See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/339472267

The Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity

Chapter · February 2020

CITATION READS

1 1,910

3 authors, including:

Lene Kuhle Jørn Borup

Aarhus University Aarhus University
62 PUBLICATIONS   270 CITATIONS    69 PUBLICATIONS   116 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Branding Buddha – Mediatized and Commodified Buddhism as Cultural Narrative View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Jørn Borup on 25 February 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 The Critical Analysis of
Religious Diversity

Edited by

Lene Kühle
William Hoverd
Jørn Borup

leiden | boston

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Contents

Foreword VII
Tim Jensen
Acknowledgements IX
Author Biographies x

Introduction: The Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity 1

Lene Kühle and William Hoverd

Part 1
Theoretical and Methodological Issues

Introduction to Part 1 16

1 Religious Diversity, Institutionalized Religion, and Religion That is Not

Religion 21
Peter Beyer

2 Counting and Mapping Religious Diversity: Methodological Challenges,

Unintended Consequences, and Political Implications 41
Mar Griera

3 Constructing and Deconstructing Religious Diversity: The Measurement

of Religious Affiliation in Denmark and New Zealand 63
William Hoverd and Lene Kühle

4 Globally Modern – Dynamically Diverse: How Global Modernity

Engenders Dynamic Diversity 83
Andrew Dawson

Part 2
Religious Diversity in Non-modern and Non-western Contexts

Introduction to Part 2 106

5 Religious Diversity and Discourses of Toleration in Classical

Antiquity 109
Mar Marcos

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

vi Contents

6 Managing and Negotiating Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 128

Jørn Borup

7 A Harmonious Plurality of ‘Religious’ Expressions: Theories and Case

Studies from the Chinese Practice of (Religious) Diversity 147
Stefania Travagnin

Part 3
Religious Diversity in Societal Contexts

Introduction to Part 3 174

8 Constructing and Representing the New Religious Diversity with

Old Classifications: ‘World Religions’ as an Excluding Category in
Interreligious Dialogue in Switzerland 179
Martin Baumann and Andreas Tunger-Zanetti

9 He Said, We Said: Religion in the York University Controversy of

2013–2014 208
Paul Bramadat

10 Interfaith Youth in Australia: A Critical Reflection on Religious

Diversity, Literacy, and Identity 230
Anna Halafoff

11 Religious Diversity and the News: Critical Issues in the Study of

Religion and Media 252
Henrik Reintoft Christensen

12 Law and Religious Diversity: How South African Courts Distinguish

Religion, Witchcraft and Culture 272
Marian Burchardt

Conclusion: The Problems of Religious Diversity 295

Lene Kühle

Index  311

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

 Chapter 6

Managing and Negotiating Asian Religious

Unities and Diversities

Jørn Borup

One important expression of the contemporary global world is the presence

of widespread cultural and religious diversity. Migration, transnationalism, In-
ternet, the breakdown of walls and monolithic metanarratives, a widespread
subjective turn and the (possible) emergence of a post-secular religiosity are
important framing conditions for increased diversity. In fact, just as Baumann
(1996) has argued that the notion of identity is foremost a modern invention,
it could be claimed that the quest for religious identity and a macro perspec-
tive differentiation of religious identities are typically modern, explaining why
religious diversity has emerged as a new (scholarly) field.
But the field is also a matter of gaze: the focus on religious diversity also
expresses a new cultural, political and academic focus with broader perspec-
tives on the general study of religion as well. ‘The categories of spirituality and
lived religion are much more clearly a reflection of shifting attention, decla-
rations on the part of the observers that we ought to revise our way of look-
ing at religion and religious phenomena’ (Beyer 2011, 193). One specific gaze is
seeing religious diversity in a context of history and culture. While the study
of religious diversity itself becomes increasingly pluralistic, the majority of
­studies are from a Western context.1 It can be argued that historically, and
especially beyond a Western sphere, religious diversity has been the norm of
most lived religion, also before the world turned global. As such, a broader
focus on diversity is a perspective revealing that monolithic traditions are par-
ticular and constructed, rather than being universal and essential. Thus, in this
perspective, the Western experiences with religious diversity should not be
universalised as default value standards, but rather as particular and modern.
At the same time, and closely related to this, diversity and its negations have
also been used in emic discursive frameworks for institutional legitimation.
Religious traditions have oscillated between different types of diversities and
unities in strategic identification and authority narratives. ‘From a sociological

1 This can easily be concluded from seeing the card literature database on religious diversity:
https://www.zotero.org/groups/276914.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004367111_010

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 129

point of view, therefore, it is important to take account of the forces that shape
the forms that religious pluralism, as an ideological position, has actually taken
in history’ (Beckford 2003, 80).
The notion of ‘religious diversity’ points to an earlier era of pre-diversity with
homogenous cultures, monopoly churches and cultural boundaries ­(Dillon
2011, 48). Such tendencies to religious monopoly and mono-religiosity has
been especially predominant in European Christianity and Arabian Islam, per-
haps because ‘Arabic societies have great difficulty in acknowledging religious
pluralism, not to mention institutionalising minimalist accommodations to-
ward the freedom of religious expression’ (ibid, 47). Whereas religious diversity
has often been a problem for monotheistic religions, it seems that non-mono­
theistic cultures in Asia throughout history generally have been more prone to
accommodate than to suppress religious diversity. There seems to be a logical
line from third century bc emperor Ashoka’s rule of alleged tolerant religious
pluralism through Hinduism as an ‘inclusive religion’ ­(Oberhammer 1983) with
its ‘homotheism’ and ‘equitheism’ (Michaels 2004, 339) and Gandhi’an univer-
salism to Chinese and Japanese syncretic systems and high levels of religious
pluralism. It is quite symptomatic for the scholarly field that one important
introductory book on Japanese religion (now in its fifth edition) from 1969 was
subtitled Unity and diversity (Earhart 1969). Unity and diversity has later also
been used in plural as a title introducing Chinese religion (Weller 1987). Gen-
erally, ‘it is true that from almost the beginning of Chinese recorded history
a diversity of religious thought has been the norm rather than the exception’
(Berling 2013, 29) and ‘patterns of multiple religious participation were wide-
spread and demonstrated a behavioural or pragmatic openness to other tradi-
tions that makes Chinese religious behaviour quite distinctive from patterns of
exclusion in other cultures’ (ibid, 33. See also Travagnin in this volume).
The pew Research Center’s 2014 report on Global Religious Diversity
shows that half of the most religiously diverse countries are to be found in
the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore being the most diverse with the highest
score (pew Forum 2014).2 Religious diversity is also significant among immi-
grants from Asian context moving to the West, both at individual and societal
level. ­Another report from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion &
Public Life found that there are ‘wide variations within the very diverse Asian-­
American population’ (Pew Forum 2012), and that ‘u.s. Buddhists and Hindus
tend to be inclusive in their understanding of faith’ (ibid, 10). Most of these
reject the notion that their religion is the one, true faith, and rather say that

