Annual Bullock Lecture Makes the Case for Pluralism

April 8, 2008

Author: Staff Writer

Source: Sharon Advocate

http://www.wickedlocal.com/sharon/homepage/x681523918

In the past thirty years the religious landscape of the United States has changed radically. Churches, temples and mosques exist alongside each other in nearly every major American city -- and most certainly in Sharon. This development has spawned interfaith councils and networks, new theological and pastoral questions, and a recasting of traditional church-state issues in a wider context.

On April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in Sharon, Professor Diana Eck from Harvard University will challenge her audience to move beyond the concepts of diversity and tolerance in this new complex religious landscape. She will make the case for pluralism.

Her talk, The Case for Pluralism: Difficult Dialogues in Multireligious America, will press that pluralism is not diversity alone, but energetic engagement with diversity. It is not just tolerance, but active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Pluralism means holding our deepest differences not in isolation, but in relationship to one another through active dialogue.