitrarily imposed\non the \u2018sacral spaces\u2019 of traditional societies, it does not follow that a\nputative global civil society would be simply the extension of Western political\nstructures to the rest of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This\nis the point at which the world\u2019s religions, even where they are instrumentalised\nto become the ideologies of authoritarian regimes such as Sunni Saudi Arabia or\nShi\u2019ite Iran, not to mention the perversities of Islamic State and the Taliban,\nare seen to be inescapably involved in the dynamic of global civil society. In\nthis new space which they all inhabit, the religions are confronted with one\nanother in ways never experienced in their countries of origin. They can be\ncompared and critiqued at arm\u2019s length, competing with one another \u2013 and with\nsecular science \u2013 for influence. But whereas traditionally each of them defined\na complete coherent \u2018world\u2019 of meaning, now no one of them defines the whole of\nreality. They are relativised simply by inhabiting the global public sphere\nwith its ubiquitous electronic media. This applies, of course, to Christianity\nas much as to any other tradition. They are each in search of their function in\nthis new and somewhat daunting situation of unrestricted pluralism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As\nhas been well said, religion has become deregulated and deprivatised. Tolerance\nof others, such as the Catholic Church learned in Dignitatis Humanae<\/em> and Nostra\nAetate<\/em>, is a necessary first step, but it is not enough to cope with the\nchallenges of pluralism. For that a new type of theology is needed. But before\nwe come to this I should like to survey, however briefly, the role of the\nreligions in our Asia-Pacific context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing to say about the indigenous traditions of our region is that they were only reluctantly acknowledged to be religious at all. Anthropologists of Aboriginal Australia such as Strehlow, Elkin and Stanner were among a minority who discerned a profound spirituality in the stories and customs emanating from the Dreaming; theologians such as Martin Wilson, Frank Fletcher and Eugene Stockton sought to correlate these with Christian faith. The significance of the Mabo, Wik and Timber Creek decisions, despite attempts to water them down, is that the religious heritage of Aboriginal peoples was recognised in British law, thereby nullifying the misguided doctrine of terra nullius<\/em> which justified so much outrageous treatment, culminating in the stolen generations and deaths in custody. For many Christians, the encounter with Aboriginal spirituality has enriched their sense of the land as the source of life, issuing in renewed commitment to ecological justice and a new appreciation of the doctrine of creation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly,\nunderstanding the religious dimension of Pacific Islanders\u2019 celebrations of\nlife and community took many decades, as missiologists such as Ennio Mantovani\nand Theodor Ahrens have documented. These types of \u2018primal\u2019 religion are the\nindispensable matrix of all the so-called \u2018universal\u2019 religions, without which\nthese could not take root in so many different cultural contexts. Or, using\nterms coined by Mantovani and the Singhalese Jesuit Aloysius Pieris: without\nthe \u2018biocosmic\u2019 religion which celebrates life and fertility, the \u2018metacosmic\u2019\nreligions of transcendence could not articulate themselves in ways that human\nbeings can relate to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buddhism, as prominent Western Buddhists have not failed to point out, has become something of a fad in the West, succumbing to the apolitical individualism and narcissism of seekers after self-fulfilment, whereas in its origins it contained not only rigorous spiritual practices but strong teachings on social and economic justice. These have been rediscovered and reformulated for today by Buddhist thinkers and activists such as Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Sulak Sivaraksa in Asia and Ken Jones and David Loy in the West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nBuddhist analysis of human passions and delusions becomes a powerful diagnostic\ntool with which to unmask the deceptions of consumerism and political\npropaganda, and the ancient principle of ahimsa<\/em>\n(non-violence) underpins criticism of the ways politics legitimises war and\ncoercion. Yet Buddhist societies have been complicit in justifying some of the\nmost egregious violence of our times, from refusing to condemn the ruthless\nwarmongering of imperial Japan to support for ethnic religious nationalism in\nSri Lanka. The persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar, simply because they are\nMuslims, by an army egged on by nationalistic Buddhist monks, is a lamentable failure\nto abide by the non-violence intrinsic to Buddhist teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christians, though they are persecuted minorities in many Asian countries, have had an enormous impact on Pacific Island nations. Though they laboured under the delusion that Aboriginal, Melanesian and Polynesian cultures were inferior and evil, the missionaries eventually learned to accept aspects of them into Christian belief and practice, and today the lively indigenous churches