Circling the Elephant

Many readers of this journal will undoubtedly have long awaited John Thatamanil’s next text, and in Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity they will not be disappointed. Invoking the readers of this journal, though, reminds me that the American Academy of Religion is a “broad tent,” and Thatamanil’s writings will be seen by some readers not as an important new work in theory but rather as mere “data” produced by the theologians for readers to chew upon. Thatamanil locates himself in this debate, and amidst reviewing critical accounts of the concept religion by such scholars as Tomoko Masuzawa, Timothy Fitzgerald, Richard King, Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, and others, he notes, specifically invoking Talal Asad, that, although “mindful” of such labors, “the theologian as normative worker aspires to generate new effects, new uses, new disruptions, and new generative articulations of the religious” (155). Thatamanil’s critical account of religion,...

Diversity (politics) · Epistemology · Generative grammar · Normative · Religious diversity · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies