Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T05:09:22.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Course Called “The Hindu-Christian Dialogue”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

James D. Redington
James D. Redington*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This upper-level undergraduate theology course (trendily renamed ”Icons in Interface” by one of the wags in my department) originated from long-standing interest and involvement in the Hindu-Christian dialogue. More immediately, it resulted from a grant which allowed me to spend a summer in India, conversing with experts in the dialogue and generating ideas on how to present the dialogue in the form of a course. Since then, I have taught the course three times, and find that it kindles an interest, in both the students and me, qualitatively different from any other course I teach or they take. This is as it should be if the course is to reflect the subject-matter—an idea which has been one of the course's structuring principles. Consequently, there is an attempt to echo the mood and content of interreligious dialogue in the format and atmosphere of the classes. There are severe limitations to this: it would be otiose, and contrary to authentic dialogue, to try to make a Hindu ashram appear, complete with yoga at dawn and silent, vegetarian meals, on an American campus. But use of a chapel instead of a classroom, and of meditation during class time, for example, might help achieve distinctness without being distracting. But, before I get ahead of myself, let me present the particulars of the course in order, as follows: the course's nature, its students and possible teachers, its format, readings, requirements, and central ideas and goals. Evaluative comments will be made in passing, and some bibliographical suggestions appended.

Type
Creative Teaching
Information
Horizons , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1985 , pp. 136 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Like many others, I have found de Mello's, Sadhana (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978)Google Scholar the most useful book available for teaching meditation.

2 Sub-title: Hindu and Christian Seekers (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969).Google Scholar

3 New York: Paulist, 1978.

4 New York: New American Library Mentor, 1972.

5 Los Angeles: Dawn Horse Press, 1973.

6 Delhi: Indian Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (Post Box 1585, Kashmere Gate), 1974.

7 Madras: Christian Literature Society (P.B. 501), 1976.

8 In his The Further Shore (Delhi: I.S.P.C.K., 1975), pp. 1–56.Google Scholar

9 Cited in Lederle, , “Discovery of Dialogue,” Religion and Society (Bangalore) 26/1 (March 1979), 59–72, at 63.Google Scholar

10 In “The Hindu-Christian Dialogue and the Interior Dialogue,” Theological Studies 44 (December 1983), 587–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar