INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE IN RELIGIOUSLY PLURALISTIC SOCIETIES
THE CASE OF THE CHURCH IN NEPAL
Enrico Beltramini
Notre Dame de Namur University
California
Abstract
Nepal is a religiously pluralistic society in which the Roman Catholic Church is actively involved in Hindu–Christian dialogue. At the same time, it is a country governed by religious majoritarianism and regulated by anti-conversion laws. This study examines how interreligious dialogue develops within a context marked by structural asymmetry, where the majority religion enjoys legal and cultural privilege while Catholicism, as a minority tradition, operates under political constraint and social vulnerability. The study therefore investigates how dialogue unfolds: the metaphysical form of dialogue takes place at the level of ultimate truth; the social form of dialogue unfolds within the concrete realities of Nepali society; and the dialogue of presence in which the Church bears witness through proximity, service, friendship, and shared life. By focusing on the Nepali case, it seeks to illuminate the forms, limits, and theological significance of interreligious engagement under conditions of inequality and juridical control.
Keywords: dialogue; Nepal, Catholic Church; Hinduism.
Introduction
When Western scholars discuss interreligious dialogue in religiously pluralistic societies, they often assume a framework in which two or more religious communities or theological traditions engage one another as equal partners, motivated by mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation. Dialogue is typically imagined as a symmetrical exchange between traditions that recognize one another’s legitimacy and negotiate their differences within a shared civic and legal space. In much of South Asia, however, this model does not correspond to social and political reality. Christianity is a minority religion in societies where the relationship among religions is shaped by the principles of religious majoritarianism. Religious majoritarianism refers to a political and cultural order in which the religion of the majority is identified with national identity and granted privileged legal, social, and symbolic status, while minority religions are tolerated only conditionally and often regarded as foreign or disruptive. In countries governed by religious majoritarianism, anti-conversion laws are frequently in place. These laws restrict or criminalize religious conversion, especially when it involves conversion from the majority religion to a minority one. They typically prohibit conversions carried out through what authorities define as “force,” “fraud,” or “inducement”—terms that are often interpreted broadly and ambiguously. In practice, such laws function to limit the public presence, missionary activity, and social legitimacy of minority religions, particularly Christianity. As a result, interreligious dialogue in these contexts cannot be understood as a neutral or symmetrical encounter, but must be analyzed within an asymmetrical political and legal framework that profoundly conditions its possibilities and limits. How can it be understood, then?
Nepal provides a concrete and revealing case study of how interreligious dialogue unfolds within a religiously pluralistic society structured by religious majoritarianism and regulated by anti-conversion laws. Geographically and politically, Nepal occupies a position on the margins of the global order. In terms of world Christianity, it likewise stands at the periphery. Yet, as Pope Francis has repeatedly insisted, it is precisely the peripheries that constitute the privileged theological locus of the Church today.[1] He reframed marginality as theological centrality. Peripheries are not marginal in God’s economy. On the contrary, they are privileged places where the Church encounters suffering, injustice, creativity, and renewal. The periphery becomes a site of public theological insight rather than irrelevance.
In Nepal, the Roman Catholic (henceforth, only Catholic) Church occupies a marginal and peripheral position. It is marginal because it exists as a small and politically powerless minority within a society structured by religious majoritarianism. It is peripheral both geographically and ecclesially: geographically, because Nepal lies at the edges of the global political and economic order; ecclesially, because the local Church stands at periphery of the institutional structures of the universal Church. The local Church lacks a resident bishop and is administered by bishops coming from abroad. Diplomatically, the Catholic presence is represented not by a local nunciature but by the Apostolic Nuncio based in New Delhi. In this sense, the Church in Nepal represents a genuine ecclesial periphery in Pope Francis’s sense.
In Nepal, interreligious dialogue must be understood as an asymmetrical and constrained encounter, shaped by unequal power relations and juridical limitations that place minority communities in a position of vulnerability. Rather than a reciprocal exchange between equals, it becomes a form of dialogical witness—a fragile and often contested negotiation of presence and legitimacy within a public order structured by religious majoritarianism, in which the Church bears witness to the Gospel under conditions of ecclesial humility and historical trial. In such a context, dialogue cannot be assumed to take place on equal footing. It may develop along different dimensions: a metaphysical dimension, where theological traditions engage one another at the level of ultimate truth; a social dimension, where cooperation emerges around shared concerns for justice and human dignity; or a dialogical dimension shaped by the theology of presence, in which dialogue takes the form of testimony through proximity, service, and shared life rather than doctrinal exchange.
