Religious Hybridity and Christian Identity

Promise and Problem

Abstract

Cornille’s essay surveys types of dual-belonging and honors those seeking to be accountable to the deepest demands of their own Christian identity while being open to the insight and wisdom of non-Christian ways. She notes similarities among religious traditions, and that dual belonging has a long history within Christianity that takes several forms expressed in practice and theology. Pluralistic cultural contexts, blended families, charismatic teachers and practices, and ethically compelling examples offer promising prospects of combined traditions, usually combined within an individual consciousness, path, or story. Cornille concludes that individuals are not the best judges of the adequacy of dual belonging efforts. Instead, Cornille offers the wisdom of inter-monastic dialogue and the emerging discipline of comparative theology as providing methods to assess and engage competing claims. The requirements of any tradition will extend far beyond the responses of any individual, and beyond the inadequacies of any one community or culture. For Cornille, depth of Christian religious traditions can tame the desires that inspire duality, since the deepest reaches of identity within communities of faith are not available to those whose attention and allegiance is divided. Cornille offers an appreciate word to those whose yearnings prompt efforts at dual belonging, but those who understand themselves belonging to two or more communities will find themselves unable to plumb the depths of either. Instead, Cornille offers the complex consolations of “being, or at least aspiring to be, ‘just’ Christian.”