Dialogue and Diplomacy: A Study of the Vatican's and World Council of Churches' Involvement in Hindu-Christian Relations

• Applicant: Dr. Melanie Barbato
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 411280951

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Drawing on examples from Hindu-Christian dialogue, Dialogue and Diplomacy asked how two major religious organisations negotiate the challenge of bridging religious and political elements in their official communication. The project worked between 2019 and 2023 on producing a discourse analysis of the involvement of the Vatican and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Hindu-Christian dialogue, including a mixed-method content analysis of the official Catholic and ecumenical documents that refer to Hindu-Christian relations.
 The analysis of the communication of high-level Hindu-Christian relations was chosen to study how Christian actors negotiate the tensions that arise through various forms of plurality in discursive practice, including different aims (truth-seeking dialogue, social activism, public diplomacy), different theological standpoints (e.g. more liberal or conservative, evangelical), a multitude of Hindu groups (e.g. proponents of classical forms of Hinduism, Hindutva, Neo- Hindu, Dalit movement), and the complex situation in which Indian Christians as a minority group have to act (e.g. political influence of Hindu nationalism or the mutual relationship with Islam). One concept that became central to the analysis was that of “clusters of identity”, which refers to shared features according to which people can be grouped. In interreligious dialogue, these features are sometimes religious affiliation but often less obvious factors, which can remain hidden and give the impression of diversity where there is homogeneity or homogeneity where there is diversity. The study found that the interreligious communication of institutions depends significantly on finding ways to address all with offending none, and thus uses vagueness, politeness and repetitive structures similar to the language secular diplomacy. The project studied the Diwali messages that the Vatican and the World Council of Churches sends to the Hindus every year as well as other documents and speeches. The analysis was based on the approach of politolinguistics, which analyzes political language, for example for its vocabulary choices and metaphors. One result of the study was that in the Diwali Greeting messages, the PCID presents itself more as a global player whose communication with Hindus is one of many respectful conversation contexts, and the WCC more as a partner who is ready to engage with Hindus also on their own terms. From the project, the Network of Hinduism in Dialogue was developed. The Network of Hinduism in Dialogue is based at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and seeks to connect scholars with an interest in how Hinduism relates to other religions.

Publications

• ‘Dear Hindu Friends’: official Diwali greetings as a medium for diplomatic dialogue. Religion, 50(3), 353-371.
  Barbato, Melanie
  
• „Mobilisierung jenseits des Kirchenvolks. Der Papst und der interreligiöse Dialog“ (Mobilisation beyond the congregation: the pope and interreligious dialogue), in Macht und Mobilisierung: Der politische Aufstieg des Papsttums seit dem Ausgang des 19. Jahrhunderts, Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 256-270.
  Mariano Barbato & Stefan Heid
  
• “Understanding Hindu-Christian Relations: The World Council of Churches’ Approach”, Blog of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, February 28.
  J. Reuben
  
• Editorial Introduction: Interreligious Dialogue and Diplomacy. CrossCurrents, 72(3), 173-176.
  Barbato, Melanie
  
• Homo interreligiosus: Zur biographischen Verortung interreligiöser Prozesse bei Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010). Beiträge einer internationalen Fachtagung zu seinem 100. Geburtstag, Theologische Revue, vol. 118 (2022)
  Christian Hackbarth-Johnson & Ulrich Winkler
  
• Interreligious Dialogue and Diplomacy, special issue, CrossCurrents 72:3.
  Melanie Barbato
  
• “Words that make a difference: An interview on diplomacy, poetry and interreligious dialogue with Philip McDonagh”, The Commons – April Online, December 12.
  Melanie Barbato
  
• AnantanandRambachan. Pathways to Hindu‐Christian Dialogue. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022. xii + 151 pp.. The Ecumenical Review, 75(5), 581-583.
  Barbato, Melanie
  
• Religious Greeting Messages as a Genre of Institutional Communication. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion, 166-179. Routledge.
  Barbato, Melanie