Religious pluralism in discourse - Buddhists and Christians in Myanmar coping with religious plurality

Basic data for this project

Type of project: Individual project
Duration: 01/10/2018 - 30/09/2020 | 2nd Funding period

Description

The research project in cooperation with theologians in Myanmar aims at a critical reconstruction of the interpretive patterns and the discourses on religious pluralism among Buddhists and Christians in todays Myanmar. The central question is: Which discourses influence the way, Buddhists and Christians in Myanmar cope with religious plurality and religious diversity and which specific patterns of interpretation and justification are effective in Buddhist and Christian perspectives? This question is based on the assumption that it would be insufficient to understand the challenge of multiethnic and multireligious coexistence in Myanmar by conceiving its implications as merely of a political and social nature. It is therefore necessary to identify and analyse the central theological-religious strategies in legitimising or questioning religious diversity among various faith communities in Myanmar. Starting from researching current discourses along those lines the project examines their actual or potential impact on the coexistence of various religions in the public space and their relation to further socio-cultural factors. In particular, the interconnection of ethnic and religious affiliation is considered in its complexity and contemporary debates are examined on the basis of their historical continuities and discontinuities. The central element of the project is the analyses of perspectives on religious pluralism (that is, on the specific ways in which the fact of religious diversity is conceived religiously/theologically) as found among (mainly) Buddhist and Christian teachers in universities and seminaries in Myanmar. The focus is on academics because of their key role within the society in questions of religion. Islam and the Muslim community will also be taken into account, while the extent to which this can and has to be done needs to be further explored during the field work. By means of its intercultural and interreligious design, the project in addition intends to make an innovative contribution to the systematic-theological discourse on religious pluralism in general. Going beyond the largely abstract discussion within the categories of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism the project will give new impulses in focusing on the interreligious communication within a concrete local context which is very different from the Western situation. Hence the project focusses on the positions of the major religious communities in Myanmar as these can be derived (by means of discourse theory) from their discursive interaction within a specific socio-political context and in relation to their respective self-understandings.

Keywords: religious pluralism; Buddhism; Christianity; Buddhism; religious plurality