department of
Philosophy & World Religions
LECTURE BY
DR. M. THOMAS THANGARAJ
Professor Emeritus of World Christianity
Candler School of Theology
Emory University, Atlanta
DR. M. THOMAS THANGARAJ
M. Thomas Thangaraj retired in 2008 as Professor Emeritus of
World Christianity at Candler School of Theology, Emory University,
Atlanta, GA. He taught at Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in
Madurai, India for several years before his move to Emory in
1988. He has widely published in Tamil and English, and his
publications include, The Crucified Guru: An Experiment in CrossCultural Christology (Abingdon, 1994), Relating to People of Other
Religions: What Every Christian Needs to Know (Abingdon, 1997),
The Common Task: A Theology of Christian Mission (Abingdon,
1999), Hermeneutical Explorations in Dialogue (co-edited with
Rambachan & Omar, ISPCK, 2007), and Discipleship and Dialogue:
New Frontiers in Interfaith Engagement (co-edited with Lott
& Wingate, ISPCK, 2013). He was Visiting Professor of World
Christianity at Harvard Divinity School in 2013, and is currently at
Boston University School of Theology, Boston, MA, as their Visiting
Professor of Global Christianity.
While Western scholars have engaged in
a descriptive and at times critical study of
religions in India, Indians themselves have
not engaged religion as a phenomenon
to be historically and critically studied in
their colleges and universities for a long
time. This was partly due to a desire to
maintain India as a “secular” democracy.
Of course, there were departments of
philosophy and sociology in most colleges
that addressed the question of religion in
a tangential manner. During the last thirty
years, departments of Religion and chairs
for various religions have been set up in
many universities and colleges. Will these
departments usher in a new India where
citizens are prone to approach their religions
with a critical and historical consciousness
and thus promote inter-religious
understanding and harmony? The lecturer
brings his own involvement in the founding
of a department of Religion in a college in
India to bear on this topic and discusses this
issue in the context of the inter-religious
conflicts in India.