Why Is There Not a Buddho-Christian Dialogue in China?

Inter-religious dialogue is not premised just upon one party's willingness to enter into a conversation with another. It requires even before that a willingness to converse with oneself, with one's own past, and to do so in a manner relevant to the time at hand. A narrow self-understanding, a lack of interest, an inability to confront one's past and future, can hamper the exchange. Nowadays, when one mentions Buddho-Christian dialogue in the Far East, one thinks immediately ofJapan, of the lively exchanges between Zen and western philosophers, Jodoshin Buddhologists and Christian theologians. That such dynamic exchanges should happen in Japan is not surprising. Japan had its own Kamakura reformation, then under Tokugawa sustained sectarian learning. After the Meiji restoration, there was so-called modern Buddhism, soon followed by the presence of professors of Comparative Religion and Buddhologists at the universities. There is also aJapanese assimilation and response to Western thought by the Kyoto school. Even her Christian minority has an indigenous churchless Christianity, her share of Barthians, Bultmannians, and Heideggerians. Compared with that, the paucity of Buddho-Christian dialogue in China is almost shameful. To understand why China did not evolve such a vibrant dialogue, we have to consider her very different history.