2 Religious diversity in this report was defined as ‘the percentage of each country’s population
that belongs to eight major religious groups’ (Pew Forum 2014).

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

130 Borup

there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. Not
surprisingly, Denmark’s ongoing religious mapping project shows that Asian
religions are notoriously difficult to map, not least due to the syncretic, hy-
brid and fluffy religiosity of especially East Asian immigrants (Ahlin and Borup
2013, Borup 2016). Eastern religions, which Iannaccone (1995) calls ‘private’ as
­opposed to the monotheistic and commitment and membership based ‘col-
lective’ religions, are generally challenged to get official approval as recognised
religious communities as they have to transfer and negotiate their religiosity
into Christian inspired institutional frameworks with mono-religiosity and
memberships (ibid.).
This chapter will investigate discourses and practices of religious diversity
in Asian contexts. The theoretical framing of the complex includes (1) histori-
cising the relations between scholarly analyses (‘gaze’) and the empirical world
(‘the religions’) and (2) investigating the relations between theologies, social
practices and discursive strategies of some of these religious traditions. The
structure will be dialectical in the sense that a Western hegemonic construc-
tion of Asian religions is acknowledged and accepted as a useful analytical tool,
that the assumptions of a sui generis Asian diversity will be acknowledged and
unfolded as (also) rhetorical devices, and that discourses of Asian unities and
diversities are both empirically ‘real’ and constructed as such in theological,
social and political regimes. The article thus aims to present a research agenda
of the study of religious diversity in an Asian context (and Asian religions in a
Western context). But it will also use such representations in a historical and
comparative perspective as a mirror towards the study of religious diversity in
a Western context and religion in general, arguing that religious diversity in
its plural manifestations is both quintessentially natural (and ‘universal’) and
constructed (and ‘relative’) as context dependent empirical realities, discours-
es and practices embedded in ideological, strategic and performative frames.

Historicising the Challenge of Diversity: ‘Religion’ and ‘Religious

Diversity’ as Analytical Concepts and Empirical Reality

There is good reason for typologically dividing monotheistic and polytheistic

traditions, perhaps even correlating these broadly to differentiations between
Western and Eastern cultures. However, going beyond mainly religious claims
that non-diverse and ‘pure’ religious traditions are the norm, historical anal-
yses easily deconstruct the monocentric myths of coherent unities – also in
non-monotheistic religions/cultures. Thus, ‘two generations of historians …
have shown that while there might have been some overarching official system

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 131

or symbols, diverse expressions in abundance plagued the homogenizers and

monopolists who favored religious uniformity’ (Marty 2011, 14). Syncretism,
diversity, hybridity, liquid religiosity and fuzziness have also been the norms
of lived religion in European Christian history, and the notion of ‘popular re-
ligion’ as a cultural characteristic to be relevant generally also for Christianity
(Sharot 2001, 14, see also Mar Marcos in this volume). Mono-religiosity might
have been the ideal and ‘narrative of identity’ (Ammerman 2003) of certain
types and times of history, but this ideal has mainly been institutionalised as a
modern, post-Reformation construction (Sharot 2001, 211ff). While religious di-
versity in the contemporary West has become less exceptional and recognised
also in hitherto monoreligious cultures, adherents of minority religions have
also previously felt differentiation (and discrimination) in a de facto diverse
religious field.
Negotiating the dangerous fluidity was also part of a larger colonialist
endeavour. ‘The ideological function of the idea of religion and religions’
(Fitzgerald 2007, 20) could in the ‘ideologically weighted language game’ (ibid,
11) l­egitimate a cultural hegemonic discourse, in which religion was distin-
guished from non-religion, and true religion from false religions. Old Christian
divisions into four kinds of religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Pagan-
ism) (Paden 1994, 15) were explained both by a dichotomic relation between
divine revelation as opposed to the ‘unredeemed darkness outside the pen-
umbra of God’s revelations’ (ibid, 17) and by a hierarchical and later evolution-
ary scheme in which Protestantised and monolithic religiosity was part of the
imperial ­essentialisms of the conquerors.
The colonial presence was itself an important context for the emergent
comparative study of religion, and a constructing factor for Asian religions.
Not only had Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto(ism), Confucianism and Daoism
practitioners found themselves defined and invented as mirrored reflections
of prescribed Protestant understandings of pure prototypical religion. These
religions also had to learn their first important lessons of religious diversity:
the distinctions between true religion for the saved and the heathen religion
for the cursed, or true, textual religion as separate from degenerate, lived folk
religion. In Japan, Shinto and Buddhism had gone hand-in-hand as a syncretic
pair at least until the 15th–16th Century, and they were not identified as ­distinct
religions until the winds of change with the 1868 Meiji restauration imposed
laws separating the two traditions.3 In India, ‘Hinduism’ was ‘manufactured by
Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth century, who sought to impose a false

3 On the concept of ‘religion’ and its accommodation in Japan, see Josephson 2012 and Isomae
2014.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