This study is structured in three sections. The first provides historical and cultural context for readers who may not be familiar with Nepal and its religious landscape. The second examines the situation of the Catholic Church in Nepal. The third explores the different forms of Hindu-Christian dialogue. As usual in ecclesial language, the Church is referred to in the feminine.
The Context
Nepal was a Hindu kingdom until little more than twenty years ago. With the abolition of the monarchy, the federal republic replaced the royal regime, and political secularism formally took the place of Hinduism as the state religion. This transition, however, remains incomplete and contested. The new republican order has not yet achieved full political and cultural stabilization, and significant segments of the population continue to advocate for the restoration of the monarchy; the former king still resides in Kathmandu. Moreover, Nepali secularism does not correspond to the Western liberal model of religious neutrality. Rather, it operates within a framework of religious majoritarianism. Although the constitution proclaims the country to be secular, it accords privileged recognition to certain traditions regarded as indigenous—primarily Hinduism, Buddhism, and local shamanic religions. Minority religions, above all Islam and Christianity, occupy a more precarious legal and social position and are often perceived as foreign or disruptive to national identity. As a result, Nepal’s secular order is not a neutral separation of religion and state, but a reconfiguration of Hindu cultural dominance within a formally secular political structure. This unresolved tension continues to shape the country’s religious landscape and its ongoing debates over national identity, sovereignty, and tradition.
Religious majoritarianism is a political and cultural order in which the religion of the majority is identified with national identity and granted privileged legal, social, and symbolic status, while minority religions are tolerated only conditionally and are often viewed as foreign, suspect, or destabilizing. In a majoritarian system, the majority religion is treated not merely as one tradition among others, but as authentic expression of the nation’s history, culture, and moral order. The state may formally claim neutrality, yet in practice it protects, promotes, or legally favors the majority religion while restricting the public presence, expansion, or influence of minority faiths. Husain Haqqani argues that religious majoritarianism is a phenomenon common to all South Asian nations and is closely linked to their post-independence processes of modernization. Despite long traditions of religious inclusivity and pluralism, he maintains that these societies are now undergoing a shift toward forms of religious nationalism. Haqqani interprets religious majoritarianism primarily in political terms: numerical dominance alone is no longer considered sufficient to secure majority authority, leading political elites to depict religious minorities as internal threats. In this way, minorities are constructed as the “other” against which the majority can be mobilized. He characterizes this dynamic as a politics of “purity,” in which national identity is redefined through religious homogenization.[2]
Article 4 of Nepal’s 2015 Constitution is composed of two clauses. The first defines Nepal as “an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular, inclusive, democratic, socialism-oriented, federal democratic republican State,” and immediately adds a qualification: “For the purposes of this Article, ‘secular’ means religious and cultural freedoms, including the protection of religion and culture handed down from time immemorial.”[3] This constitutional definition of secularism has generated divergent interpretations. The phrase sanātan dekhi caliāyeko dharma saṁskṛtiko saṁrakṣaṇa (“protection of religion and culture practiced since ancient times”) is understood by some as a reference to sanātan dharma, traditionally identified with Hinduism, while others interpret it more broadly as encompassing Nepal’s indigenous religious traditions.
The provision thus leaves unresolved whether Nepal’s national identity has genuinely shifted from a Hindu-centered framework to a plural religious model, or whether Hinduism continues to function as the implicit normative tradition of the state. What is clear, however, is that Nepali secularism does not operate as a neutral separation between religion and state. Rather, it establishes a hierarchy of recognition in which certain religions receive constitutional protection while others remain structurally disadvantaged.
Article 26 defines the right of religion:
a. “…Every person who has faith in religion shall have the freedom to profess, practice and protect his or her religion according to his or her conviction…”
b. “…Every religious denomination shall have the right to operate and protect its religious sites and religious Guthi (trusts). Provided that nothing shall be deemed to prevent the regulation, by making law, of the operation and protection of religious sites and religious trusts and management of trust properties and land”
c. “… No person shall, in the exercise of the right conferred by this Article, do, or cause to be done, any act which may be contrary to public health, decency and morality or breach public peace, or convert another person from one religion to another or any act or conduct that may jeopardize other’s religion and such an act shall be punishable by law.
