Field Notes Articles

Muslim-Christian Dialogue in the Gulf


In mid-October 2011, I conducted an interview with the Rev. Doug Leonard, Director of the Al Amana Center in Oman. Aimed at promoting Muslim-Christian understanding, the Al Amana Center began as an initiative of the Reformed Church in America and now operates under the auspices of the government of Oman. As far as is known, the Al Amana Center is the only Christian-initiated interfaith center in the world that formally partners with an Islamic government.

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Indian Catholics Responding to Globalization


When I first began researching call center workers in India, I was surprised to come across an article on a British news website about how the Catholic Archbishop of Bangalore had expressed public concern about rapidly mushrooming call centers. While most people outside India assume that call centers and “outsourcing” must be an unqualified boon for the country, the Archbishop fretted about their impact on the lifestyles of Indian youth.

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Catholics in the Call Center


In 2005, I visited Bangalore for the first time in ten years, and was astonished at the major facelift the city had undergone. The once quiet and easy-going “garden city” was now a thriving metropolis, dotted with an ever-growing number of shopping malls, coffee shops, glass-paneled office towers, KFC and McDonald’s franchises, and Pepsi billboards. Besides these usual symbols heralding the arrival of globalization, one new development struck me as peculiar: the outsourcing industry. I soon discovered that outsourcing highlights some of the important tensions between new modes of secularity and new religious modernities—including Catholic ones—emerging around the world.

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The Future of Catholic Peacebuilding

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Among the most pressing of the challenges posed by modernity is violent conflict. How is it possible to build peace and community in the face of this challenge? The heads of several Catholic organizations most deeply involved in peacebuilding joined scholars in Rome on June 30th for a conference on “The Future of Peacebuilding: Contributions from Catholic Theology, Ethics, Praxis.” The Contending Modernities blog asked the organizer of the conference as well as a key participant—Gerard Powers and Maryann Cusimano Love , respectively—to share their thoughts on Catholic peacebuilding, based on reflections they presented at the conference. Read the full article »

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Catholic Contributions to Modern Peacebuilding

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Some people say that Catholic Social Teaching is the Church’s Best Kept Secret. If that is true, Catholic peacebuilding may be Catholic Social Teaching’s Best Kept Secret. From South Sudan and Central America to Congo and Colombia, the Catholic Church is a powerful force for peace, freedom, justice and reconciliation. But that impressive and courageous peacebuilding work of the Catholic community is often unknown, unheralded and under-analyzed.

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Lessons for Interreligious Dialogue Today

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I concluded my last post on Manila 1960 with two questions: Why did Manila 1960 take place under the peculiar circumstances described so far? And why did Manila 1960 remain a forgotten episode in the history of Interreligious Dialogue? Let me answer with two simple statements: Interreligious Dialogue is inseparable from the political field, and Manila 1960 was forgotten because a new religious elite rose to take control of Interreligious Dialogue.

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Interreligious Dialogue, Too, Can Marginalize

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In my previous post on Manila 1960 as a forgotten yet fascinating chapter in the history of Interreligious Dialogue, I made a distinction between hagiography and unofficial history. In a way, I learned about the 1960 conference on “The Present Impact of the Great Religions of the World upon the Orient and the Occident” the “wrong” way around—by first getting acquainted with the unofficial story and only later with the somewhat more flattering self-portrait.

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A Forgotten Episode in the History of Interreligious Dialogue

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One often gets the impression that the history of Interreligious Dialogue is told in the form of hagiography, starting with “mystical figures” such as Akbar the Great or the Emirs of Granada and leading up to “present-day saints” such as Hans Küng, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Maya. There is, however, an important history of interreligious encounters that is generally excluded from the hagiography—a history that does not focus exclusively on shining examples and peaceful saints, that includes failure and dissent as well as understanding and comprehension, and that has to be rediscovered in order to grasp the structures, potentials and losses of Interreligious Dialogue.

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Civility 101: Do Unto Otters


Review of Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller (New York: Henry Holt and Company LLC, 2007).

Shrillness, vitriol, and a distinct lack of civility characterize much of our public discussion in America these days. America is torn and tense. One example is that the topic of Islam in public discussion has become almost radioactive. A jolting, disturbing reminder spread across the internet last week in video footage of loud, rude, and at times vicious anti-Muslim protesters who held a rally in February at a mosque in California. And Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Islamic radicalization in America have been the focus of intensely polarized—and not particularly civil—national debate.

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Monks in Algeria: Loving Thy Neighbor at Gunpoint


A review of the film “Of Gods and Men.”

What does it mean to love your neighbor? What does it mean to love your neighbor when a neighbor is pointing a gun at you and your other neighbors? The film “Of Gods and Men,” which won “best film” at France’s equivalent of the Oscars on February 25th, is based on a true story. It follows the lives of French Catholic monks in Algeria in the 1990s as the country descends into violent conflict between a secularist state and radical Islamists.

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