132 Borup

conceptual unity on what was and continues to be an extraordinary diversity

of beliefs and practices’ (Sharot 2001, 5–6), consisting of ‘three Hindu religions
and four forms of Hindu religiosity, which can occur in all Hindu religions’
(Michaels 2003, 21).4 Identifying and constructing religions as distinct and
separate entities, each with their own foundations, doctrines, institutions and
identities, were part of the cultural curriculum of the colonised people. The
Bhagavad Gita was ‘canonised’ as an Indian counterpart to the Christian Bible
(Davis 2014), a ‘bibelisation’ having political impact also on present day ‘Hindu-
isation’ of Indian culture. Accommodating modernity and entering the select
representatives of ‘civilisation’ was one strategic way of integrating the notion
of ‘religion’ (shūkyō) (Isomae 2014, 27–37), a concept later imported via Japan
to China as zongjiao. It is fair to acknowledge that the often claimed assertion
that ‘religion’ and therefore also religious diversity in Asia was named, framed
and invented in a colonial context. For this reason, some scholars have found
it necessary to counterbalance such Orientalist conceptualisations and essen-
tialisms by relativising them and reclassifying them in their plural. There are
thus many Buddhisms, Hinduisms, Islams etc.
The importance of the political impact and hegemonic discourses of co-
lonialism should be recognised. Yet it is also necessary to go beyond postco-
lonial deconstruction theories and relativistic overkills. Fuzzy things such as
‘religion’ (and hence religions in the plural and thus religious diversities) apart
from being constructed, invented and imposed also did exist in some sense
even before they were named as such. Though not identical to ‘Western’ re-
ligion nor exactly suitable to fit concepts and categories developed Western
contexts, analytically constructed ideal types and comparisons across time
and space do point to usable, relational frameworks. It might not have been
called ‘religion’ and there might not have been an idea of separating ‘religion’
form ‘non-religion’ or one ‘religion’ from another ‘religion’, but what pragmati-
cally and analytically can be termed religion and religious diversity was also
existing in pre-modern, non-European societies. Diversification and relati-
visation in the name of post-colonial, post-Orientalist and multiculturalist
discourses themselves are relativistically promoting one specific side of a
complex scholarly field and gaze. Rather than over-emphasising differences
and ­incommensurable particularities, focusing on multifaceted processes in
a global perspective with also universalistic relevance is a relevant theoretical
framing opening up for cross-cultural comparison. Although Asian religions
are doctrinally and historically less mono-centric than monotheistic religions,

4 See Michaels’ complex model suited for Hinduism with his ’Identificatory Habitus’ (Michaels
2004, 334ff).

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 133

diversities have also been internally constitutive for religious traditions. Unity
and diversity as strategic tools and possible webs of meanings were also con-
stitutive for Asian religious history, within a series of oscillations between ho-
mogenisation and relativisation, unification and diversification.
Thus, acknowledging the necessity of contextualising the very notions of ‘re-
ligion’ and ‘religious diversity’ within a framework of Western hegemonic dis-
courses and consequentially relativising these within particularised research
agendas, it is also here claimed that religious diversity is and throughout much
of also Asian history has been a ‘social fact’ to be managed at different levels.
Models of manufacturing, managing and negotiating such diversities will thus
be the topic of the remaining part of this article.

Manufacturing and Managing Asian Diversities

James A. Beckford has identified three dimensions of ‘empirical religious di-

versity’, namely (1) distinct faith traditions, (2) diversity within distinct faith
traditions, and (3) diversity at individual level (beliefs and practices differing
from each individual and at different stages in life) suggesting these to be ‘a
priority for sociological research on religion’ (Beckford 2014, 22). Within the
framework of Asian religions (and Asian religions in the West) different in-
terpretative frames and strategies of unities and diversities both between and
within religions as well as at individual level can also be identified.5
The contextual parameters for such diversities are manifold. Political con-
texts have framed the concrete cases in which for instance Buddhism has been
favoured or persecuted in China and Japan, being either the emperors’ or gen-
erals’ darlings or enemies. In addition, the ideological environment enforcing
or negotiating multicultural coexistence is itself in a dialectical relation to the
discursive milieu constituting the frames for accommodating the different re-
ligions with their different teachings, practices and institutions. Historically,
the ‘harmony model’ has been one view of Asian religious history, the ‘con-
flict model’ being its complementary opposite. Buddhists and Hindus in India,
Buddhists, Confucianists and Daoists in China, and Buddhists and Shintoists
in Japan have, at times, embraced each other, but they have also fought and
sometimes even persecuted each other, when politically opportune. Reli-
gious pluralism is not the norm in Theravada Buddhist countries (Sri Lanka,

5 Within Theology and interreligious dialogue a conceoptual framework of responding to

­diversity has often been reflected upon through the typology inclusivism, exclusivism and
pluralism. On such ‘Theological’ types in early Pali canon Buddhism, see Velez de Cea 2013.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

134 Borup

­Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia), and in recent decades Hindu national-

ism has spread throughout the region. Naturally, differences in generation, gen-
der, social background and religious status further underline the relativism of a
given religion, legitimating the always important question: ‘whose ­religion?’ It
is fair to say that the notion of the Asian harmony and unity-in-diversity model
is both a typical characteristic of traditional religion and a modern invention,
rhetorically and strategically used by agents of specific ideologies.
First, the model of unity will be described followed by a discussion of the
strategic rhetoric behind such ideals. Second, the three different models of
diversity (exclusivism, hierarchy and evolution) will be analysed, before con-
cluding remarks on how to further study such unities and diversities. Whereas
such models of managing unity and diversity has traditionally been used in
theological discussions, these will be analysed here in also social, political and
discursive contexts.

