Table Of ContentRitual Participation and
Interreligious Dialogue
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Ritual Participation and Interreligious Dialogue
Boundaries, Transgressions and Innovations
Edited by
Marianne Moyaert and Joris Geldhof
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CONtENtS
Notes on the Contributors vii
1. Introduction: Exploring the Phenomenon of Interreligious
Ritual Participation Marianne Moyaert 1
Part I
PhILOSOPhICAL, thEOLOGICAL, AND
PhENOMENOLOGICAL OBSERVAtIONS
2. On Doing What Others Do: Intentions and Intuitions in Multiple
Religious Practice Mark S. Heim 19
3. Bowing before Buddha and Allah? Reflections on Crossing Over
Ritual Boundaries Maria Reis Habito 33
4. Enlightened Presuppositions of (Spiritually Motivated) Cross-ritual
Participation Walter Van Herck 43
5. Religion is as Religion Does: Interfaith Prayer as a form of Ritual
Participation Douglas Pratt 53
6. Interreligious Ritual Participation: Insights from Inter-Christian
Ritual Participation Martha Moore-Keish 67
Part II
MuSLIM AND ChRIStIAN-MuSLIM PERSPECtIVES
7. Receiving the Stranger: A Muslim Theology of Shared Worship
Tim Winter 81
8. Interreligious Prayer between Roman Catholic Christians
and Muslims Gavin D’Costa 93
9. Back-and-Forth Riting: The Dynamics of Christian-Muslim
Encounters in Shrine Rituals Albertus Bagus Laksana, SJ 109
vi Contents
Part III
ChRIStIAN AND EASt ASIAN RELIGIOuS PERSPECtIVES
10. Offering and Receiving hospitality: The Meaning of Ritual
Participation in the hindu temple Anantanand Rambachan 125
11. toward an Open Eucharist Richard Kearney 138
12. The Practice of Zazen as Ritual Performance André van der Braak 156
13. Theorizing Ritual for Interreligious Practice James W. Farwell 166
Part IV
JEWISh AND JEWISh-ChRIStIAN PERSPECtIVES
14. transgressing and Setting Ritual Boundaries: A Puzzling
Paradox Rachel Reedijk 181
15. Mourning the Loss of My Daughter: The Failure of Interfaith
Bereavement Rituals Anya Topolski 195
16. Parameters of hospitality for Interreligious Participation:
A Jewish Perspective Ruth Langer 205
17. Epilogue: Inter-riting as a Peculiar Form of Love Joris Geldhof 218
Notes 225
Bibliography 243
Name Index 257
Subject Index 259
NOtES ON thE CONtRIButORS
Albertus Bagus Laksana teaches at Sanata Dharma university in Yogyakarta,
Indonesia. his research interests and publications include topics in Muslim-
Christian comparative theology (especially the role of pilgrimage, saints, and
sacred space) and theology of religions, mission studies, theology and culture, and
Asian theologies. he is the author of Muslim and Catholic Pilgrimage Practices:
Explorations Through Java (2014).
Gavin D’Costa is Catholic Professor of Theology, university of Bristol. he acts as
an advisor to the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and the Anglican
Church on matters of interreligious dialogue and theology. he also advises the
Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Vatican City. his most recent
publication is Vatican II: Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (2014).
James Farwell is Professor of Theology and Liturgy at Virginia Theological
Seminary. he is the author of This Is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies
of Holy Week (2005) and has recently written a new version of the classic primer
The Liturgy Explained (2013).
Joris Geldhof is Professor of Liturgical Studies and Sacramental Theology at the
Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Ku Leuven. Along with several articles
in the domain of liturgical theology and philosophy of religion he published a
monograph entitled Revelation, Reason and Reality. Theological Encounters with
Jaspers, Schelling and Baader (2007). he is the editor-in-chief of the bilingual
journal Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy.
Mark Heim is Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton
Theological School. he is deeply involved in issues of religious pluralism, Christian
ecumenism, and the relation of theology and science. he is author of Salvations:
Truth and Difference in Religion (1995), The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian
Theology of Religious Ends (2001) and, Saved From Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross
(2006).
