The Senior Seminar in Inter-Religious Relations presents Dr Reid B. Locklin (St Michael’s College, University of Toronto), ‘Conquering the Quarters, Preaching in Silence: an Interreligious Exploration of Missionary Advaita Vedānta’, Thursday 3 May 2018 11am-1pm
The Faculty of Divinity Introduces the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme's second term-length Senior Seminar Series in Inter-Religious Relations. The second session of Easter Term will be given by Dr Reid B. Locklin, Associate Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition, St Michael’s College, University of Toronto. The paper is titled 'Conquering the Quarters, Preaching in Silence: an Interreligious Exploration of Missionary Advaita Vedānta', and a response will be given Dr Ankur Barua, Academic Director of CIP and Lecture in Hindu Studies at the Faculty of Divionity.. It will take place on Thursday 3 May, 11.00 am – 1.00 p.m. in Seminar Room 7, Faculty of Divinity.
All welcome. There will be an informal lunch after the event: please email team@interfaith.cam.ac.uk if you would like to attend so that we have an idea of the numbers attending
Abstract
For some four centuries, Hindus and Christians engaged a public dispute about the real or imagined threat posed by aggressive Christian missionaries, intent on converting Hindus to a foreign tradition. In my presentation, I propose to reframe this controversy by shifting attention from the South Asian context and the history of this particular debate to a comparative study of “mission” itself, as a category of thought and practice. The presentation will focus particularly on the theologies of several Hindu missionaries in the modern era, who gave new expression to the non-dualist tradition of Advaita Vedānta and reinvented it as a global religious movement. Through an interreligious study of such movements, I suggest, mission and conversion are opened to re-signification, with consequences for both Hinduism and Christianity.
Other CIP seminars this term:
Dr Sami Everett (CRASSH, University of Cambridge), 'Maghrebinicité: North African Jewish experience in peri-urban Paris since 1981' Thursday 10 May, Lightfoot Room, Faculty of Divinity, 12:00-14:00
Dr Susannah Ticciati (King's College London), 'Negotiating Conflicting Religious Truth Claim: Rabbinic and Christian Accounts in Dialogue' Thursday 24 May, Seminar Room 7, Faculty of Divinity, 14:00-16:00