Religious essentialism

PJ Johnston10 years 1 month agoHi Rajiv!I found myself reading about the differences between Christianity and Hinduism that you articulated in your essay and wanting to say that I know Christians who don't believe any of the things you attributed to "Christianity," having a more "Hindu" interpretation and practice. To me this brought up concerns about essentialism, where we say that a single form of a religious tradition is the "real" or "authentic" form of the religion, and any forms of religion that depart from that form aren't really "Christian" or "Hindu" or whatever they might claim to be. I was made uncomfortable by the worry that a lot of your claims about the deep differences between Hinduism and Christianity were based on a kind of essentialism where forms of the faiths that were more similar than you allow would be dismissed as not "really" Hindu or Christian, even if people who call themselves "Hindu" or "Christian" actually practice them.
-- beliefnet.com https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/hinduism/articles/holy-spirit-is-not-the-same-as-shakti-or-kundalini.aspx
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