Comparative Religious Studies Research Articles

A Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Buddhist Christian Dialogue

All of the world’s major religions teach the concepts of kindness, acceptance, tolerance, love, peace, and harmony. The ten essays in this collection come from questions posed to the author during his lifetime of working with comparative religious studies. Some of the pieces were composed as lectures for predominantly Christian audiences; others were written with the Buddhist viewpoint in mind. The book represents more than half a century of “the study of and the actual experience of Tibetan Buddhism as well as the deeply sympathetic study of other religions.” Pallis (who died in 1990) first encountered Tibetan Buddhism while climbing the Himalayan Peaks in the 1920s. Born of Greek parents who lived in Liverpool, England, he received his education at Harrow and Liverpool University and served in the British Army during “The Great War.” A lover of nature, a student of religion, an accomplished musician with specialties in Renaissance English music, and a mountain climber, Pallis was one of the first to bring his knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism to Christians and to address the concerns in Christian circles regarding Buddhism. The author also refers to Hinduism and Islam, offering “a multiplicity” of religious ideas. In his attempts to answer questions about the differences and similarities among faiths, Pallis addresses: Living One’s Karma, The Marriage of Wisdom and Method, Is There A Problem of Evil?, Is There Room for “Grace” in Buddhism?, Considerations on the Tantric Alchemy, Nembutsu as Remembrance, Dharma and the Dharmas, the Metaphysics of Musical Polyphony, Anatta and Archetypes as Seen Through Buddhist Eyes. Because of the nature of the book, there are some redundancies, but the overall effect is one of meditation, despite the book’s sexist language (i.e., using “man” for “humanity”), which dates the collection and distracts the reader. The essay called “Living One’s Karma” offers one of the better examples of the comparisons and contrasts between Christian and Buddhist tenets. Discussing self-identification, the identification of good karma, and karma as a determinant of one’s vocation or specific dharma, the author interprets Buddhist beliefs using biblical scriptures. During his lifetime, Pallis was widely respected as a teacher, musician, composer, and translator of Traditionalist works. For many years, he corresponded with Ananda Coomaraswamy, Rene Guenon, and Frithjof Schuon. Many of the essays included here were first published in the British journal, Studies in Comparative Religion. Pallis’s 1939 book, Peaks and Lamas, was a bestseller; The Way and the Mountain, published in 1960, is scheduled for republication. (February 14, 2004)

Liberal Religion and Free Love: An Undiscovered Afro-American Novel of the 1890s

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, church-going America underwent a crisis of faith which had been mounting since the start of the Gilded Age. Evolutionary thought, comparative religious study, the Higher Criticism of the Bible, and the secularization of American society all threatened the vital theological core around which Protestantism had grown in the ante-bellum United States. Traditional concepts of God as actively supervising the affairs of creation, of Jesus as divine agent of human salvation, and of man as intrinsically sinful and only redeemable through the action of God through Christ were all thrown into question. The writings of Herbert Spencer and John Fiske made impersonal natural law seem more benevolently disposed toward humankind than the jealous Jehovah of conventional Christianity. Theistic evolutionists could not reconcile the notion of the depravity of man to the evidence Spencer had introduced in favor of the steady progress of man on spiritual, moral, and material fronts. Readers of books like David Strauss's Life of Jesus (1846) and Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Robert Elsemere (1888) did not have to consult the Christological theories of Friedrich Schleiermacher or Albrecht Ritschl to believe in a Christ whose humanity was no longer burdened by the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Trinity, or the Second Coming. Liberal revaluation of the role of institutions in religious life reduced the importance of traditional theology, sectarian organization, and church discipline. Even among conservative denominations like the Methodists, clergymen could be found who welcomed science's demolition of the supernaturalism and outworn theologies of old-fashioned orthodoxy. Rev. J. F. Chaffee of Minneapolis was but one of many in the Protestant community who called for liberty of thought and speech in the turn-of-the-century church, for freedom from outmoded authority and myth.1 Many Americans took the new liberalism at its word, exchanging their pastors and priests for a gaggle of latter-day prophets and utopians who led them

The Ideas of Newman: Christianity and Human Religiosity by Lee H. Yearley

820 BOOK REVIEWS text, although I would hope that he will correct the numerous inaccuracies in the chapter on " Eastern Religion." Creighton Univer~ity Omaha, Nebr~ka RANDOLPH M. FEEZELL The Ideas of Newman: Christianity and Human Religiosity. By LEE H. YEARLEY. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978. Pp. xii + 188. $rn.5o. Interpreting Newman is no easy task. He is such an original and personal thinker that commentators all too frequently find themselves with inadequate categories for analysis. His fate at the hands of the late 19th- and early 20th-century scholastic writers is well documented. The sectarian nature of his conversion from Anglo- to Roman Catholicism often puts many critics in clearly opposing camps. Finally, the very power of his rhetoric and the clarity and candor of his spirit beg some kind of engagement that often enough clouds scholarly objectivity. By setting his study of Newman in the larger context of comparative religious studies, and by applying the methodologies of that discipline, Lee Yearley provides a fresh and provocative reading of one of the most important thinkers in the history of Christianity. At first blush, the title, " The Ideas of Newman," might seem either naive or presumptuous. Quite the contrary. The author's purpose and focus are sharply set. He addresses himself to an understanding of Newman's life-long foe: religious liberalism. By moving away from traditional theological methods and applying those drawn from the comparative study of religion, Yearley is able to sort out Newman's key ideas, to eliminate or explain apparent contradictions in his thought, and to pull together under the name" Liberal Religion " many of his disparate statements on liberalism. Most importantly , this study highlights Newman's stunning relevance to the religious predicament of our own time. This is one of the most valuable studies of Newman to appear during the past twenty years. In Chapter 1, "Natural Religion," Yearley examines what he calls "human religiosity," the basic human potential for religion. Key to all of Newman's thought is his belief that human nature is naturally religious. This approach clarifies what might seem a contradiction in Newman's use of the term " natural." Sometimes he opposes " natural " to supernatural. At other times " natural " refers to that which is characteristic of human nature. Thus when he writes of Natural Religion in the Grammar of Assent he speaks of our natural capacity for fulfillment through a religious experience of God. At other times he insists that this natural capacity BOOK REVIEWS is merely nature, i. e., impotent without supernatural grace. The characteristics of this religious type (Natural Religion) are: providence, prayer, revelation, sacrifice, and the mediatorial power of a holy person. In showing how Newman formulates these characteristics Yearley suggests how closely he anticipates the thought of writers like Eliade and Van der Leeuw. The chapter is an admirable summary of all Newman says on religion in general and contains a superb study of his tenet that conscience is central to the religious experience. Chapters ~ and 3 examine Christianity according to two further types of religious ideas one finds in Newman: the fulfillment model and the authority model. These are both types of revealed religion as opposed to natural religion {needing the supernatural) . The fulfillment model is more irenic and stresses the continuity of religious growth. The authority model is more divisive and stresses or at least implies the discontinuity inasmuch as revelation "intrudes" into the human process. Here Newman develops his idea of the economic communication of revelation and the process of "assimilation" which is one of the characteristics of true doctrinal development . Yearley finds one major difficulty in Newman's use of the fulfillment model: his unawareness, not to say ignorance, of other world religions than Judaism and the classical Graeco-Roman religions. He thus feels that, if Newman had made a distinction between phenomenological and historical preparation for the fulfillment of human religious potential by Christianity, he would have been on safer and more consistent ground in facing the problems posed by the claims to truth by other religions and by the difficulty of tracing the historical connections in the gradual " economic " unfolding of revelation to mankind through the ages. In using...