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Inter-religious Relations
- Edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Daniel Jeyaraj, Todd M. Johnson
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- Book:
- Christianity in South and Central Asia
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2020
- Print publication:
- 18 April 2019, pp 384-395
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- Chapter
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Summary
Inter-religious relations in South and Central Asia cannot be reduced to a ‘one size fits all’ category, because the nature of religious plurality both between and within the countries that constitute South and Central Asia is vast and varied. Therefore, any attempt to reify the religious plurality of these regions, or the responses to this plurality, into a rigid and unified category would be futile. Writing about inter-religious relations in South and Central Asia entails paying attention to specific contexts in order to discern points and patterns of convergence and divergence, from which a broader picture of inter-religious relations can be mapped.
Mapping the Religious Contexts
Though in the twenty-first century most parts of South and Central Asia attest to the presence of different religious and spiritual traditions, and in some cases even the thriving of different religious communities, the reality in most of these contexts tends to be that one religious tradition has an overwhelming numerical majority – Hinduism in Nepal and India; Islam in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan; and Buddhism in Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Overwhelming numerical majority status does not necessarily mean, however, that that religion is invariably recognised as the state religion. The situation is remarkably diverse. South and Central Asia have countries with a prescribed state religion, like Pakistan and Sri Lanka; countries that are constitutionally secular and have no official state religion, like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India and Nepal (the last since 2006); countries that have embraced secularism constitutionally and yet have an official state religion, like Bangladesh; countries that prescribe the practice of a particular religion as a condition of citizenship, like the Maldives; and countries with a state religion that also ascribe freedom of religion to all and yet place restrictions on any form of missionary activity, like Bhutan.
One defining characteristic of this part of the world is that Christians do not constitute a numerical majority in any of these countries.
10 - Christian ethics in Asia
- from Part II - Approaches to Christian ethics
- Edited by Robin Gill, University of Kent, Canterbury
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics
- Published online:
- 28 January 2012
- Print publication:
- 24 November 2011, pp 131-144
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Summary
Christian ethical thinking in Asia has been contextually responsive and thus, given the diversity that constitutes the Asian context, necessarily multi-faceted. Yet, continuities can be discerned across the continuum of Christian ethical thinking that has emerged in various Asian contexts. This is because Christian ethical thinking in Asia, which is primarily reflected in its various contextual theologies, has consistently engaged two distinctive features of the Asian reality, namely Asia's multi-religiousness and poverty – the latter needing to be understood both in terms of economic deprivation and social discrimination. It has, so to speak, undertaken that ‘Double Baptism’ in ‘the Jordan of Asian multi-religiousness and the Calvary of Asian Poverty’, which the Sri Lankan Theologian Aloysius Pieris has famously described as being an essential characteristic of a truly contextual church in the Asian context. However, it needs to be pointed out that any ambitious project toward an overt generalisation of Asian Christian ethics runs the risk of contextual disembodiment or the eclipsing of identity-specificity. Therefore, it can be said that one of the tensions inherent in defining Asia concerns striking a balance between the politically necessitated construction of Asia as a unitary group and the concomitant dangers of oversimplification, stereotyping and homogenisation that have the potential to reify, constrain and denounce the complexity and diversity of Asian identity. It is with this recognition that this chapter seeks to provide specific examples of Christian ethics in the Asian context, focusing mainly on the Korean and Indian contexts, because Asian Christian attempts at Christian ethics can be discerned most pronouncedly in the different attempts made toward articulating contextually relevant theologies.