Dear Colleagues,
I am very pleased to announce the publication of the
2013 volume of
Buddhist-Christian Studies, an international, peer reviewed
journal of
inter-religious dialogue. It is available in print from the
University
of Hawai'i Press, and digitally through Project Muse.
Most
of this year’s volume is devoted to contemplative pedagogies:
efforts to
integrate contemplative practices — Buddhist, Christian, and
non-sectarian —
into academic courses of various kinds. Barbara Newman,
a professor of
English, emphasizes the necessity of cultivating memory
and attention in the
“age of Google.” Douglas Christie offers a lyrical
reflection on “slow
knowledge,” inspired by a remarkable work of
performance art he witnessed.
Andrew Fort argues persuasively for the
value of contemplative pedagogies in
liberal education, and addresses a
variety of issues that arise when such
pedagogies are employed in
academic classrooms. Judith Simmer-Brown shows how
inter-religious
dialogue can be a form of contemplative practice. John
Copenhaver
describes several practices he has introduced into his courses,
taught
from both confessional and phenomenological perspectives, in
religious
studies. Christine Utterback describes what students in
her
medieval-studies courses gain from engaging in medieval
contemplative
practices, and responds to ethical concerns about the
appropriateness of
teaching such practices to people who are not devoted to
and mature in
religious life. Deborah Haynes reports her experiences of
using
contemplative practices in undergraduate classrooms over the past
eight
years. These have been well received by her students, and her
study
illustrates some of their academic benefits. The journal's
co-editors,
C. Denise Yarbrough and I, also included a discussion of a
seminary
course we co-taught on Buddhist and Christian contemplative
practices
and dialogue.
Because most of the voices represented are
professors teaching in
various academic disciplines, we thought it important
to include some
student voices, as well. So we are happy to have a reflection
on our
co-taught course by one of our graduate students, Deborah Sprague,
and
reflections by two undergraduate students, Lauren Rodgers and
Jillian
Guizzotti, who participated in meditation as part of a course on
Buddhism.
Another group of essays in this volume offer Buddhist and
Christian
perspectives on “the ethics of wealth in a world of
economic
inequality," by Mark Wood, Carol Anderson, and Joerg Rieger.
Anderson’s
paper offers a Buddhist perspective through the lens of the tenth
Vinaya
precept in Buddhism, which prohibits monks and nuns from handling
gold
or silver. Rieger develops an ethics of wealth, examining first the
full
scale of economic inequality as it exists in our 21st century
context,
with particular attention to the role of the middle class in the
world’s
economy and in Christian and Buddhist thinking about an ethics
of
wealth. Wood’s paper is a response to Anderson and Rieger. He
summarizes
and critiques their analyses, as he also establishes the context
in
which an ethics of wealth from either or both a Christian and
Buddhist
perspective might be developed.
In addition, we have the
winning essay for the Society’s 2012 Student
Essay Competition, by P.J.
Johnston, which examines Beat religiousness;
as well as a Christian
commentary on the Dhammapada by Leo Lefebure,
based on his co-authored book
on that subject, which is also reviewed in
this volume by Glenn Willis. We
offer thoughtful reviews of six
additional books, edited by Sid Brown, and
our usual “News and Views”
section, edited by Jonathan Seitz. We welcome
contributions to both
those sections, as well as longer submissions to the
journal.
We hope you will enjoy reading all of these as much as we have
enjoyed
preparing them for your reading pleasure! If you have or know about
a
paper that might be suitable for the journal, please send it in a
Word
document to the co-editors, at wakoh@alum.berkeley.edu and
dyarbrough1024@gmail.com.
Many thanks,
Wakoh
Shannon Hickey, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Notre
Dame of Maryland University
4701 North Charles St.
Baltimore, MD
21210
(410) 532-5307
Co-Editor, Buddhist-Christian
Studies
Office: whickey@ndm.edu
Personal: wakoh@alum.berkeley.edu
