Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (JISASR). Vol. 3, Issue 1, (2016)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/3788
Special Issue: Festschrift in Honour of Professor Brian Bocking

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    ASR and RE
    (ISASR in association with the Study of Religions, University College Cork., 2016) Jensen, Tim
    As a university discipline, the academic study of religions (ASR) has produced a critical approach to the study of religion which is (or ought be), I think, of fundamental importance for a modern secular and enlightened democratic state. However, the "study-of-religions" approach has percolated with limited success into society at large as well as into the primary and secondary educational systems of Western democracies. Too often so-called religious education (RE) really is religious or confessional, and even so-called non-confessional RE is, mostly if not always, mixed with crypto-confessional approaches, inculcation of moral values (not least those claimed to be Christian) and the promoting of religion as a resource for a more "spiritual" approach to life. While these goals may be in line with the traditional use of the public school as the key instrument of the (nation-) state to try to confer its ideology to (future) citizens, it is not compatible with the ideals of the academic study of religion, nor with the ideals and ideas of the present writer as regards the secular, study-of religions based RE that I think ought be taught in public schools as a totally ordinary school subject and as such also true to its scientific basis. In what follows I map and evaluate some of the many approaches to RE as well as some of the obstacles to a study-of-religions approach. Likewise, I ever so briefly argue why my approach to RE may be seen as a 'natural' and 'good' kind of 'applied ASR ', as an obvious way to promote and strengthen the academic study of religions, --and as a positive value to the open, democratic and pluralistic society. I begin, however, with a statement by Prof. Brian Bocking, quoted in part below, which admirably describes the components and characteristics of the academic study of religions - and by extension - of a study-of- religions based RE.
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    All too human: the impact of international Buddhist networks on the life and posthumous conviction of the Burmese nationalist monk, Shin Ukkaá¹­á¹­ha (1897-1978)
    (ISASR in association with the Study of Religions, University College Cork, 2016) Crosby, Kate; Ashin, Janaka
    This article examines how the Buddhist, interfaith and nationalist networks centred on India in the first half of the 20th-century influenced the Burmese monk Shin Ukkaṭṭha. On his return to Burma in 1929, after seven years' travel, study and debate in India, Shin Ukkaṭṭha expressed his Buddhist nationalism by opening a Buddhist Mission school to combine Buddhist and secular learning and by publishing Buddhist tracts and works, including a bestselling work on comparative religion. He won an important Christian-Buddhist debate in 1936 which, widely reported in the national press, inspired many to convert back to Buddhism. Part of his success was due to his relativistic attitudes to texts. He was willing to dismiss as later fabrication parts of the Buddhist canon if they ran counter to current scientific thinking. Like other Buddhists influenced by Theosophy, he dismissed traditional cosmology and reinterpreted rebirth in line with Darwinian evolutionary theory. His stance ran counter to the Buddhist Sangha hierarchy, which regarded an anti-secular, fundamentalist as the best defence against the corruptions of colonialism. Under the British, the lack of a central Buddhist authority gave Shin Ukkaṭṭha the freedom to express his views. However, after Independence, he increasingly found himself at odds with the Sangha hierarchy, which he roundly insulted as naïve when he walked out on the Sixth Council citing its uncritical approach to the canonical texts as his reason. So significant was his challenge to authority, that in 1981 the State Sangha Leaders Committee set up under General Ne Win to try miscreant monks, selected Shin Ukkaṭṭha as the second case. The court found him guilty of heresy - posthumously, for Shin Ukkaṭṭha had died three years earlier.
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    Editorial [vol. 3]
    (ISASR in association with the Study of Religions, University College Cork., 2016) Butler, Jenny; Shanneik, Yafa; Kapalό, James A.
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    Michael Pye, translating drunk - and Stark Naked: problems in presenting eighteenth century Japanese thought
    (ISASR in association with the Study of Religions, University College Cork, 2016) Barrett, Tim H.
    In 1990 Michael Pye published a full translation of the writings of the Japanese scholar Tominaga Nakamoto (1715-1746), to which I responded in a 1993 review illustrating a possible alternative approach by retranslating one chapter. In 1997 Michael Pye defended his original work. Here I show that this defence misunderstands at least some of the rationale for suggesting an alternative translation method, and provide a short passage of translation with commentary from Hattori Somon (1724-1769), a very similar but much less wellknown scholar, in order both to introduce his thought and to illustrate further the translation method I prefer. Finally some broader questions about the interpretation of Japanese eighteenth century thought are briefly indicated.
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    Brian Bocking and the defence of study of religions as an academic discipline in universities and schools
    (ISASR in association with the Study of Religions, University College Cork., 2016) Cush, Denise; Robinson, Catherine
    In this article we will explore the contribution made by Brian to establishing and defending study of religions as a discipline in its own right and argue for the importance of a holistic and polymethodic approach to studying religions as the most appropriate way forward for programmes for undergraduates at university and students in schools. We will include the major contributions made by Brian in the institutions in which he has taught, with particular attention to our own Bath Spa University. The title "study of religions" - contributed by a student of Brian's - implies something about both content and methodology as well as his attitude towards students as co-participants and potential colleagues. The content is determinedly plural, acknowledging the diversity of religious (and perhaps non-religious) worldviews in the contemporary world. The approach is open and non-confessional, a study rather than endorsement or refutation of the claims of religions. The methods of study are multiple, prioritising neither textual and historical, nor philosophical or theological, nor social scientific approaches. Following in a tradition associated with the name of Ninian Smart among others, we argue that an understanding of religions can only be gained by seeing the relationship between theory and practice, text and context and official doctrines and vernacular custom. Hence Brian and Bath Spa continued to be committed to our students being exposed both to primary texts and direct encounters with living religious communities. Moreover, these polymethodic studies should be undertaken from a global rather than narrowly "Western" perspective, building upon Brian's own specialism in Japanese Buddhism and entrepreneurial international links.