Among the three constitutional clauses governing religious rights, clause (c) is the most contested. It explicitly states that secularism does not include the right to religious conversion. The provision makes clear that any religious activity aimed at persuading adherents of another religion is punishable under the law. Rather than affirming a conditional right to conversion subject to public order or state security, the clause authorizes state intervention irrespective of whether conversion causes social disturbance. While the Constitution guarantees “the freedom to profess, practice, and protect” one’s religion, it simultaneously prohibits the propagation of religion, including consensual conversion through peaceful persuasion. Under the Constitution, both coerced and voluntary conversions are therefore explicitly criminalized. In Nepal, religious conversion occurs predominantly among the poor, the socially marginalized, and Dalit communities. In this context, anti-conversion legislation can be interpreted as a mechanism aimed at preventing Dalits from embracing Christianity. Conversion is not limited, however, to lower Hindu caste groups such as the Sarki, Damai, and Kami. It also involves several ethnic communities. For example, although Tamangs are traditionally Buddhist and Chepangs originally follow animist traditions, a growing segment of their populations is gradually converting to Christianity, which many perceive as more meaningful and socially empowering than their inherited religious affiliations.
The Condition of the Church
Catholic missionaries first entered Nepal in the seventeenth century while traveling toward Tibet, but they were expelled by the end of the eighteenth century. Christians were allowed to return to Nepal only in 1951, invited by the King for educational help. Today, estimates of the Christian population vary significantly depending on the source. Official figures report approximately 400,000 Christians, while independent statistics suggest a much larger number, ranging between two and a half million and three million (ten percent of the total population). The vast majority of Christians in Nepal belong to Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal communities. The Catholic Church remains a small minority, with an estimated membership of around 10,000 faithful.
Major male religious orders such as the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Salesians of Don Bosco, together with women’s congregations including the Sisters of the Congregation of Jesus (CJ), the Missionaries of Charity (MC), and the Loreto Sisters (IBVM)—with personnel often coming from India and South Korea—play a significant role in Nepal’s social and educational development. Local clergy and religious communities manage numerous schools, colleges, and technical institutes in both urban and rural areas, serving tens of thousands of students, including a large number of girls, for whom education is a key instrument of empowerment and social mobility. Through organizations such as Caritas, the Church also supports the elderly, the mentally ill, and communities affected by natural disasters, contributing to the rebuilding of roads, homes, and essential infrastructure.
Nepal’s Criminal Code contains stringent provisions regulating religious activity, including strict prohibitions on religious conversion. Some provisions of the Criminal Code appear, at least in principle, to protect freedom of religion or belief. For example, Section 157 prohibits interference with religious rites and rituals. However, subsection (1) of this provision refers exclusively to “religious rites and rituals that have been practiced since time immemorial,” thereby privileging traditional religions. At the same time, several other provisions significantly restrict religious freedom. Section 155 criminalizes damage to shrines or places regarded as sacred. Section 156 prohibits acts deemed to “outrage religious feelings,” while Section 158 explicitly criminalizes “proselytizing.” Most notably, the law classifies religious conversion as a criminal offense: anyone who encourages or facilitates conversion by any means faces a sentence of up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 Nepali rupees. In addition, any foreign national convicted of promoting religious conversion is subject to deportation within one week. Together, these provisions establish a legal framework that effectively limits religious propagation and constrains the public activity of minority religious communities.
Missionaries have at times been subject to prosecution under the Criminal Code. In one notable case, dental services provided by a group of Korean nuns were alleged to be linked to evangelization activities. The case was brought before a judge, and the nuns were ultimately deported. The Church is also subject to strict oversight of its financial activities. Funds received from abroad may not exceed legally established ceilings and must be approved by the competent government authorities.[4] These conditions are likely to deteriorate further should Nepal adopt legislation similar to the recently amended anti-conversion law introduced in the neighboring Indian state of Uttarakhand. The revised Freedom of Religion Bill significantly broadens existing restrictions by extending prohibitions on religious propagation from in-person activity to digital communication, including social media, messaging platforms, and phone conversations. Activities such as sharing personal testimony, quoting sacred texts, or speaking publicly about one’s faith may now be classified as unlawful “propaganda” or as asserting the superiority of one religion over another. The legislation also reverses the presumption of innocence, placing the burden of proof on the accused. Observers warn that Uttarakhand’s model is likely to be adopted by other Indian states and could influence legal developments in Nepal, further restricting the public presence of minority religions.[5]
It remains uncertain whether Nepal will adopt legislation similar to the Freedom of Religion Bill enacted in Uttarakhand. Nevertheless, current legal and political developments indicate a trajectory not toward the expansion of religious freedom and expression, but toward their further contraction. The likely scenario is that of a Church that becomes increasingly invisible. Its social institutions—schools, charitable organizations, and development projects—may continue to operate, but the religious signs that identify them as Christian are progressively removed. The Church is thus allowed to function as a service provider, while being stripped of its public religious identity. This situation raises a fundamental ecclesiological question: how a socially marginal, weak, and politically irrelevant Church understands and enacts her mission at the periphery of both the world and the universal Church? The answer cannot romanticize weakness, nor treat marginality as a virtue in itself.[6] Rather, it must acknowledge that powerlessness is often imposed through legal, cultural, and political mechanisms that restrict the Church’s agency and visibility. Yet it also recognizes that these conditions oblige the Church to rethink her modes of action, including her forms of interreligious dialogue.