of the Pacific Islands are an integral part of people\u2019s lives. These churches, however, have a long history of fighting among themselves, and in many cases they remain exclusivist in their theology and absolutist in their moral teachings, as the unfortunate case of Israel Folau has recently demonstrated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Johann\nBaptist Metz has asserted that at the core of the Christian program for the age\nof globalisation is compassion<\/em>, but\nChristian leaders who have tried to take this seriously when confronted with\necological destruction and unregulated immigration are few and far between. The\nGerman chancellor Angela Merkel, who famously declared wir schaffen das<\/em> (we can do this) in the face the flood of refugees\nin 2015, has been punished politically ever since, losing voters to the far\nright Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em>.\nBut she did not hesitate to remind her own party that it has the word\n\u2018Christian\u2019 in its title. The great refusal of Australia to deal\ncompassionately with refugees is drawing alongside the great Australian silence\n(Stanner) on the plight of Aborigines as one of the darkest chapters in our\nhistory. In the early centuries Christianity, too, had a tradition of pacifism\nwhich has largely been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is the tragedy of Islam in our time that its struggles to come to terms with modernity, something only Muslims can achieve, have been overwhelmed by the spread of radical exclusivist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaida and Islamic State, covertly aided and abetted by sympathisers in Islamic governments such as those of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Yet Islamic extremism has claimed far more attention than it deserves, possibly because since 9\/11 it is seen as an irritant and a threat in the West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nIndonesia, the biggest Islamic country in the world, a fascinating tug of war\nis taking place between radical elements inspired by Wahhabi legal doctrines\nintroduced from Saudi Arabia and the liberal interpretations of pluralism which\nhave long been traditional in both popular culture and legal philosophy. From\nthe very beginning of the Republic, when the Islamists\u2019 attempts to include\nShari\u2019a law in an annex to the constitution were thwarted by Sukarno, radical\nIslamic parties have never been able to take control of Indonesian politics.\nRather, the huge popular movements Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammadiya have\npreserved the social capital that brought about the fall of the dictator\nSuharto, albeit after two decades of authoritarian rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\npoint of mentioning these examples of religious actors in the public sphere of\ncivil society is to suggest the roles their traditions might play in the much\nvaster and more complex scenario of global<\/em>\ncivil society. This is becoming the matrix in which all the religions now\nsubsist, transcending their particularities just as their teachings transcend\nthe economic doctrines of neoliberal capitalism, the narrow mentality of\nscientism and the amorality of so much political practice. It may seem\nincongruous and would be ridiculed in public discourse, but it has long been my\nconviction that at the root of the problems caused by the religions with their\nexclusivist doctrines and constant quarrelling lie theological<\/em> problems which only they can solve. It is also my\ncontention that they can address these problems together, collaboratively. To\nthis proposal we must now give consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent times, a fresh approach to religious pluralism has arisen, inspired by the superb scholarship of Francis Clooney, which has come to be called \u2018comparative theology\u2019. The term is not new; it was used as long ago as 1700 and can be seen to apply retrospectively to the work many of us have been doing for years. Restricting itself to the careful and respectful reading of texts from different traditions, comparative theology largely eschews theorising about their truth or otherwise, preferring to allow these analyses to stand by themselves and amass a rich storehouse of interpretation. Pluralist theologians such as Paul Knitter, however, have remarked that, though there might be a lot of comparison going on, there is not much theology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\ndifficult questions of truth and method involved in, say, Christians coming to\nterms with the radically different doctrines of Buddhism, polytheistic Hindus\nconfronting the stark monotheism of Islam, or Westerners trying to cope with\nthe elusive nature mysticism of Daoism or Shinto, tend to be left to one side.\nThe comparativists\u2019 respect for the integrity of poetic texts is admirable,\nbut, as Knitter and others have insisted, the need to transpose their teachings\ninto guidelines for medical, ecological and political ethics is too urgent to\nbe ignored. