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

Basic data for this project

Description

The research project in cooperation with theologians in Myanmar aims at a criticalreconstruction of the interpretive patterns and the discourses on religious pluralism among Buddhists and Christians in today’s Myanmar. The central question is: Which discoursesinfluence the way, Buddhists and Christians in Myanmar cope with religious plurality andreligious diversity and which specific patterns of interpretation and justification are effective inBuddhist and Christian perspectives? This question is based on the assumption that it wouldbe insufficient to understand the challenge of multiethnic and multireligious coexistence inMyanmar by conceiving its implications as merely of a political and social nature. It is thereforenecessary to identify and analyse the central theological-religious strategies in legitimising orquestioning religious diversity among various faith communities in Myanmar. Starting fromresearching current discourses along those lines the project examines their actual or potentialimpact on the coexistence of various religions in the public space and their relation to furthersocio-cultural factors. In particular, the interconnection of ethnic and religious affiliation isconsidered in its complexity and contemporary debates are examined on the basis of theirhistorical continuities and discontinuities. The central element of the project is the analyses ofperspectives on religious pluralism (that is, on the specific ways in which the fact of religiousdiversity is conceived religiously/theologically) as found among (mainly) Buddhist andChristian teachers in universities and seminaries in Myanmar. The focus is on academicsbecause of their key role within the society in questions of religion. Islam and the Muslimcommunity will also be taken into account, while the extent to which this can and has to bedone needs to be further explored during the field work.By means of its intercultural and interreligious design, the project in addition intends to makean innovative contribution to the systematic-theological discourse on religious pluralism ingeneral. Going beyond the largely abstract discussion within the categories of exclusivism,inclusivism and pluralism the project will give new impulses in focusing on the interreligiouscommunication within a concrete local context which is very different from the Westernsituation. Hence the project focusses on the positions of the major religious communities inMyanmar as these can be derived (by means of discourse theory) from their discursiveinteraction within a specific socio-political context and in relation to their respective selfunderstandings.