Event

John J. Thatamanil Lecture

Lecture on Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 7 pm
"Eucharist Upstairs, Yoga Downstairs: Multiple Religious Participation as Problem and Promise"

John J. Thatamanil, formerly of Vanderbilt Divinity School, will be an Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary in the Fall of 2011. Dr. Thatamanil teaches on inter-religious dialogue and writes on "open inclusivity" as he works to build bridges of understanding and appreciation between Christianity and other religious traditions.

Multiple religious participation is increasingly becoming the norm rather than the exception among mainline Christians. Sometimes such participation takes place even within church walls. But just what is multiple religious participation? Is multiple religious participation the same as "syncretism?" Are conservative Christian leaders like Albert Mohler right to warn that the practice of yoga is incompatible with Christian faith? By what criteria would we make such judgments? What would we have to know about other religious traditions and our own to arrive at answers to such questions? In this lecture, John J. Thatamanil will not so much seek to answer these urgent and demanding questions as help us to think carefully about the questions themselves as we strive to move faithfully toward a new integral theological wisdom that learns with and from a variety of religious traditions.