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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Theoretical reflection on interreligious questions can be deeply enriched by the praxis of dialogue. The article describes an undergraduate course in which the students and professor engaged self-critically in such dialogue both with texts and one another in the classroom and with local representatives of three religions in a public symposium. In the latter context, students' encounter of the religious “other” was sharpened by having students, rather than the outside experts, present the papers on the course themes—a feature that also stimulated broader interest among the college community. Such a course illustrates the value and the limitations of a dialogical pedagogy in which attention is simultaneously given to learning about both other religions and the students' points of view, in their distinctness and in their interaction.
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19 Note that there is a difference between a dialogical approach and a comparative one, though some comparison will inevitably take place in the context of establishing points of view and drawing them into relation to another via a common topic of interest. While in the comparative approach an objectifiable conceptual structure assumes the mediatory role between different viewpoints, in the dialogical approach it is the trusting and dynamic act of conversation that relates them—an approach that is thereby more adaptable to allowing differing elements to remain in creative tension productive of empathetic insight as well as interreligious understanding. See Trapnell, Judson B., “The Comparative Study of Religious Experience: Implications for Dialogue,” Dialogue & Alliance 11/2 (Autumn-Winter 1997): 59–87.Google Scholar
20 Admittedly, this statement sounds rather insensitive to the needs of the students just described. However, I make the dialogical assumptions of introductory and upper level world religions courses evident in the opening classes when students are hopefully still discerning whether the course is suitable for them. Note that these assumptions are reconcilable with a spectrum of positions on the relationship between the religions.
21 By “relativity” I denote the conclusion from hermeneutics and the sociology of knowledge that each person's point of view on a given topic is recognizably shaped by (relative to) numerous factors (biographical, economic, religious, etc.). By “relativism” I indicate the position that, given the relativity of viewpoints, one cannot legitimately generalize the truth of propositions, i.e., truth independent of perspectival factors. As others have observed, the move from acknowledging relativity to the generally decried pitfall of relativism is now endemic in Western and Westernized cultures, especially in the academy. My interpretation of these two terms is informed by Panikkar, Raimon, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics: Cross-Cultural Studies (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1979), 316–17.Google Scholar
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23 Daniel Larison, “The Exile of God,” unpublished manuscript.
24 See Eck's discussion of “keeping one another's image” Encountering God, 218-21).
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