God Talk: Christians Talking with Muslims in Buddhist Thailand

Abstract

Religions use language in particular ways to attribute honour to humans and divine beings. This leads to complications in communication within the one Thai language but across social boundaries, specifically between Christianity and Islam. These two religious movements of Middle Eastern origin have established a presence in Thai society and made different adaptations to the ways of talking, particularly about people of status or divinity. Language use is often a marker of social group membership. This presents challenges when the religious communities seek to talk to each other. After outlining the different hierarchical strata of the Thai language, I examine how the Christian tradition has adopted it to speak about God, human kings, and Jesus as a special case, and the different approach of Islam. The focal question of the paper is: How do the religious traditions speak to each other in ways that generate understanding and cooperation rather than rejection and division?