The Celestial Web

Winner of The Catholic Media Association Award

3rd place – Ecumenism or Interfaith Relations

In his ground-breaking Gifford Lectures, published as Religious Pluralism & Interreligious Dialogue, Perry Schmidt-Leukel introduced his fractal theory of religions, challenging the tendency to distinguish religious traditions as discrete entities without acknowledging the wide variety within them, varieties essentially reproduced in different religious traditions.

After offering an introduction to this new methodology to comparative religion, Schmidt-Leukel, in The Celestial Web, applies this method to a comparison between Buddhism and Christianity. Some of the points of comparison include their respective approaches to the world, ultimate reality, the dark side of human existence, and salvation/liberation in terms of the figures mediating it.

Stereotypical approaches often treat these traditions as opposites, for instance, positing that Buddhism embraces an impersonal absolute, whereas Christianity affirms the primacy of ones relationship with a personal God. Yet the fractal approach, which examines intra-religious varieties within the two traditions, reveals surprising points of congruence.

Perry Schmidt-Leukel