| The process of globalization and secularization has constituted a grave challenge to religious traditions, no exception of Christianity as a world religion. Many Christian thinkers have come up with different suggestions and programs to face that challenge. This dissertation studies Don Cupitt's philosophy of religion, who is a contemporary British thinker advocating religious non-realism, and whose life religion program serves to transform Christian tradition.Before entering our main thesis, the ten stages of Cupitt's spiritual odyssey are illustrated and the sources of his thinking are explained to portray a rough sketch of his whole idea.In the main part of this dissertation, we discuss the background of life religion, the methodology of life religion and the content of life religion. In the background of life religion, we first make Cupitt diagnoses the present situation of the West. There have been three interpretation lines about our present situation, namely religious foundationalists'line, secularists'line and the line of "kingdom stage" proposed by Cupitt. Through demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages of the first two lines, we come to the third line, also an insight of Cupitt:modern West is the kingdom stage of Christianity. This involves a new understanding of Christianity, namely Christianity is a Utopian cultural movement, which once adopted the form of religion, and eventually burst out of its religious chrysalis and became the modern western world. The reasons for this are analyzed in the dissertation. In the process of this analysis, we point out the continuity between the church stage and the kingdom stage, which proves that the kingdom stage abandons the hierarchic and supernatural side of Christianity, and keeps the ethical and spiritual side of Christianity. Besides, a non-realist world picture is described here, as it is the world picture of the kingdom stage.The methodology of life religion is the method of the Religious Enquiry of Everyday Speech, which is a brand new method in religious studies created by Cupitt. Because the kingdom stage only keeps the ethical and spiritual side of Christianity, ordinary people's ordinary language becomes the home for religious thoughts. In the light of this recognition, the new method studies ordinary people's everyday speech to find out the philosophical and religious thoughts embedded in ordinary language. In this part, we describe the reasons for adopting this new method, the meaning of this new method, and the true religion it demonstrates. In order to explain how to operate this new method, we offer a theoretical description, and a practical illustration by taking Cupitt's two trilogies of everyday speech as an example. In view of a new theory usually arises much misunderstanding, we discuss some challenges and problems confronting the new method.The content of life religion includes solar ethics and humanitarian ethics, as Cupitt has made clear several times in his works. Both of them originate from solar spirituality with different emphases. Solar ethics offers a religious lifestyle for individuals, while humanitarian ethics concerns the value-creating activities in public area. Besides, we discuss the great questions of life, and introduce the Sea of Faith Networks. The great questions of life is a general concern at present, and Cupitt's exploration fills in the blank of studies on this subject. The Sea of Faith Networks put Cupitt's religions non-realism into practice. Therefore, these are two important extensions of life religion.In the last part of this dissertation, we try to walk out of Cupitt's thinking, and examine the limits and problems of life religion from other writers'perspectives, which could be seen in the part of "problems and challenges". We carry out our examination from two aspects. Firstly, some comparative studies are carried out between Cupitt and several famous contemporary writers in the field of philosophy of religion, and some religious writers from Sea of Faith Networks, with an emphasis on their challenges to Cupitt's ideas, in order to expose the problems and limits of life religion, explore the present situation of studies on philosophy of religion both in China and abroad, and have a glance at a newly established project for exploring non-realist theology. Secondly, we illustrate several problems left undealt with, in order to patch up the whole argument.Our argument proves that life religion does make an available program for transforming Christianity, and an available living program for people in the postmodern world.
|
PDF Full Text Request