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A\nsomewhat different perspective, incorporating both the fruits of comparison and\nthe theoretical framework of pluralism, might be called \u2018collaborative\ntheology\u2019. This would envisage not just the imagined<\/em>\ncorrelation of doctrines and rituals but the real<\/em> engagement of thinkers from different traditions in the task\nof finding solutions to the moral, political and spiritual problems which\nconfront real believers. The methodological implications of such an enterprise\nare of course immense. But there are already examples of successful\ncollaboration in the area of Buddhist-Christian theology, which in my view\npresents the most profound spiritual and intellectual challenge of all, both in\nAsia (Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Aloysius Pieris, Lynn de Silva, Abe Masao) and the\nWest (Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Paul Knitter, John Cobb). <\/p>\n\n\n\n If\ncomparison<\/em> is the first step in\nunderstanding anything new and unfamiliar, communication<\/em>\nwith the other in order to verify one\u2019s new knowledge is the next. Thus\ncommunication mediates between the somewhat abstract knowledge-at-a-distance\ngained by comparison and its conversion into praxis by collaboration.<\/em> Though such interactions can sometimes go as far as\ndual religious belonging, where one or more participants declare allegiance to\ntwo traditions simultaneously, they need not result in either syncretism or\nrelativism, the two bugbears of the guardians of orthodoxy. Nor do they imply\nthat in the end all religions are \u2018the same\u2019. But they do go beyond mere\ntolerance, i.e. keeping one\u2019s others at a polite distance so as not to be\nunduly influenced by them. What I envisage could be described as an\n\u2018interactive pluralism\u2019, respectful of the autonomy of distinct identities yet\nstriving to engage with them in pursuit of both spiritual and ethical goals\nwhich transcend both sides\u2019 particularities. This, of course, is much easier\nsaid than done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nGreek word oikos<\/em> means \u2018house\u2019, but\nmore than that it embraces the whole household in all its aspects, not unlike\nthe German word Heim<\/em>, from which Heimat<\/em>, the word for \u2018home\u2019 in its\ndeepest sense is derived. Oikos<\/em> is a\ncomponent in three fundamental areas which encompass all the dimensions of the\ninterreligious collaboration envisaged here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is rare indeed for these three dimensions to be viewed together as an integrated whole. They amount to what international relations theorists call \u2018cosmopolitanism\u2019, which in turn presupposes the existence of global civil society and transcends the traditional conception of sovereign states. Such a vision can be threatening to those, whether Western or Asian, who value rootedness in familiar surroundings in the company of like-minded fellow citizens who speak the same language. It is this feeling of being invaded by the alien other, of being expected to come to terms with other cultures, live in other countries and participate in transnational institutions, that is a root cause of Brexit and the election of ignorant demagogues like Trump. If the religions acquiesce in such particularism they risk negating everything their traditions stand for. On the other hand, if they demonstrate in their own relations with one another a willingness to overcome humanly constructed differences by :<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\nmake their message of peace, liberation and human and ecological wellbeing all\nthe more credible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nbiblical word oikoumene<\/em> originally\nmeant \u2018the whole inhabited earth\u2019, in effect the Roman world of Hellenistic\nculture. Its relevance for today is that it incorporates in a synthesis the\nthree dimensions of the ecumenical mentioned above. This is why an\nunderstanding of the emerging global civil society is indispensable if we are\nto move beyond interreligious dialogue as the comparison or correlation of\nabstract doctrines to the religions as lived; to their rituals, their ethics\nand their mores, as they participate in the dynamic of complex pluralist\nsocieties in a global context. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Out\nof this shared experience there may emerge the kind of theology that will\nenable people of faith (and possibly those who proclaim with the fervour of\nbelievers that they have no faith!) to collaborate on the deeper spiritual task\nof awakening a sense of wonder and a yearning for peace capable of overcoming\nthe institutionalised greed, violence and delusion (the Buddhist diagnosis of\nhuman ills) that fuel conflict and dissension the world over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The religions may well prove indispensable to the formulation of an ethic of survival such as the \u2018world ethos\u2019 envisaged by Hans K\u00fcng, but over and above that they can offer a divided world a vision of hope which relativises both their own fundamentalisms and particularisms and the narrow ideologies of power which political leaders seek to justify. It may seem impossibly difficult, but the conclusion is inescapable: unless we learn, individually and collectively, to live with people of alien cultures and religions the prognosis for peace and the survival of our planet is grim.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPolitics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Religions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Theologies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n