John Hick's Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective

This volume contains fresh scholarly contributions to mark the birth centenary of John Hick, the internationally well-known philosopher of religion, whose works continue to have significant global relevance in today’s religiously diverse and conflict-ridden world. His writings have reset the parameters of religious pluralism. Up till now, Hick’s religious pluralism has been mainly seen in relation to the Western context where Christianity is the predominant religion. This volume includes both Western and non-Western engagement with his thinking in contexts such as Japan, China, Korea, Nigeria, and India, where Christianity is a minority religion with little political power. Its distinctiveness lies in widening the debate on religious pluralism by bringing Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis into a constructive cross-cultural and interreligious conversation with scholars of Hinduism, Jainism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and African traditional religions. In doing so, this collection examines how Hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism has been received, appropriated and appraised by these scholars.  It has been appreciated and critiqued in equal measure, and continues to impact on current thinking on religious pluralism. This volume makes a significant contribution to the debate initiated by Hick. 

1. Introduction; Sharada Sugirtharajah.- Part 1 Hick’s Religious Pluralism:  A Western Reappraisal.- 2. The Translucency of the Real: Revisiting John Hick’s Pluralistic Hypothesis; Kenneth Rose.- 3. Religious Pluralism and Critical Realism; Perry Schmidt-Leukel.- 4. Pointers to Pluralism Not Relativism; Alan Race.- 5. Ethics and Pluralism; Keith Ward.- 6. Jewish Pluralism and John Hick; Dan Cohn-Sherbok.- Part II Re-envisioning Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Indic and Islamic Responses.- 7. Eating Sugar, Becoming Sugar, Both, or Neither? Eschatology and Religious Pluralism in the Thought of John Hick; Swami Medhananda.- 8. On the Shoulders of a Giant: The Re-envisioning and Reconstruction of John Hick’s Pluralistic Hypothesis; Jeffery D. Long.- 9. The Knowable and the Unknowable ‘Real’ in Radhakrishnan’s and Hick’s Thinking; Sharada Sugirtharajah.- 10. Hick’s Theory of Religion and the Inclusive Option; Amir Dastmalchian.- Part III Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Asian and African responses.- 11. Chinese Daoism and Ultimate Reality: An Interpretation Based on John Hick’s Religious Pluralism; Zhicheng Wang.- 12. Hick’s religious pluralism and Korean Theology of Indigenization; Iljoon Park.- 13. Japanese Responses to Hick’s Religious Pluralism: Hick’s liberalism inherited from British Idealism; Naoki Kitta.- 14. The Significance of John Hick’s Soteriological and Ethical Criteria for Religiously Pluralistic Nigeria; Olusegun Noah Olawoyin

Sharada Sugirtharajah, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Theology, Philosophy and Religion, University of Birmingham