We are 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 Hawaii 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 journals 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 [email protected] and dyarbrough1024@gmail.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 17:49:19 +0000
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