The King's Five Bodies:

In the summer of 2010, Professor Leonard Swidler and Harry Halloran met with me in Philadelphia to discuss the root causes of violence in the Congo. The result was the creation of the Bumuntu Peace Institute, (1) the first African extension of the Dialogue Institute. This essay intends to articulate the challenges of interreligious dialogue in Central Africa, drawing from the field trips and the work of the Bumuntu Peace Institute over the last four years. I. Introductory Narrative It is January 14, 2015, and I am sitting in an hotel. This is not Los Angeles or Bombay, but Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The television screen that runs non-stop news from CNN, BBC, and French agencies shows the picture of Amedy Coulibaly, a black African involved in the Paris shootings connected to the Charlie Hebdo attack. I hear the reaction of many Congolese around me: These Muslims are crazy. As Africans we already have many problems: wars, poverty, tribalism, racism, dictatorship. Why get involved in Arab issues and fight wars that are not ours? Outside, in the streets of Kinshasa, Muslim robes are everywhere. When I left the Congo some twenty years ago for studies in Europe and then the United States, Muslims were believed to be about two percent of the population. Now statistics point to ten percent or even more. Moreover, it is a population of affluent businesspeople, soon to be heavily involved in competition for political power in this country where power was traditionally held by Catholics, Protestants, and Kimbanguists. (2) But, in this traditionally Christian country, Muslims are not alone in shaping the religious landscape. Street-radio (radio-trottoir) has it that many politicians belong to esoteric cults that require them to commit incest or perform human sacrifices to secure their jobs, positions, and power. Here, Indian are feared as malefic magic. As for traditional religions, they are viewed by most Congolese as mere witchcraft that should be eradicated as quickly as possible. The same opinion is prevalent in Lubumbashi and Kamina, where I have been teaching and doing research since 2011. Over the past four years I have regularly traveled to the DRC to teach and promote interreligious dialogue. After some attempts in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, in this vast land, we focused on Kamina. Thanks to the support of the Dialogue Institute of Temple University (Philadelphia) and grants from the Halloran Philanthropies, we have progressively established the Bumuntu Peace Institute in Kamina to prepare young generations for peace. In January, 2015, I was joined by Rene Sephton, a Greek-Australian woman who does research on the Bumuntu peace-making tradition. Together we have conducted several interviews among local people in various villages, while working with students from the Universite de Kamina, Institut Superieur Pedagogique, and the Methodist University of Kamina. It is the labor of these field trips and research that I would like to articulate here and to reflect on the state of interreligious dialogue in Central Africa, using Kamina as a paradigmatic case study. II. Context: Africa Matters In order to understand the scope of interreligious dialogue in Africa, let us observe the situation on the ground, that is, the religious landscape of Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the DRC, and finally the city of Kamina where our Bumuntu Peace Institute is based. A. The Religious Landscape of Sub-Saharan Africa (3) Africa is now home to four major religious groups: Christianity, Islam, African Traditional Religions, and religions of Asian origin (largely practiced by the political elite, mainly Mahikari, Hinduism, and Buddhism). The fifty-four countries of the African continent have nearly a billion people (15% of the world population, versus 5% for the U.S.A.). According to a Pew Forum study, more than 1,300. …

The article is devoted to the study of the role of the World Russian People’s Council and the Interreligious Council of Russia in establishing interfaith dialogue in post-Soviet Russia. The speeches of delegates at council meetings and sessions of the World Russian People’s Council are analyzed. The importance of interfaith dialogue at the site of the World Russian People’s Council was confirmed by the participation of the highest clergy and clergy of different confessions of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States at the cathedral meeting “Russia: the path to salvation” (1998). The importance of the agreement on the establishment of the Interreligious Council of Russia (1998) for the representation in it of the “traditional religions” of the Russian Federation: Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism is noted. The assessments of publicists and researchers in relation to the Interreligious Council of Russia, including critical ones, are given. It is noted that the interaction of the Russian Orthodox Church with representatives of other confessions continued at the 5th and 6th World Russian People’s Councils in 1999 and 2001. The conclusions indicate that the activities of the World Russian People’s Council and the Interreligious Council of Russia at the turn of the XX—XXI centuries showed the importance of cooperation and respectful relations between representatives of Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and other confessions.

