Does more discussion about religion among people who have different takes on faith lead to better understanding? How do those interactions differ in modern times and in earlier situations? Those questions and others will be pursed at the Divinity School's conference, "Deconstructing Dialogue: New Perspectives on Religious Encounters." The conference begins at 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21 and continues through Saturday, Jan. 23, in the third floor lecture room in Swift Hall.
Although interactions about religion are part of the fabric of modern cultures, the idea of having a dialogue about religious ideas has a rich history, according to the conference organizers. Scholars from the United States, Canada and France will examine these interactions in conference sessions that will be open to the campus community.
"The goal of this conference is to initiate a new, critical, multidisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of religious dialogue," said James Robinson, Assistant Professor in the Divinity School and an organizer of the event.
By looking at early religious dialogues and comparing them in modern and pre-modern contexts, the conference will "provide a broader framework for studying the ways ideas are discussed and debated across time, and geographical and cultural divisions," said Lucy Pick, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lecturer in the History of Christianity in the Divinity School.
The conference participants also will attempt to move the conversation about faiths away from the kinds of physical confrontations that often characterize current exchanges to an examination of religion through dialogue.
Malika Zeghal, Associate Professor in the Divinity School and another conference organizer, will discuss the role of dialogue in forming the "Amman Message," an effort made by the Jordanian monarchy in 2004 to establish religious consensus on the definition of Islam. That work was followed by an interfaith project called "A Common Word" that brought together Muslim and Christian scholars.
"My paper describes the political underpinnings of internal and external interfaith 'dialogue' under state sponsorship and its consequences for the state's religious and political authority," Zeghal said. "In particular, interfaith dialogue leads the state toward constructing a 'mainstreamed' definition of the tradition, with the aim of pacifying the meaning of Islam in a post 9/11 context."
Matthew Kapstein, the Numata Visiting Professor in the Divinity School, will look at Muslim-Hindu interactions in 17th-century India as well as the religious conversations of 18th-century China that led Tibetan Buddhist scholars toward an interest in Confucianism and Taoism.
David Tracy, Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School, will open the conference with a plenary address titled "Dialogue in Fragments."
The conference will continue at 9 a.m. on Friday with the panel discussion, "Dialogue and Disputation," followed at 11:30 a.m. by "Reading other People's Scriptures." A discussion, titled "What is Dialogue?," will begin at 3 p.m.
Three more panel discussions, also scheduled for 9 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m., are on Saturday's agenda, when scholars will gather for the presentations "Travel and Ethnography," "Dialogue in Everyday Life," and "Dialogue and the State."
Other UChicago scholars who will present or serve as panel respondants are Daniel Arnold, Assistant Professor in the Divinity School; Orit Bashkin, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and the College; W. Clark Gilpin, the Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor in the Divinity School and the College; Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor in the Divinity School and Helen A. Regenstein Professor in Jewish Studies; Margaret Mitchell, Professor in the Divinity School; Willemien Otten, Professor in the Divinity School; Richard Rosengarten, Dean of the Divinity School; Susan Schreiner, Professor in the Divinity School; and William Schweiker, the Edward L. Ryerson Professor in the Divinity School and the College.
The Divinity School, the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, the France Chicago Center and the Franke Institute for the Humanities are co-sponsoring the conference.