Jigsaw of Faith

Review of David Brown's Learning from Other Religions in The Times Literary Supplement, 4th October 2024.

The West has a long and complex history of “learning from other religions”. In the colonial era, European philosophers looked to Eastern belief systems as a source of wisdom and spiritual insight, giving rise to the notion of ex oriente lux (“light from the East”). Such orientalist attitudes persisted in the twentieth century, and came to be adopted by both ends of the political spectrum: while Indologists in 1930s Germany appropriated aspects of Hinduism within Nazi ideology, progressives in the 1970s and 80s were drawn to Buddhism as a form of liberation from capitalism. Though for starkly different reasons, other religions were seen as an antidote to the ills of modern society, as is still the case (if in the softer form of “mindfulness”) today.

The premiss of David Brown’s new book might therefore seem an unoriginal one. There is already a considerable body of literature on how the world’s ethical and philosophical traditions might challenge western attitudes, and almost as much critiquing the endeavour altogether (see Arthur Koestler’s The Lotus and the Robot, 1960, for a more cynical take on the “light from the East” trope). Which is not to deem the subject irrelevant: if anything, conversations surrounding decolonization have brought questions of intercultural dialogue and “indigenous ways of knowing” back to the fore. Still, the proposition that we might learn something from other religions is not exactly novel. What, then, does Brown offer?

A retired Anglican priest, Brown is unapologetically Christian in his perspective on other religions. Unlike those who appropriated them for ideological ends, he sets out to seriously engage with their truth claims. In doing so, he is cautious not to repeat previous thinkers’ mistake of making gross generalizations, instead choosing to focus on specific aspects from which westerners might learn. From Hinduism, he proposes, we might rediscover a conception of the divine feminine; Jainism, ethics of animal welfare; Buddhism, selflessness and non-attachment; Sikhism, humility in our understanding of God; Daoism, an environmental ethos; Confucianism, notions of civic and social duty; Shinto, an emphasis on divine immanence; and Islam, an approach to scripture grounded in historical context.

Brown suggests an understanding of divine revelation as something not limited to any one religion, but partially present in all of them; they are pieces which, taken together, can “provide a more complete picture of the whole”. His approach is essentially that of the Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant…

Read the full article in The TLS.