In Search of Interspiritual Truth: An Interview with John Thatamanil

In Search Of

“If I'm truly, as a Christian, to affirm that core affirmation that God did, in fact, so love the world, then divine disclosure must be happening far beyond the boundaries of the Christian tradition. If that's true, then how God engages in self-disclosure under different vocabularies, under different practices, under different modes of being must matter.” – John Thatamanil

Welcome to In Search Of, a podcast where we go in search of voices and perspectives that inform and expand a life of faith. In this episode, John Thatamanil tells Amy about his interfaith work and identity in a conversation that covers everything from capitalism to philosophy to the definition of religion. Why is “syncretism” a bad word? Why is it okay to be a capitalist Christian, but not a Buddhist Christian? How can we embrace religious diversity instead of fearing it? Explore these questions and more on this episode of In Search Of.

John Thatamanil is a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he teaches classes in comparative theology, religious diversity, Hindu-Christian dialogue, the theology of Paul Tillich, theory of religion, process theology, and ecotheology. He’s the author of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity and is working on a book provisionally entitled, Desiring Truth: Comparative Theology and the Quest for Interreligious Wisdom.