Guest Editors’ Introduction Jin Y. Park and Kyeongil Jung The State of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in Korea Buddhism and Christianity are unarguably two of the most dominant religions in contemporary Korea. The period and context for the introduction of each tradition differ significantly. Buddhism was introduced to Korea between the fourth and sixth centuries, and since then, it has played a significant role in the evolution of Korean society. Catholicism was introduced to Korea in the eighteenth century, while Protestantism came to Korea in the late nineteenth century.1 Despite these differences, the roles and influence each of these faiths have had and continue to have on contemporary Korean society and the lives of the Korean people cannot be overemphasized. Although they form integral parts of Korea’s social and religious life, Buddhists and Christians have not always had an amicable relationship, and the conflict between them has at times turned violent. In recent years, efforts have been made by the two religious groups to ameliorate the unfortunate reality of their lack of mutual understanding. This has happened more at the level of practitioners than in academic discourse.2 Korea may be one of the best places for undertaking a Buddhist-Christian dialogue as it has almost an equal number of Christians and Buddhists,3 as Bernard Senécal notes in his essay. Despite this fact, the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Korea is still in its initial stage. Serious dialogue at the scholarly level is far more needed than people think. This situation stands in contrast to the trend in the West. As Asian religious-philosophical traditions became better known in the Western intellectual and cultural milieu, comparative studies of traditional Western religions (and philosophies) and those of the East began to take shape. One such East-West dialogue of intellectual traditions took the form of Buddhist-Christian dialogue. One can consider two directions in this encounter. From the Eastern side, the Kyoto School thinkers of Japan have produced rich sources for the Buddhist-Christian dialogue that encompass [End Page 5] both philosophy and religion from Western intellectual disciplines. Nishida Kitaro’s Nothingness and Religious Worldview, Nishitani Keiji’s Religion and Nothingness, which is a translation of the text What is Religion?(Shūkyō to wa nanika 宗教とわ何か), and Tanabe Hajime’s Philosophy as Metanoetics,to name a few, offer compelling discussions of the different ways the East and the West envision ultimate reality and religious practice. In this interreligious dialogue along with East-West comparative philosophy, one finds rich sources for the potential of a Buddhist-Christian dialogue. In the context of Korea, as Robert Buswell mentions in his response, Paek Yongsŏng 白龍城 (1864–1940) was the first who found it necessary to consider Christianity.4 Wŏn Buddhism adopted various aspects of Christianity, as Jin Y. Park’s paper discusses. More theoretical engagements of Buddhism and Christianity as religious paradigms can be found in Kim Iryŏp’s 金一葉 (1896–1971) discussion of Christianity from a Zen Buddhist perspective, in which she discusses how God and Buddha share the same ground (Kim 1960, 59; English translation, Park 2014, 96).5 The other direction comes from the West. As Buddhism became known to American society and the American intellectual world, which from the early twentieth century was especially influenced by the popularity of Zen Buddhism, some of the major theologians initiated interreligious dialogues, and scholars, such as John Cobb, Thomas Merton, and Paul Knitter (who participated in the Roundtable for this issue), took the Buddhist-Christian dialogue as the core of their religio-philosophical thinking.6 In the context of the Korean intellectual and religious scene, such scholarly dialogues seem to be fewer than one might expect. Some of the notable scholars of Buddhist-Christian dialogue are Pyŏn Sŏnhwan, Kim Kyŏngjae, Keel Hee-Sung (Kil Hŭisŏng), Oh Kang-nam (O Kangnam), and Kim Sung Hae (Kim Sŭnghye). A Methodist pastor and pluralist theologian, Pyŏn Sŏnhwan tried to construct a “Korean inculturation theology” (t’och’ak hwasinhak 토착화신학), a theology envisioned through dialogue with Asian religions, especially Buddhism. In his writings, Pyŏn discusses the possibility and necessity of a Buddhist-Christian dialogue in the...

In Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and Burkina Faso, Christianity exists amidst predominantly Muslim societies and traditional African religions. In Niger, while Islam is the predominant religion, Christianity maintains a minority presence, largely influenced by neighbouring countries. Here, the Catholic Church plays a vital role in social development despite facing challenges related to inculturation and religious tensions. Mauritania is almost entirely Muslim, and its Christian population is very small and limited in its activities due to the criminalization of apostasy. In Mali, Islam as the largest religion coexists with traditional cultures, and Christianity is growing despite the rise of Islamic extremism. Chad has a substantial and growing Christian population, with churches significantly contributing to education and healthcare, fostering interreligious dialogue for lasting peace.

The author presents the dialogical principle I am constituted through Thou as a tool to understand the double edge concept of identity, as sketched by Zygmunt Bauman whom he considers an enlightened sceptic. He pays special attention to the concept of recognition or acknowledgment, as a meeting point of the universal and the unique, for the building of relational and dynamic identities in post-modern societies. Contemporary authors such as Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig, or Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine and St John Climacus, and other traditions, consider the I and Thou relationship as the fundamental standpoint for man’s existence; as such, we may follow their ideas as a reference for intercultural and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world.

The idea of interreligious dialogue has in the last decade or so been brought under some serious questioning in Christian theology, especially in regard to the efforts made by the proponents of religious pluralism to find on either theoretical or practical grounds a common base and starting point for interreligious dialogue. The postliberal and neotraditionalist critics of pluralism have objected to such an attempt on the basis of the alleged incommensurability and nonconvergence of religions and the need for each religion to confess itself in all its particularity in order to resist the imperial and universalist agenda of secular liberal modernity. Thus, if these opponents of pluralism do not reject the idea of interreligious dialogue altogether, they regard it at best as occasional, ad hoc apologetics or the work of evangelization and witness in another form. In this essay I intend to defend the idea of interreligious dialogue, while moving the discussion forward in light of its critics, by making a case for reconfiguring it as a practice of political theology with the help of the Hegelian notion of “mutual recognition.” I will begin by arguing, against postliberalism and neotraditionalism, for the necessity of reconceiving the idea of interreligious dialogue as a form of “politics of recognition” within today’s postcolonial-neocolonial global context. I will show that the Hegelian notion of mutual recognition, especially when qualified by Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial rereading of it, can be the key for such a reconception insofar as it provides a model of interreligious relationship within a common polity that rejects relations of domination and exclusion while nurturing a sense of solidarity among