Not to Compel, but to Conjure: the Bible and pluralism
“Governments and revolutionaries would compel society to take on the shape of their imagining, whereas poets are typically more concerned to conjure with their own and their readers’ sense of what is possible or desirable, or, indeed, imaginable.”
In 2011, I was involved in preparing the final report for a three-year research project, funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Its central concern was to re-articulate the classical ecumenical project in light of the inter-cultural, multi-religious and secularising context of contemporary Ireland. From the outset, what became clear was the need to revise the traditional focus of ecumenism within the wider intercultural, inter-religious and public interfaces of theology, a task which is trans-disciplinary and at once theological, political, and cultural. Whereas traditional ecumenism, on this island, arose out of a need to engage with the politics of sectarianism, and Catholic/Protestant divisions which are both social and religious, it is now clear that contemporary theology, in socially plural contexts, should be woven into a broader canvas, one which acknowledges the values and practices of faith groups other than Christian, and the voices of those who describe themselves as atheist, humanist or agnostic.* Full article available in printed copies.
Celia G Kenny
A Church of Scotland minister, currently Research Assistant in Trinity College Dublin and Research Associate at the Centre for Law and Religion, Law School, Cardiff University.