The Dialogue
Since her return to Nepal in 1951, the Catholic Church has been engaged in interreligious dialogue, primarily with the Hindu majority and the Buddhist minority. Over time, however, this dialogue has evolved from an engagement focused mainly on doctrinal and spiritual questions to one increasingly shaped by social, cultural, and political concerns. In particular, the Hindu–Christian dialogue deserves attention, being structured in a religiously pluralistic society shaped by religious majoritarianism and regulated by anti-conversion laws. Hinduism is commonly understood as an umbrella term that encompasses six major philosophical schools (darśanas), each offering a distinct interpretation of reality, knowledge, and liberation. Among these traditions, Catholic theology has shown a particular interest in Vedānta, especially in the Advaita interpretation articulated by Śaṅkara, which affirms a radical non-duality.[7] The reason for this sustained interest is, in many respects, counterintuitive: Advaita Vedānta represents the position most distant from Christian theology. Advaita rejects all that is not Brahman, the one and only Self. Only Brahman is real; all phenomenal reality is ultimately unreal or illusory.[8] In this framework, multiplicity, materiality, and historical existence are dissolved into an absolute metaphysical unity.
There is therefore a threefold distance between Christianity and Advaita Vedānta. First, the Advaitic Absolute admits no internal plurality, whereas the Christian Trinity is an absolute unity in multiplicity. Second, the ontological consistency of the world—including that of human persons and even of the incarnate Son—is rejected on the grounds that the phenomenal world is ultimately illusory. Third, there is no room for the mediation of Christ between the created and the uncreated, since the former is ultimately absorbed into the latter. Jesus can be readily accepted within Hinduism as an avatar, that is, as a mythical descent of the divine into the illusion of the world. The Incarnation, however, is inconceivable, because in Advaita the uncreated cannot truly assume or unite itself with what is created. It is precisely this double abyss between Hinduism and Christianity—the abyss represented by Advaita for the Christian, and the abyss represented by the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation for the Hindu—that has made Advaita Vedānta the principal interlocutor of Catholic theology in Hindu–Christian dialogue. Rather than avoiding difference, Catholic engagement with Advaita takes place precisely where the contrast is greatest, because it is there that the fundamental theological questions emerge in their most explicit and uncompromising form.
However, this conversation cannot properly be described as a genuine dialogue, since Hindu interlocutors are not, in most cases, interested in Christianity as such. From their perspective, Christianity remains anchored in a cosmic metaphysics and therefore represents only a provisional stage within the realm of impermanence (vyavahāra), on the path toward ultimate truth (paramārthasatya). From the Advaitic perspective, Christianity is interpreted not as a final revelation but as one religious expression among many operating at the level of conventional or provisional reality (vyavahāra). It is therefore seen as an intermediate stage on the spiritual path rather than as a bearer of ultimate truth (paramārthasatya). As a result, what appears from the Christian side as a serious theological dialogue is often, from the Hindu side, a hierarchical assimilation rather than a reciprocal encounter. The dialogue is marked by a structural imbalance: Christians approach Advaita as a mystery, while Advaita absorbs Christianity into its own metaphysical framework.
This does not mean that Christian theologians have abandoned dialogue. Rather, it indicates that theological and metaphysical dialogue has reached a point of impasse. As a result, the focus of interreligious engagement has shifted from the doctrinal and speculative level to the social and political sphere, particularly under the influence of liberation theology. Here, cooperation is possible around shared concerns such as poverty, injustice, human dignity, and liberation. At the social level, however, the central issue is the caste system. The intrinsic egalitarianism of Christianity makes it a natural interlocutor for Dalits and other ethnic minorities excluded from caste system. It also places the Church in dialogue with modern and secular segments of Nepali society that advocate a progressive relativization of caste hierarchies.[9] Yet it is precisely this social dimension that religious majoritarianism and anti-conversion legislation seek to control. These mechanisms are directed not so much against theology itself as against Christianity’s capacity to draw marginalized communities by proclaiming a message that seeks to transform social structures, restore human dignity, and contest inherited hierarchies. In this sense, the problem is less doctrinal than political: it concerns the capacity of Christians to articulate and enact an alternative social vision.