Richard Kearney holds the Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and is
author of several books on the philosophy of religion. These include Anatheism:
Returning to God after God (2010), The God Who May Be (2001), Strangers, Gods
and Monsters (2000) and as editor, Traversing the Heart: Journeys in Interreligious
Imagination (2006) and Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions (2012). his forth-
coming book is Reimagining the Sacred: Debating God with Richard Kearney (2015).
viii Notes on the Contributors
Ruth Langer is Professor of Jewish Studies (Comparative Theology) in the
Theology Department at Boston College and Associate Director of its Center for
Christian-Jewish Learning. her publications include Cursing the Christians? A
History of the Birkat HaMinim (2012).
Martha Moore-Keish is Associate Professor of Theology at Columbia Theological
Seminary. her research interests include Reformed theology, liturgical theology,
and feminist theology. She also has interests in ecumenical theology and interfaith
issues. She is currently coediting a book on Karl Barth and comparative Theology.
In 2008 she published Do This in Remembrance of Me: A Ritual Approach to
Reformed Eucharistic Theology.
Marianne Moyaert is the Fenna Diemer Lindeboom Chair of Comparative
Theology and hermeneutics of Interreligious Dialogue at the Vu university
Amsterdam. She recently obtained funding for a four-year research project
Crossing Borders: Interreligious Ritual Sharing as a Challenge to the Theology of
Interreligious Dialogue (2014–2018). her latest book is In Response to the Religious
Other: Ricoeur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters (2014).
Douglas Pratt is Professor of Religious Studies at the university of Waikato,
New Zealand and Adjunct Professor (Theology and Interreligious Studies) at
the university of Bern, Switzerland. together with David Cheetham and David
Thomas, he coedited the volume Understanding Interreligious Relations (2013)
his most recent book is Being Open, Being Faithful: The Journey of Interreligious
Dialogue (2014).
Anantanand Rambachan is Professor of Religion at Saint Olaf College, Minnesota,
uSA. Among his books are, Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source
.
of Valid Knowledge in Śankara (1991), The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s
Reinterpretation of the Authority of the Veda (1994), The Advaita Worldview: God,
World and Humanity (2006). his latest book is A Hindu Theology of Liberation:
Not-Two is Not One (2015).
Rachel Reedijk is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the dialogue between
Jews, Christians, and Muslims. She works as a lecturer at the Amsterdam Center
for the Study of Cultural and Religious Diversity (ACCORD), Vu university
Amsterdam. her book is entitled Roots and Routes: Identity Construction and the
Jewish-Christian Muslim Dialogue (2010).
Maria Reis Habito PhD, is the International Program Director of the Museum of
World Religions and the Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute uSA. her latest
publication is Heart to Heart. Buddhist-Muslim Encounters in Ladkah (edited),
Museum of World Religions (2012).
Notes on the Contributors ix
Anya Topolski is a postdoctoral fellow, (FWO-Flanders), at the higher Institute
of Philosophy, Ku Leuven. her current research involves the deconstruction of
the discourse of Judeo-Christianity in relation to European identity formation and
its symbolic role in propagating Islamophobia. her most recent publications are
Arendt, Levinas and the Politics of Relationality (2015) and the coedited volume Is
there a Judeo-Christian Tradition? A European Perspective (2015).
André van der Braak is Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in Dialogue with
other World Views, Vu university Amsterdam, Faculty of Theology. his main
publication is Nietzsche and Zen, Self-overcoming without a Self (2013). he is
currently coediting a volume with Paul van der Velde and Aloys Wijngaards, titled
Buddhist Transformations.
Walter Van Herck is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the university
of Antwerp and guest professor at Ghent university. One of his most recent edited
books is The Sacred in the City (ed. with L. Gomez, 2012). he is editor-in-chief of
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology (Routledge).
Tim Winter is university Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity,
university of Cambridge, and Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College. his
academic publications include many articles on Islamic theology and Muslim-
Christian relations. he is the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Classical
Islamic Theology (2008). his most recent book is Commentary on the Eleventh
Contentions (2012).