Unity and Pluralism as Religious Ideals

There is good reason to go beyond essentialised versions of ‘a religion’. Differ-

entiating agency (e.g. lay/elite, young/old), religiosity (e.g. ‘nibbanic’/‘kammat
ic’/‘apotropaic’), or social strata (e.g. castes) explicates the internal division of
also ‘Buddhism’, ‘Hinduism’ or other constructed categories. However, going
beyond differentiation models (e.g. Buddhism vs Hinduism, ‘High Buddhism’
vs ‘Folk Buddhism’, ‘Great Tradition’ vs ‘Little Tradition’, official vs unofficial
religion, elite vs popular religion) also transgresses essentialist ideas of textu-
alised, coherent and diversified units of religions, often canonised by a ‘Prot-
estant’ research agenda or by emic discourses with interests in distinguishing
true elite religion from false religion of the masses. A more ‘holistic’ approach
will thus also underline the fact that lived religion is a more complex and fuzzy
field. There is very often an overlap between the religiosity of the elite and the
lay practitioner, both being part of what Tambiah in a Thai context called a
total ‘single field’ (Tambiah 1970) and Tanabe and Reader in a Japanese context
termed ‘common religion’ (Tanabe and Reader 1998). This is generally true for
much lived Buddhism, where such distinction of ‘high’ Buddhism and ‘low’
popular religion ‘is unlikely to be made with any clarity among the majority
of village monks and laypeople’ (Sharot 2001, 134), as it is for the majority of
Chinese who participate in ‘syncretistic amalgams of Confucianism, Taoism,
Buddhism, as well as additional elements that cannot be linked to the three
major traditions’ (ibid, 70), since ‘Chinese religion has a unity that transcends
the variety among religions and strata’ (ibid, 71). The position of t­ ranscending

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 135

particularism is also a prescribed ideal of much lived religion, also in Asia,

where holistic cosmologies and anthropologies are often the ideal. The classic
South Asian myth about an elephant and a group of blind men has been used
as a metaphor by both Buddhists, Jains and Hindus to describe the existence
of absolute and universal truth (the elephant), the blind men representing the
limited insights of human beings only being able to experience and under-
stand parts of this truth.
In classical Buddhist literature, such universalising hermeneutics is seen
not least in Mahayana Buddhism with ideas of an all-encompassing Buddha
nature, in the idea of ‘one Buddhism’ (ekayana), in the upaya idea of skillful
means and consequently an ‘open canon’, in the notion of the ‘two truths’ (ab-
solute and relative), in the idea of the threefold Buddha (trikaya), and in the
idea of Indra’s net symbolising the connectedness of everything, all of which
point to transcendental unity behind diverse manifestations, not unlike Daoist
cosmologies in classical China. An illustrative metaphor for a radical syncretic
system is the Japanese 18th century lay preacher Ninomiya’s ‘pill’: all ingredi-
ents (Buddhism, Shinto and Confucianism) need to be all mixed up to have
full strength, and the pill is so thoroughly blended, that individual parts are
not recognised as such. The whole is thus larger than the sum of its parts, and
from a typical user’s perspective, there are no essential differences in ritual
logic, iconographic content or theology/mythology. Prince Shotoku already in
the 6th century used a metaphor to illustrate the same holistic idea, with the
moral that a tripod (signifying the three religions) can only stand if all three
legs are intact. Kuroda has been inscribed into the canon of scholarship on
Japanese religion by his claim that the idea of Shinto-Buddhism differentiation
and the ideas of disparate Buddhist sects are mainly modern inventions, based
on sectarian and teleological history writing (Dobbins 2004). Full syncretism,
where local Shinto deities were seen as manifestations of Buddhist deities (or
vice versa) was the norm in most of the medieval period, and very often part of
individual Japanese’ religiosity today. This is also the case in other South Asian
contexts, where symbols are often identical or overlapping. Such ‘reciprocal
inclusivism’ (Schmidt-Leukel 2008, 154) is thus seen when Hindu deities are
interpreted by Buddhists as Bodhisattvas, and Buddha is seen by Hindus as
an avatar of Vishnu, and the ‘considerable mutual influence’ between the two
religions relate to also doctrines and practices within Mahayana, Tantra, Yoga
(ibid, 156ff). While it might be inappropriate to call it syncretism per se, also
Nepalese religion is characteristic of ‘a mature synthesis of elements of heter-
ogenous origin’ (Gellner 2001, 326).
In contemporary Buddhism, transgressing diversity and relativity is often an
ideal pointing to an absolute understanding and experience of true, u ­ niversal

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

136 Borup

spirituality. Soka Gakkai is one group legitimating itself through universal-

ism and trans-ethnicity, and many practicing Buddhists in the West will see
syncretic ideas and practices (e.g. being nominally a Christian or Jew, but a
practicing Buddhist) as an argument in itself, pointing beyond institutional
and doctrinal constraints in order to get to ‘the essence’. The often overlap-
ping fields of Buddhism and New Age religions find doctrinal legitimacy in
for instance the Kalama Sutra claiming not to blindly believe and follow reli-
gious doctrines, consequently both dharma hopping and dharma shopping are
part of the game: the truth is accessible to all, but it needs to be sought a­ fter,
­according to diverse levels and types of flavours of comprehension. When the
Dalai Lama speaks of trans-religious spirituality beyond the limitations of
even ­Buddhism, he might be giving contemporary voice to such perennialist
versions of modern and transnational Buddhism and generally to post-secular
individualised religiosity.

Strategic Universalisation of Particularism

Ascribing unity to a diverse social field can also be revealed as a macro-level

controlling strategy, disguised as inclusivism. Denying religious, cultural, racial
and ethnic diversity is a means of manufacturing monolithic authority, and
the self-legitimacy of political regimes through sacralisation has been known
throughout history, not least in Christian and Muslim cultures, where religious
monopoly has often been the norm, even when theoretically or rhetorically ac-
cepting varied versions of religious diversity. Countries where Islam is the state
or majority religion often have severe restrictions, limited religious freedom
and sometimes death penalties for apostasy. Even in a country like Malaysia,
where religious freedom in enshrined in the constitution, apostasy is illegal
in several states and persecution of non-Muslims has been occuring for years.
Domesticating Tibetan Buddhism and demonising Falun Gong is an example
of Chinese means of politically governing religious diversity. While officially
guaranteeing religious freedom, in practice religions in ‘oligopoly’ (where the
state allows the practice of a few select religions) China have been restricted
and banned (Yang 2014, 54).
Combining soft version of religious inclusivism (religious diversity as alter-
native paths to the same truths) with politics of controlling diversities is often
accomplished by ‘domesticating’ the others. Pluralisation can thus also be a
political statement giving missionary legitimacy, whether manifested as super-
imposition, appropriation or repression (Sharot 2001 65). This was probably
the strategy of emperor Ashoka in India as it was later in the Buddhification

