“Studying World Religions at a Christian Seminary”
Three seminary students—a Catholic, a Methodist, and a Unitarian—walk into a Buddhist meditation center . . . .
No, that’s not the setup for a religious joke. It fulfilled an assignment in the course, “Perspectives on Buddhism,” at the Theological Consortium of Greater Columbus.
Here’s an excerpt from the field report by one of those three students:
As things were wrapping up and people were getting their coats and shoes on, . . . [one] lady mentioned that many people practice mindfulness meditation and still belong to another religion. When the host found out that the three of us were taking a fifteen-week course on Buddhism, she asked if we meditated in class. When we replied in the negative, she wondered aloud how one could study Buddhism without practicing meditation. (David Soliday, “Field Assignment Report,” November 2004.)
Note the implication of the Buddhist host’s comment, that only “insiders” can truly understand a religion. This is a lively topic in the academic study of religion, for instance when sociologists examine a religious group. Can such research, conducted by objective outsiders, ever capture the insider’s experience of a religious tradition?
The complexity of the question is compounded when the outsiders are Christian seminarians studying other religions. Seminarians are insiders to their own religious tradition—does that make them any more likely to understand what it means to be Buddhist insiders? Perhaps it makes them more sensitive to the importance of religion in people’s lives, but don’t you have to be a Buddhist to understand Buddhism in more than a superficial sense? As the woman said, how can you study Buddhism without meditating?
Studying world religions at the Theological Consortium of Greater Columbus includes both the objective methods of the academic outsider and the theological methods of the Christian insider. We learn something about Buddhism from sociological and other strictly academic insights. We also ask questions about Buddhism from the perspective of Christian faith, convinced that the Christian theological agenda must include serious and wide ranging consideration of other religions, and that such consideration will prepare our students for faithful participation in inter-religious interaction and informed leadership among fellow Christians.
We do not expect our students to become Buddhists or adherents of any of the other world religions they study. Neither do we require our students to meditate or otherwise participate in the religious activities they observe in any field research they might conduct. This means that they will miss something of the insider’s experience, but they will learn at least two valuable lessons from their studies: A little of what it might mean to be an insider of another religion, plus a great deal about what it means to be a Christian in a multi-religious world.