Scientia (Sep 2020)
Religion, Conflict and the Asian Theology of Harmony
Abstract
Interreligious dialogue plays a vital role in addressing conflicts in Asia. In situations, however, where there is an interweaving of religion and conflict, interreligious dialogue, as a peace-building mechanism, is fundamentally challenged by its very foundation, which is the notion of religion. By taking the case of the Mindanao conflict, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that religion expressed culturally and geographically as ethno-religious identity forces interreligious dialogue as primarily a process towards radical renewal of the involved faith traditions. By drawing into the Mindanao experiences, the paper argues that interreligious dialogue, in order to perform its peace-building task, should first be able to process ethno-religious identities to overcome their particularity and embrace theology of harmony. 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