Submitted by Administrator on Thu, 01/02/2018 - 10:56
The Faculty of Divinity are hosting the upcoming conference on Dual-Religious Belonging in Hinduism and Christianity
Hindu-Christian Dual Belonging
An Interdisciplinary Conference
An increasingly visible socio-religious feature of some western, and more specifically British, cultural spheres is the practice of cultivating forms of affiliation to more than one religious tradition. Especially in the case of individuals from Christian, and occasionally Jewish, religious backgrounds, we find attempts to interweave forms of Eastern religions into their broadly Abrahamic horizons of belief and practice. These modulations of the ‘Eastward turn’ over the last few decades or so, which have generated contested hybrids such as ‘Christian yoga’, ‘Christian mindfulness’, and so on, could be dismissed on the grounds that they are shaped by, and hence also contaminated by, the inherited cultural trajectories of European fascination with the exoticised Orient. Thus, it might be claimed that Christians who are looking to the wisdom-based traditions of Hinduism are uncritically repeating older Orientalist strategies for culturally appropriating what the West desperately needs from the romanticised East.
From a slightly different perspective, there are also complex philosophical-theological questions relating to truth-claims made by the different spiritual traditions which have often become part of the sociological smorgasbord in urban locations such as London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, Luton, Slough, Leicester, and elsewhere. The metaphysical presuppositions of certain forms of Vedantic Hinduism cannot always be readily translated into Jewish-Christian doctrines, idioms, and vocabularies, and, conversely, certain Jewish-Christian experiences may not resonate powerfully with some Indic sensibilities. Therefore, hybrid descriptions of ‘Hindu-Christian’ could seem, at worst, to be logical contradictions, and, at best, to be passing fads on the religious landscapes.
We are bringing together academics who will speak on the theme of dual religious belonging, especially in the cases of Hinduism and Christianity, by using the analytical tools of philosophy, theology, cultural studies, anthropology, to present their theoretical reflections on, and their personal engagements with, themes relating to living in and with more than one religious worldview.
INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE 3 - 4 JULY 2018
University of Cambridge (UK)
Faculty of Divinity
To register, email
Nadya Pohran & Daniel Soars