Hood developed a Mysticism

Th is article presents a theoretical framework for religiocentrism that is suited to cross-religious comparisons between Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Religiocentrism is defined as the combination of positive attitudes toward the religious ingroup and negative attitudes toward religious outgroup(s). Empirical research proves the relevance of the construct 'religiocentrism' among Christian, Muslim and Hindu college students in Tamil Nadu. Full score comparability is possible for positive ingroup attitudes but is hampered in the case of negative outgroup attitudes because of the specificity of outgroup prejudice to each religious group. Cross-religious differences between levels of positive ingroup attitudes can be explained in terms of the differential effects of socio-cultural, socio-economic and socio-religious characteristics. Th is topic calls for further reflection, taking into account contextual factors such as majority versus minority position and specific religious convictions for each religious tradition, more particularly within the context of Tamil Nadu. Th e article ends with a discussion of the findings.

How do Christians, Muslims and Hindus interpret religions other than their own? The theoretical framework of the research is models of religious pluralism developed by scholars in the field of theology of religions, especially Knitter. The authors pay special attention to pluralistic models, which have so far remained rather unclear. Special attention is paid to gender as a factor influencing levels of agreement with models of religious pluralism. Empirical research undertaken among Christian, Muslim and Hindu college students in Tamil Nadu in 2003 reveals three common models of religious pluralism that can be found among the adherents of these traditions: monism, commonality pluralism, and differential pluralism. Christian and Muslim students have much the same approach to religious pluralism, measured according to these three models; Hindu students differ from both Christian and Muslim students. Especially among Muslim students gender influences the level of agreement with the monism and commonality models. The article concludes with a discussion of the fruitfulness of comparative research (among members of different religious traditions) based on models derived from Christian theology.

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This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NonDerivative3.0Unported(CC-BY-NC3.0)License.

There is no gainsaying that in a globalized world, economic and technological development greatly determine human wellbeing. In the Indian context, the dialectics between socialist and capitalist economy, while giving way to the latter since 1991, has progressively led to the enlargement of the middle class, yet widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Such a situation points to the importance of socioeconomic rights for guaranteeing human flourishing. The question that we pose is whether religions can play a significant role in favoring these human rights, given their own specific vision of human life and of its socioeconomic facets, such as work, wealth, leisure, health, and education. In other words, can personal and contextual religious attitudes and religious socialization contribute to socioeconomic wellbeing? The empirical research undertaken in the pluralistic and democratic context of Tamil Nadu, India, seeks to verify among 1215 Christian, Muslim, and Hindu students, the impact of religion on their attitude towards socioeconomic rights. The emerging results reveal that some aspects of religious attitudes and socialization have a significant impact on students’ agreement with socioeconomic rights, particularly in the case of Christians and Muslims. We conclude with a discussion on the salient findings and their implications.

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