Interreligious Testimonial Dialogue in the Immanent Frame of a Secular Age

Abstract

This paper explores the plausible approach of interreligious dialogue in a secular world. It first examines Taylor’s account of the immanent frame in his A Secular Age. This helps us to grasp the moral spiritual outlook of the modern world and the underlying moral concerns of the controversies between the religions and secularists. I then examine Taylor’s claim regarding the indispensability of transcendence in achieving the fullness of human life which is criticized by non-transcendentists and naturalist mundane transcendentists. I argue that the phenomenon of these controversies, on the one hand, is consistent with Taylor’s account of the Nova effect in the secular world, and, on the other hand, that assessing these different versions of transcendence via Taylor’s historical hermeneutical approach or Wainwright’s inference to the best explanation may raise the problem of Christian-centric or epistemic circularity. Furthermore, as we are now living in the immanent frame, interreligious dialogue cannot be implemented without the practical concerns of ordinary life. Inspired by Ricoeur’s idea of testimony and narrative identity, I argue for a kind of interreligious testimonial dialogue which integrates morality, actions, thought and experience into communication, so that it can enhance mutual sympathetic understanding, broaden the life vision between participants, no matter whether religious or nonreligious, and break through the limitation of epistemic circularity.