Seminar Paper by Constant Mews – Venue : The University of Sydney 15 May 2017
Monday, 15 May 2017
Place: Kevin Lee Room
Level 6, Lobby H
Quadrangle Building
Time: 4pm-5.30pm
Prof Constant J. Mews (Monash University)
“Rethinking Religious History in Global Perspective: Songlines, Sacred Stories and Theologies”
Religious history can often become a celebration of what is parochial, without awareness of larger global issues. By contrast. the history of religions often deals with global perspectives, but can become out of touch with the specificity of particular moments in time and political circumstance. This lecture reflects on the need for religious history to develop a greater consciousness of a global perspective, without sacrificing its contribution to understanding local identity. In particular, it considers how various forms of religious history have combined local and global identity in different ways, drawing on earlier patterns of reflection. These go back to orally transmitted songlines about spirit ancestors, that define the law of the land. It will suggest that this most ancient of literary genres was transformed by the advent of writing, but can illuminate written records of sacred stories about ancestral saints, whether in early medieval Ireland or in India.
Appreciating how the narrative of sacred texts combines local and global perspectives also illuminates how global religions, like Christianity and Manichaeism, developed theologies through interaction with philosophical traditions. It will reflect on how how the medieval theologies that emerged in the Latin West themselves issued from contestation about specific forms of global identity, serving to privilege and exclude particular groups in society. Scholasticism is phenomenon, however, that can be found in many different cultures, not just in the Latin West.