Christianity and Religious Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Abstract The chapter argues that all religions belong to the entirety of humankind. The well-being (salus) of humanity is the common mission of all religious traditions, and this realization calls for a re-conceptualization of religious identity in more dynamic terms, as well as the cultivation of religious cosmopolitanism (as opposed to syncretism and hybridity). Religious cosmopolitanism is the ensemble of moods, motivations, values and practices which allow a person to be at home with any religious tradition or group and to value its mystical, universalistic and humanizing potentials. To be fruitful, the notion of cosmopolitanism must be divested of the lingering elements of colonial epistemology which shaped its development in the West, and corrected by accounts of cosmopolitanism among peoples and civilizations in different parts of the world.