Response to Dr. Cornille's Lecture on Religious Hybridity

Abstract

Terrell’s generous and critical response to Catherine Cornille’s keynote affirms Divine presence and loving goodness that precedes the particularities of religious traditions and religious language we cherish; a Divine presence not limited to the dualities, binaries, and boundaries we enforce. Furthermore, Divine love has deployed multiple religious traditions and many modes and methods to overcome the harm done by cultural hubris, empowered racist, and extended colonialist forms of any one religion. Terrell offers an autobiographical narrative that endorses a continuing process drawing upon the insight and grace of pre-critical/natural knowledge of God, nurtured in deepening Christian, Buddhist, and Daoist practice, informed and sharpened by a Womanist sensibility, all to cultivate a habitus of openness to Divine presence and provision that is as eager for claims of ultimacy, as it is impatient with claims of exclusivity and finality.