Beyond Babel: Religion and Linguistic Pluralism

This volume is the first attempt to explicitly investigate how the multiplicity of religions and forms of spirituality interconnect with the multiplicities of language, such as digital lingo and the language of science.  This book analyzes how religious and linguistic multiplicities become a pluralism, that is, how they enter into polyphonic relations, as well as how they interconnect, grow together, and why they often clash. The contributors are renown international scholars working in interreligious dialogue, philosophy and sociology of religion, history of religious arts, and the crossroads of religion and science.This text provides the setting for a dialogue on a rich variety of religious languages and traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Jainism, and Christianity.  Each chapter connects these traditions either in profound interreligious means, or with linguistic codes such as: vernacular speeches, sacred dialects and technological language. Some linguist examples are the impact of Artificial Intelligence on religious beliefs, the synergy between science and religion in the alchemist tradition and in magic, as well as the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and current religious practices. This volume contributes to interfaith studies and teaching, to sociology and philosophy of religion, and finally to the history and anthropology of religion and the sacred arts.  It is intended for students, researchers, instructors and professionals alike.

Andrea Vestrucci has a Ph.D. in ethics (University of Lille SHS and University of Milan), and a Ph.D. in systematic theology (University of Geneva). He taught and was researcher at the Federal University of Ceará (Brazil), the University of Münster (Germany), Monash University (Australia), and the University of California Berkeley (USA). He is the recipient of the Australia Award from the Australian Federal Government, and he is a laureate of the Academic Society of Geneva, Switzerland. Currently he is a research professor at the Graduate Theological Union, and a privatdozent for the University of Geneva. Among his publications, he is the author of Theology as Freedom: on Martin Luther’s De servo arbitrio (Mohr Siebeck, 2019), the co-editor of the issue “Artificial Intelligence, Spirituality, and Analogue Thinking” for the International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence (2021), and guest editor of “Religions and Languages: A Polyphony of Faits” for Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions (2021).