How Should We Talk About Religion? Inwardness, Particularity, and Translation (Occasional Papers of the Erasmus Institute: 2001 Series, Number 1)

In this wide-ranging and timely volume, fourteen scholars address the important question, How should we talk about religion, whether our own or the religion of others? They confront such fundamental topics as the sufficiency of "reason" for a full life; the adequacy of our methods of describing and analyzing religion; the degree to which any serious confrontation with the religious experiences of others will challenge our own; and whether there can be a pluralism that does not dissolve into universal relativism.

Writing from a diversity of perspectives and academic disciplines―philosophy, classics, medieval studies, history, anthropology, economics, political science, and art history, among others―the contributors illuminate issues at the heart of the most significant cultural, social, and political debates of our day.

What emerges is not a univocal answer to the question posed in the title. Instead, by demonstrating how religion is talked about in the languages of very different academic disciplines, the essayists creatively address issues that no one should ignore: fundamentalism; the role of religion in American democracy; the tension between secular liberalism and religious rhetoric; monotheism versus pluralism; and the relationship between poverty and liberation theology. Collectively, their various approaches to talking about religion―differences due to background, age, nationality, religious outlook, and intellectual commitment, yet all valid―provide a general response to the question in the book's title: in intellectual and personal community.

Contributorss: Luis E. Bacigalupo, Clifford Ando, Sabine MacCormack, R. Scott Appleby, Bilinda Straight, Patrick J. Deneen, Wayne C. Booth (1921–2005), Eugene Garver, Javier Iguíñiz Echeverría, Ruth Abbey, Sol Serrano, Carol Bier, Jeffrey Kripal, Ebrahim Moosa.

James Boyd White is Hart Wright Professor of Law, professor of English, and adjunct professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan.