In Search of Interspiritual Truth: An Interview with John Thatamanil (S2:E8)
“If I’m truly, as a Christian, to affirm that core affirmation that God so loved the world, then divine disclosure must be happening far beyond the boundaries of the Christian tradition.”
Welcome to In Search Of, a podcast where we go in search of voices and perspectives that inform and expand a life of faith. In this episode, John Thatamanil tells Amy about his interfaith work and identity in a conversation that covers everything from capitalism to philosophy to the definition of religion. Why is “syncretism” a bad word? Why is it okay to be a capitalist Christian, but not a Buddhist Christian? How can we embrace religious diversity instead of fearing it? Explore these questions and more on this episode of In Search Of. A transcript of this episode can be found here.
John Thatamanil is a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he teaches classes in comparative theology, religious diversity, Hindu-Christian dialogue, the theology of Paul Tillich, theory of religion, process theology, and ecotheology. He’s the author of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity and is working on a book provisionally entitled, Desiring Truth: Comparative Theology and the Quest for Interreligious Wisdom.
Link:
- Stephen Colbert: “‘Post-Truth’ Is Just A Rip-Off Of ‘Truthiness’”
Related Christian Century content:
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“The Magi’s interfaith encounter (Matt. 2:1-12),” by Liddy Barlow (Jan 2023)
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“Baptist and Buddhist,” by Tony Coleman (Jan 2022)
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“How White Christians turned syncretism into an insult,” by Ross Kane (June 2021)
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“Faith formations in my world religions classroom,” by Jason A. Mahn (Jan 2020)
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“My holy envy of other faith traditions,” by Barbara Brown Taylor (March 2019)
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“Three ways Buddhism has shaped me as a Sri Lankan Christian,” by Shanta Premawardhana (Jan 2017)
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