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 137

process of the first Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Tibet, where local cults were
subsumed in a presumably holistic unity. Such ‘rhetorics of religious plural-
ism, in which religions are regarded as equal, while interpreting non-Buddhist
religions in a manner that imposes Buddhist concepts on them’ (Burton 2011,
333) has been seen also in Burma, where Buddhism, as a discursive strategy
of culturalising religion, by leading proponents is seen as quintessential Bur-
meseness, thereby rendering other religions suspicious, or even barbaric. This
was also the strategy in the militarisation of Japan in the 1930s, where Shinto
was heavily politicised and by the government conceptualised not as (only a)
religion but quintessentially as Japanese culture. Today, conversion and pros-
elytisation are not permitted in Nepal, where forced Hinduisation is often the
outcome of state-encouraged self-identification as Hindu, rather than Bud-
dhist (Levine & Gellner 2005, 32). In India he political party Bharatiya Janata
Party (Indian People’s Party, bjp) is an illustrative example of such politicised,
nationalised essentialism, confining true Indianness to the notion of Hindu-
ism (or ‘Hinduness’, Hindutva),6 and the traditional Chinese elites’ ‘Confuzian-
isation’ process of manufacturing religious diversity could be seen reviewed
in contemporary China and East Asia (Yang and Tamney 2011). In Taiwan and
Southeast China multiple participation in community festivals was expected
(and enforced) as an expression of community solidarity’ (Berling 2013, 33) and
refusing to participate was a sign of ‘serious break with the community’ where
‘nonparticipants would be mocked and scorned by their neighbors’ (ibid.).
Religious truth as universal and ‘objective’ is often agreed upon (in both
Asian and Western contexts), but the position of whom to represent this is
often a matter of sectarian strife.7 Ideals of unity as lived religion can thus also
be ‘revealed’ as expressions of particularism and sectarianism, also behind the
idealised versions of Asian ‘harmony models’. Mutual inclusivism thus often
has exclusivistic overtones (Schmidt-Leukel 2008, 156), and unity is often a
strategic cover for taming or suppressing fuzzy and dangerous diversity. Also
‘statements about Chinese religious diversity have to be analysed in terms of

6 ‘This is a geographical, genealogical, and religious definition with an adroit solution: Sikhs,
Jains and Indian (more precisely, South Asian) Buddhists are Hindus, but not Christians, Mus-
lims, or other Buddhists, for whom either Bharatavarsha is neither a fatherland (Westerners
and East Asian Buddhists) nor a holy land (Christians and Muslims). (Michaels 2003, 14).
7 This is typically illustrated in Tibetan Buddhism when a new lama is to be recognised, or
when in the West a Buddhist group by tradition (and media narratives) is positioned as the
Buddhism, until alternative narratives unfold such claims. An even more illustrative example
is the field of Islam during the ‘Muhammad crisis’, in which the politicised discourse and
practice of representing ‘Islam’ was performed in a tangled web of different kinds of Mus-
lims, media, politicians and citizens.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

138 Borup

rhtoric and power’ (Berling 2013, 31). Spivak termed the strategy of represent-
ing a common identity behind actual differences (and rhetorically neutralizing
these) in achieving a political goal ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak 1990). Such
strategic essentialism can be said to be behind also religious strategies in man-
aging religious diversity, where a part is enlarged to represent the whole.

Diversity as Religious Ideals

Claiming universality and unity in diversity is one mode of hermeneutical

ideal of some Asian religious discourses. Another is the opposite position,
denying unification and stressing diversity as an ideal. At macro level this is
often the ideal of multicultural societies in which cultural relativity and reli-
gious diversity are the basic norms as opposed to mono-cultural and mono-
religious models of society. Thus, multi-religiosity is also the ideal in countries
like Canada and Australia, and in Hawaii the notion of ‘rainbow of cultures’ to
a large extent also is representative for the multiplicity of religions, also inter-
nally among a diversity of Buddhisms (Borup 2013). At the institutional level,
particularisation is often seen as a means of stressing distinct truth claims, not
least in Western democratic and multicultural societies, with a view to com-
peting on the religious market or to frame practice and identity as ‘religious’ in
order to gain recognition and access to special rights. At individual level, ‘Shei-
laism’ is still a fine metaphor to illustrate the widespread, almost standardised
insistence on particular uniqueness mainly in the modern West. Another way
of categorising such diversity ideals is by typologising religious hermeneutics
in three themes: exclusivism, hierarchisation and evolution.

Exclusivism

Exclusivist positions manufacture diversity as a normative basis of identifica-

tion through difference and ‘othering’. ‘Most historians have found that the
majority experience their own faith and practice as superior to all others, while
others must be kept at a distance’ (Marty 2011, 11). Hence, Buddhists became
Buddhists as opposed to ‘Hindus’ just like Christians became Christians by ne-
gating ‘Judaism’, each basing ideology and legitimating political suppression by
a dichotomy between the saved and the unsaved. The ‘inclusivism’ of Hinduism
is often accompanied by ‘exclusivism toward other religions’ with some ‘spuri-
ous and intolerant features’ (Sharot 2001, 103). Demonising ­non-Christian oth-
erness was very much part of the early study of religion, in response to which

