Only Decentered Deities Bring Harmony
and Wholeness to Our World
August 2, 2016 by Paul Louis Metzger 0 Comments
The conversation took an unexpected though welcome turn, like all
really good dialogues: you never quite know where they will go. I had gone to
Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan to interview Prof. Seung Chul Kim (Dr.
Theol.). He is the Director of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and
Culture, and Professor, Faculty of Arts & Letters, at Nanzan
University. I asked Prof. Kim why he has dedicated so much of his energies
to incorporating science into religious studies. Among various endeavors, he
has recently overseen a Templeton grant project that involves incorporating
science into religious studies courses of various religions in Japanese
universities and high schools.
Drawing from Keiji Nishitani, Pierre Baldi and others, Prof. Kim
discussed his implicit reason for his passion of incorporating science into
religious studies: the need for decentering, including the self. He wants
religion to go back to ground zero by way of negation through scientific
scrutiny. The decentering of self is an essential ethical moment. Prof.
Kim believes the decentering of humanity and the Christian story that occurred
through science and the rise of world religions as a category can helpfully
decenter the Christian West from hegemony.[1]
He believes we all need such decentering—all countries, cultures, and
religions, not simply the Western powers, but also Japan as well as South Korea,
his homeland. Past cultural, military and religious conflicts in the Asian
context involved a centered West and centered Shogun (and later Emperor), among
others.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/uncommongodcommongood/2016/08/only-decentered-deities-bring-harmony-and-wholeness-to-our-world/
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