Prospects for the Development of Interreligious Dialogue in China: Lessons from Neighboring Asian Countries

Abstract

In contemporary China, interreligious dialogue remains limited in scope. Government intervention and religious revivalism both define and limit the way various religious traditions interact among themselves. This essay tries to assess resources coming from the Asian religious experience taken as a whole so as to map the issues facing the actors engaged in interreligious dialogue and cooperation in China. Asian countries have been marked by the diversity of their languages, narrative modes and hermeneutical traditions. These linguistic and narrative matrixes have shaped religious approaches to reality, while being themselves reshaped by the encounters taking place among concepts and stories. Remembering and making sense of these encounters provide communities with a web of resources that may help them to make interreligious dialogue a creative endeavor reshaping and deepening the understanding of one’s religious experience. At the same time, current religious revivalism offers an array of new challenges that redefine the frontiers of interreligious dialogue and call for a greater reliance on prayer and grassroots initiatives. Finally, the burgeoning of Chinese civil society offers new opportunities for meaningful religious encounters, provided all the actors concerned use them with caution and wisdom.