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 139

neo-Hindus and neo-Buddhists in the late 19th century found common ground
against ‘Western’ monotheistic religions and colonial powers (see below).
In contemporary times, such ‘othering’ via religion and culture is often seen
emerging in conflict situations. Ethnic and religious difference was invented
and constructed in India, Yugoslavia and Rwanda by being politicised as tools
of differentiation (Sen 2006), just like the 1970s strategic culturalism of ‘African
values’ or the 1980s ‘Asian values’ were promoted and celebrated as signs of
exclusivistic identity. The same kind of invention of uniqueness was rehearsed
in the 1990s when religious identity was invoked by Hindus in the uk universi-
ties to promote Hindu unity, linking identity politics by creating a more cul-
tural version of Hinduism (Mitchell 2006, 1146); or more recently when the
oic (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) claimed particular Muslim rights
across nations against ‘Western values’ (such as democracy or equal rights). In
post-colonial Sri Lankan history, religion has been staged as an ethnic marker,
or vice versa ethnicity, nationality and language as religious markers. Just like
the ‘Hinduisation’ of India in nationalist discourses have huge impact on the
freedom to act for non-Hindus, Buddhism in Sri Lanka has been the trademark
of ‘Srilankanness’, being a common denominator with which to unite against
non-Buddhists (Tamils and more recently Muslims) (Tambiah 1992). Gener-
ally, ‘a dialogue between Hinduism and Buddhism has not yet really developed’
(Schmidt-Leukel 2008, 161).
A new diversity has also been framed by globalisation, migration and indi-
vidualisation. In the West, never before have so many religions co-existed in
one place. New questions are being asked and new complexes such as multi-
religious/multiethnic communities in hitherto less diverse cultures also force
diaspora religious diversities to be more clear-cut in marketing their identity
by ethnic and religious boundaries. Cultural or religious segregation can be
one acculturation strategy with a ‘defensive solidarity against discrimina-
tion’ (Breton 2012, 32). Competition for managing authentic ‘Vietnameseness’,
‘Indianness’ or ‘Koreanness’ can be another identity and authority criterion
for diaspora religion in ways which it never was in the past.8 Apart from re-
forming and re-inventing ethno-religious identity, exclusivism (and strategic
identity narration) in migrating to the Christian West (especially the usa)
has also been expressed by conversion to the majority religion. In Northern
­Europe, where religion is less often an identity factor and multiculturalism is
still in its infancy, more diversity does not necessarily produce more pluralism.
In Denmark, interreligious interaction is not mainstream, and ethnicity is still

8 See Kurien 2001 and Min 2005 for examples of Indian and Korean immigrants to America
negotiating balances of religion and ethnicity.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

140 Borup

an important dividing line in each religion (Ahlin et al 2012). The existence

of the ‘two Buddhisms’ (those of immigrants and that of ethnic ‘white’ con-
verts) throughout much of the Western world is a division based on the fact
that the religion in one sense might be global and universalistic, but due to
apparently non-transferable religious narratives and cultures also differenti-
ated along cultural and ethnic lines (ibid, Borup 2013). Soka Gakkai is another
illustrative example of a religious group claiming to be both universalist and
trans-ethnic and yet insisting on exclusivist differentiation from all traditional
temple ­Buddhism, the latter on the other hand pointing fingers at Soka Gakkai
for being either a new religious movement (hence not Buddhism) or a black
sheep of the family (hence non-authentic Buddhism).
The Buddhist version of the elephant and the blind men story can be seen
as an expression of such exclusivist hermeneutics, where the file of blind
men (Brahmins) holding on to the man in front, all led by another blind man
(also a Brahmin) are all different from the enlightened ‘God’s eye view’ see-
ing the whole elephant in its clear, coherent reality. The exclusivist position
in m­ anaging diversity is thus to divide true from false, real from fake, centre
from periphery, even if revisionist history writing or invention of traditions
and identity narratives are necessary.

Hierarchy

Dichotomic either-or differentiations are typically aimed at solidifying religion

against non-religion or a specific religion against other religions. More-less
differentiations are typically found within religious traditions or in modern
trans-religious movements (such as the Theosophical Society) in which ema-
nations from the core are seen in graded terms. Hierarchies are also framed
within sectarian discourses of authenticity. In this light, Mahayana Buddhist
hermeneutics of unitarism, claiming to go beyond differences, mediations and
particular positions, is also based on hierarchy, differentiation and privileged
positions. Buddha knows all, only the blind men keep on touching parts of the
elephant. The Chinese classificatory system of teachings, panjiao, as developed
by the 6th Century monk Zhiyi explaining and explicating their differences
are illustrative for this. The different Buddhist schools were placed in a hier-
archy corresponding to their teachings, naturally based on Zhiyi’s own school
(Tiantai, later transferred to Japan as Tendai) as the foremost representation
of truth. Such hiararchisation was also adopted by the 9th Century Japanese
monk Kobo Daishi, whose esoteric Buddhism and its institutionalised version
in the Shingon school were placed in top against exoteric teachings. The Zen

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 141

schools staged themselves beyond such schemes by claiming to point directly

to truth without any scriptures, thus transcending the hermeneutical system
by transgressing it.9
Sociologically, the Hindu and Buddhist ‘two-tier model’ of elites and non-
elites (Brahmins and Buddhist monks versus lay people) points to the rel-
evance of acknowledging stratified kinds of religiosity and power relations.
Differentiation between world negation and world affirmation, between
soteriology and thaumaturgy, between virtuosi and householders underlie
these religious systems just like social facts constituting traditions based on
hierarchy, not least manifested in the varna system in India. Subdivisions of
both agency and religiosity types appear naturally, and hybrids and overlaps
are widespread in certain traditions in particular. The Buddhist sangha and
the Brahmin householder system – in all their different manifestations – are
based on symbiotic interactions and dialectics between different agents and
practices. Such interactions may be characterised by processes (e.g. lay people
entering monastic life periodically), transactions (gift giving) or the division
of labour between religions. The latter is especially significant in Japan, but
also in South Asia where the accommodation of ‘Great Traditions’ and ‘Little
Traditions’ often have an explicit division of the Buddhist way and the local,
spirit tradition, even though these may be compartmentally integrated in the
individual’s own religious practice. Alternatively, such divisions may develop
as transformations or circulations, either from the top down (i.e. theologisa-
tion, Sanskritisation, Christianisation, Buddhification) or from the bottom up
(parochialisation, domestication, rationalisation of folk religion), the main
challenge to such systems having not been diversity but the challenges of mo-
dernity and individualisation.

