Cross Emerging from a Lotus Flower
I came across an interesting article by Phillip Jenkins, entitled “When Jesus met Buddha”, and printed in the Boston Globe. It is a poignant discussion of the contemporary collision of Christianity with the other world religions, and what its future might look like in an increasingly global community. Jenkins spends a great deal of time detailing the move of the early Christian faith into Asia and Africa, relatively detached from the main body of the Church which developed in Europe. The Church of the East gave rise to vibrant communities of Christ followers in China, whose cultural expressions of faith naturally commingled and cooperated with Buddhist thought and Confucian culture. The church that emerged there adopted the symbol of the lotus cross, a cross emerging from a lotus flower, two symbols representing liberation and redemption brought together.
The article is a good read, and raises interesting questions about how the predominately European-influenced Christian Church of today will be viewed 1000 years from now. Will it be seen as the righteous holder of Truth it views itself as? Or, will this time in history be considered a dark time in the Christian church, where the essential message of Christ was overshadowed by fundamentalism? I don’t know the answer to this. I do often recognize a great difference between the Christ I encounter in the Gospels and the Christ being proclaimed to the world by the church…the ‘Good News’ doesn’t always sound that good.
Read the full text of the article here –> or here–>
If you’d like to discuss this issue in more depth, visit our forum topic on Interfaith Dialogue, and start a discussion.
Recent Comments