[Buddha-l] Supporting Peace

[curt]

Buddhists are also often guilty of having an attenuated view
of "interreligious dialog". Often Buddhists dispense with
interreligious dialog altogether and just seek "Buddhist-
Christian" dialog. I am not sure what the point of Buddhist-
Christian dialog is supposed to be - but it always looks to
me like a way for Buddhists to try to gain greater legitimacy
and for Christians to try to keep people from defecting to
Buddhism (via the message: "you can meditate and still
go to Church and be a good Christian"). On the american
religious scene the people with whom Buddhists have the
greatest cultural/spiritual affinity are Pagans. Pagans have
basically the same "profile" as Buddhists - except they
just tend to be (even) flakier than most Buddhists. But
Pagans are often completely overlooked when Buddhists
talk about interreligious dialog, even when Hindus, Sikhs,
Muslims, Native Americans and secular humanists are included.
- Curt

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

> This past weekend there was a meeting of a new group in Albuquerque 
> called Ecumenical Voices for Democracy (http://www.evoices.org). Their 
> first initiative was a panel discussion, open to the public, called 
> "The Uses and Abuses of Religion." At this first meeting their idea of 
> ecumenism was to have a Roman Catholic sociology professor, an 
> Anglican priest, an evangelical minister from Albuquerque's biggest 
> megachurch and a secular humanist lawyer who works for the ACLU. No 
> Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims or native American leaders were 
> included at this round, but perhaps they will get their turn at one of 
> the planned future events.
> <snip snip snip>