Evolution

‘Overcoming modernity’ was the name of a symposium held in Japan 1942 to

justify imperialism by demonising ‘Western’ modernity. Not only Shinto but
also Buddhism were used in nationalist discourses and actual war actions.
Besides being merely brute politics, such examples of politicised religion also
point to a differential logic of evolution. Cultural evolution based on inverted
social Darwinism was one means of coping with modernity in Asia. Just as
Christian theologians could justify supremacy in the past by referring to the

9 See Swanson 1998 on such Chinese (and East Asian Buddhist) classifications.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

142 Borup

‘inferior nature of other religions’ (Paden 1994, 22), some post-colonial reli-
gious revivalists could reverse the model by claiming advanced scientification
and spiritualisation to justify the position of developed stages of the religious
ladder. This was both the strategy and religious worldview of neo-Hindus like
Vivekananda, whose transformation of his own gurus’ teachings were based
on and yet constructed as opposed to Western religious and political hegemo-
ny, just like ‘subaltern peoples appropriated hegemonic colonial discourse for
their own ends in the struggle for freedom’ (Fitzgerald 2007, 7). The same rheto­
ric was used in Sri Lanka by Vivekananda’s Buddhist counterpart, Anagarika
Dharmapala. Transforming traditional Buddhism into a modern reform Bud-
dhism for the intellectual urban elite was part of the nationalist project against
hegemonic suppression by reversing Orientalist stereotypes, and thus turning
the evolutionary ladder upside down. In Japan, such efforts were successfully
used by D.T. Suzuki, whose interpretation of Zen as on the one hand was seen
as a universal ‘essence’ and yet quintessentially Japanese, being the cherry on
the cake in Buddhist evolution and world religious history. Especially in the
1980s, the idea of using also religious arguments in proclaiming Japanese cul-
turalism (nihonjinron, ‘theory of the Japanese’) has been a kind of civil religion,
using religious diversity as an argument for cultural evolution as well.
Evolutionary models are also used in the contemporary West to legitimate
intra-religious positions of authority. While Theravada groups identify them-
selves as foundational ‘pure Buddhism’, more or less explicitly downplaying
the degradation of later schools, Vajrayana schools often use the hermeneutics
of cumulative teachings (from ‘Hinayana’ through Mahayana and Vajrayana;
from the ‘first turning of the wheel’ to the second and third turning of the
wheel) to promote the idea of being at the top of evolution. With modernity
also alternative readings of Buddhism have questioned traditional religiosity,
also in Nepal where ‘Newar Buddhism is condemned by western-educated,
self-appointed spokesmen’ (Gellner 2001, 330). Amongst young second- and
third-generation immigrants, the re-orientation of formerly transmitted cul-
tural and religious values and traditions is often seen in an evolutionary per-
spective. Parents’ culture religiosity, with its mixture of religion, ethnicity and
culture, is often opposed by an allegedly more authentic, universal and indi-
vidualised spirituality. Such ‘pristinization’ (Breton 2012,13) in which religion
and culture is separated in favour of universal truths and de-ethnified narra-
tives are seen generally in Western versions of Asian religions, where authority
claims through authenticity ideals and personal self-development is the para-
digm of practice. Individual experience rather than institutionally transmitted
tradition is the narrative explaining and legitimating religious diversity in the
market, also for the  spiritualised and individualised Euro-American convert

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 143

Buddhist, who typically will narrate himself more authentic than the cultural
Buddhism of Asian immigrants.

Conclusion: Methodological Challenges

The above analysis and discussion of religious diversities in Asia (and Asian
traditions globally) point to both the problematic embeddedness in Western
discourses and to concrete examples as empirical facts showing diverse ways
of managing and negotiating unity/diversity models.
Studying religious diversities is first of all a matter of perspective: we need to
decide which optics to look through, what to look for, and why. The focus can
be on different kinds of diversities (religions, traditions, religiosities, ethnici-
ties, agencies etc.), and the gaze can be on centrifugal (diversity) or centripetal
(pluralism) forces at different levels (micro, meso, macro) of society in different
times and cultures. The examples given above show the relevance of having
different perspectives regarding religious identity and practice.
Studying religion is also a matter of performativity. The examples above
show that religious traditions themselves have hermeneutical, ideological
and sometimes political interests in framing religious unity and/or diversity.
Strategic essentialisation creates religion as invented traditions, and strategic
diversification can be part of the game. It is a methodological challenge for
scholars to unveil such hidden agendas, strategies and discourses. Not least the
question of representation needs to be addressed when religious and cultural
diversity is negotiated. We have to ask on whose behalf are the claim-­makers
speaking, which groups do they represent, and how and why is a­ uthority
distributed and managed? To what extent are scholars (and politicians, the
media) captured by insider categories and seduced by authenticity-dressed,
strategic claims? Sometimes ‘Islamophobia’ is actually just a question of legiti-
mate, critical scholarship, and sometimes it is necessary to underline the fact
that Hindu and Buddhist nationalism is also religion (rather than just some-
thing else). Sometimes it is perfectly legitimate to insist on seeing so-called
authentic traditions and truth-claims as ‘merely’ invented traditions. As dis-
cussed above, sometimes discourses of religious diversities or unities can be
revealed as strategic means of identity and/or power formation.
But the causality can also be reversed. The scholar also has a performa-
tive impact on the religious traditions themselves. It has become common
knowledge that language is also practice and scholarly conceptualisations and
­categorisations are also illocutionary speech acts which have an actual impact.
Naming what is considered a religion and what is considered not a religion is

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

144 Borup

not a neutral act. Description is also prescription, and mapping the religious
worlds is also part of manufacturing them. Framing religious pluralism and
multiculturalism can itself be part of ideological statements helping to guard
against majority cultural/religious hegemony, but also to produce more ­religion
and religious diversity. Are scholars taming or celebrating religious diversity,
and which impact does the multicultural turn in academia have on multicul-
tural reality itself? Does the increased study of religious diversity itself have
a religionising effect? We could ask ourselves: what if there is no elephant?10
The easy answer of course is: it does not matter! We are not here to reveal con-
structions and political games behind religion, but to acknowledge that claim-
ing religious truths and manufacturing religious diversity is itself religion. The
more problematic answer would probably need sophisticated Mahayana Bud-
dhist philosophical juggling to cover the fact that we are indeed all part of the
elephant game.

