Encounters with the Religious ‘Other’: From One True Religion to Interreligious Dialogue

Wednesday, February 26, 2014
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. EST
Location: Berkley Center third floor conference room Map

Drawing on Professor José Casanova’s broader project on the Jesuits and globalization, this seminar addressed how religions have moved from the Mosaic monotheistic distinction of "true" and "false" religion and the related system of classification of one "true religion" in contradistinction to all others—"schismatics" (Orthodox Christians), "heretics" (Protestants and other sects), "infidels" (Jews and Muslims), and "pagans" (idolatrous heathens)—to a global system of religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue, by revisiting the Chinese Rites Controversy and other Jesuit encounters with the religious "other."

This workshop was the first of three sponsored this spring by the Normative Orders Collaborative, an interdisciplinary and international effort to foster thinking about moral change and moral innovation. The collaborative is a trilateral effort wherein Georgetown University and Fudan University (Shanghai) will work with and extend the pioneering efforts of the Cluster of Excellence on the Formation of Normative Orders at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The centerpiece of Georgetown’s contribution to this effort was a full-year faculty and graduate student seminar on moral innovation led in 2014-2015 by professors Henry Richardson and Terry Pinkard.

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Encounters with the Religious ‘Other’: From One True Religion to Interreligious Dialogue

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About José Casanova

José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the U.S. Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, where he worked on a book manuscript on Early Modern Globalization through a Jesuit Prism. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. Casanova is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

José Casanova's Profile