References

Ahlin, L. and J. Borup 2013. ‘Konklusion.’ In Religion i Aarhus. En kortlægning af reli-

gion og spiritualitet, edited by L. Ahlin, J. Borup, M.Q. Fibiger, B. Jacobsen and M.V.
Nielsen. http://samtidsreligion.au.dk/religion-i-aarhus-2013/konklusion/ (accessed
March 12, 2015).
Ammerman, N.T. 2003. ‘Religious identities and religious institutions.’ In Handbook of
the sociology of religion, edited by M. Dillon, 207–224. New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Bauman, Z. 1996. ‘From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity.’ In Questions
of Cultural Identity, edited by S. Hall and P. du, 18–36. London: Sage.
Beckford, J.A. 2014. ‘Re-thinking religious pluralism.’ In Religious Pluralism. Framing Re-
ligious Diversity in the Contemporary World, edited by G. Giordan and E. Pace, 15–29.
Berlin: Springer.
Beckford, James A. 2003. Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Berling, J. 2013. ‘Why Chinese Thought on Relgious Diversity is Important.’ In Religious
Diversity in Chinese Thought, edited by P. Schmidt-Leukel and J. Gentz, 27–38. New
York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 27–38.
Beyer, P. 2011. ‘Religious Diversity and Globalization.’ In The Oxford Handbook of
R
­ eligious Diversity, edited by C.V. Meister, 185–200. New York: Oxford University
Press.

10 This rhetorical question is taken from the title of an article by Cook, Laidlaw and Mair
(2009), who question the assumption that multisited research can reveal ’hidden truths’
of an alleged, implicit holistic system.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

Asian Religious Unities and Diversities 145

Borup, J. 2013. ‘Aloha Buddha – the secularization of ethnic Japanese-American Bud-

dhism.’ Journal of Global Buddhism 14: 23–43.
Borup, J. 2016. ‘Who are these Buddhists, and how many? Theoretical and method-
ological challenges in counting immigrant Buddhists – a Danish case study’ Journal
of Contemporary Religion 31(1): 85–100.
Breton, R. 2012. Different Gods. Integrating Non-Christian Minorities into a Primarily
Christian Society. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Burton, D. 2011. ‘A Budhist perspective.’ In The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity,
edited by C.V. Meister, 321–336. New York: Oxford University.
CARD litterature database https://www.zotero.org/groups/276914.
Cook, J., J. Laidlaw and J. Mair. 2009. ‘What if there is no elephant? Towards a concep-
tion of an un-sited field.’ In Multi-Sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in
Contemporary Social Research, edited by M. Falzon, 47–72. Farnhem: Ashgate.
Davis, R. 2014. The Bhagavad Gita. A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Dillon, M. 2011. ‘A Sociological Approach to Questions of Religious Diversity.’ In The Ox-
ford Handbook of Religious Diversity, edited by C. Meister, 42–56. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Dobbins, J.C. 2004. ‘Exoteric-esoteric (kenmitsu) Buddhism in Japan.’ In Encyclopedia
Buddhism, edited by Robert Buswell, 271–275. Farmington Hills: Thomson/Gale.
Earhart, B. 1969. Japanese Religion, Unity and Diversity. Encino: Dickenson Publishing
Company.
Fitzgerald, T. ed. 2007. Religion and the Secular. Historical and Colonial Formations. Lon-
don and Oakville: Equinox.
Gellner, D.N. 2001. The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Iannaccone, L.R. 1995. ‘Risk, rationality, and religious portfolios‘ Economic Inquiry 38(2):
285–295.
Isomae, J. 2014. Religious Discourse in Modern Japan. Religion, State and Shinto. Leiden:
Brill.
Josephson, J.A. 2012. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: Uni. of Chicago
Press.
Kurien, P. 2001. ‘Religion, ethnicity and politics: Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrants
in the United States’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(2): 263–293.
LeVine, S. and D.N. Gellner. 2005. Rebuilding Buddhism: TheTheravada movement
in Twentieth-Century Nepal. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard
University.
Marty, M.E. 2011. ‘Historical Reflections on Religious Diversity.’ In The Oxford Hand-
book of Religious Diversity, edited by C. Meister, 9–20. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Michaels, A. 2004. Hinduism, Past and Present (tr. B. Harshav). Princeton: Princeton
University Press.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

 146 Borup

Min, P.G. 2005. ‘Religion and the Maintenance of Ethnicity among Immigrants: A Com-
parison of Indian Hindus and Korean Protestants.’ In Immigrant Faiths: Transform-
ing Religious Life in America, edited by K.L. Leonard, A. Stepick, M.A. Vásquez, and
J. Holdaway, 99–122. Lanham: Alta Mira Press.
Mitchell, C. 2006. ‘The Religious Content of Ethnic Identities’ Sociology 40(6): 1135–1151.
Oberhammer, G. ed. 1983. Inklusivismus: Eine indische Denkform. Vienna: De Nobili
Research Library.
Paden, W.E. 1994. Religious Worlds. The Comparative Study of Religion. Boston: Beacon
Press.
PEW Forum 2012. Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths. http://www.pewforum.org/
2012/07/19/asian-americans-a-mosaic-of-faiths-overview (accessed May 2, 2018).
PEW Forum 2014. Global Religious Diversity. http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/
global-religious-diversity/ (accessed March 12, 2015).
Reader, I. and G.J. Tanabe Jr. 1998. Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Com-
mon Religion of Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Schmidt-Leukel, P. (ed.) 2008. Buddhist Attitudes to other Religions. St. Ottilien: EOS.
Sen, A. 2006. Identity and Violence; The Illusion of Destiny. New York: Penguin Books.
Sharot, S. 2001. A Comparative Sociology of World Religions. Virtuosi, Priests, and Popular
Religion. New York: New York Press.
Spivak, C.G. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York:
Routledge.
Swanson, P. 1998. ‘Apocryphical Texts in Chinese Buddhism: T’ien –t’ai Chih-i’s Use of
Apocryphycal Scriptures‘ In Canonization and Decanonization, edited by Van der
Kooij & K. Van der Toorn, 245–255. Leiden: Brill.
Tambiah, S.J. 1970. Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge
University Press.
Tambiah, S.J. 1992. Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics and Violence in Sri Lanka.
­Chicago & London: Chicago University Press.
Velez de Cea, J.A. 2013. The Buddha and Religious Diversity. London and New York:
Routledge.
Weller, R.P. 1987. Unities and Diversities in Chinese Religion. Seattle: University of Wash-
ington Press.
Yang, F. and J. Tamney eds. 2011. Confucianism and Spiritual Traditions in Modern China
and Beyond. Brill Academic Publishers.

For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV

View publication stats