These mechanisms are designed to turn the Church into an enclave and Christianity into a privatized religion stripped of its social and public dimension. The Church is tolerated as a closed and inward-looking community but prevented from exercising any transformative role within society. In this way, Christianity is confined to the private sphere and neutralized as a social force. Deprived of her evangelizing dimension, the Church is reduced to the exercise of an inward-looking pastoral mandate: providing sacramental care to the faithful, accompanying them in their spiritual growth, and sustaining their personal religious life. Yet she is prevented from fulfilling her broader mission of proclaiming the Gospel in the public sphere. Evangelization is confined to internal catechesis.
The case of Nepal makes evident that the traditional model of interreligious dialogue rests on a liberal understanding of religious relations—one that presupposes equality, reciprocity, and freedom of expression among religious communities. In religiously pluralistic societies governed by religious majoritarianism and regulated by anti-conversion laws, however, these conditions do not exist. Therefore, the very notion of interreligious dialogue in a society shaped by religious majoritarianism requires a fundamental rethinking of dialogue itself and must be reimagined in more fragile, indirect, and context-sensitive forms.
Over the past decade, a growing number of theologians have developed what is often called weak theology or a theology of weakness. Although this approach can be interpreted in more or less radical ways, it broadly designates a theological perspective that rejects models of divine power based on domination, sovereignty, and control, and instead interprets God’s action in history through vulnerability, kenosis, and self-giving love. Rather than grounding theology in metaphysical omnipotence, weak theology takes the Cross as its central paradigm and understands Christian faith as a form of witness enacted in fragility, exposure, and service. Rather than seeking to regain power, weak theology interprets the Church’s mission as witness, service, and presence. It provides a theological language for understanding Christian life at the margins, where faith is enacted not through authority but through fidelity.[10]
Theology of weakness and theology of vulnerability can be interpreted as form of public theology closely related and often overlap. The distinction is mainly one of emphasis and conceptual focus. A theology of weakness is primarily Christological and political. It begins from the Cross and from God’s self-emptying (kenosis) and interprets power itself through that lens. Weakness here is not simply a human condition; it is a theological form of divine action. It challenges political and religious models of sovereignty and authority. It asks how the Church can act in history when it does not possess power, and how Christian witness can be credible without control. A theology of vulnerability is primarily anthropological and relational. It begins from the human condition: finitude, dependence, exposure, and relational fragility. Vulnerability is not a defect but a constitutive dimension of human existence and of authentic relationship.[11]
While undoubtedly significant within contemporary Western theology, the theology of weakness represents a radical response to a specific situation of crisis: the crisis of bourgeois capitalist society and its religious and institutional foundations in the West. Weak theology emerges from the recognition that the traditional religious frameworks that once sustained liberal bourgeois culture and its institutions no longer function as a viable source of meaning or legitimacy. It develops in dialogue with pensiero debole (weak thought), as articulated by Gianni Vattimo, and draws in particular on the philosophical legacies of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer within a hermeneutical and postmodern ethical horizon.[12] In this sense, the theology of weakness is a distinctly Western phenomenon addressing the loss of Christian hegemony in the West; it does not automatically translate into a context where Christianity never possessed such hegemony in the first place. As a result, the political and theological questions are different.
What are needed, rather, is a public theology and a theology of mission for a small, poor, and vulnerable Church in Asia, and within that framework, a renewed understanding of interreligious dialogue.[13] Such a dialogue would not be centered primarily on doctrinal exchange or institutional recognition but would take the form of testimony. When doctrinal exchange is futile and public proclamation is restricted, the Church bears witness not primarily through argument or persuasion, but through presence, service, and silent fidelity. The point of reference here is Charles de Foucauld, whose spirituality of Nazareth proposes a form of evangelization grounded not in proclamation but in presence. De Foucauld envisioned a Church that lives among others as a humble companion, bearing witness to the Gospel through proximity, friendship, and shared life. In contexts where the Church is confined to the margins and reduced to an enclave, testimony becomes the privileged mode of dialogue: a form of communication that does not impose itself, yet quietly discloses another way of being human. His theology is thus an incarnational and missionary theology of presence, centered on hiddenness, humility, and ordinary life as privileged places of encounter with God. Evangelization takes place through loving service, especially among the poorest and most forgotten, and mission becomes a form of silent witness in which the Christian becomes a living Gospel through a life shaped by charity and fraternity.
The idea of a Hindu–Christian dialogue grounded in a theology of presence is still in its infancy. It has not yet been conceptually formulated, systematically developed, or theologically theorized. And yet it seems that, for the Church in Nepal, a theology of presence is not merely a theoretical option but an existential necessity. In a context marked by religious majoritarianism, legal restriction, and social vulnerability, the Church cannot rely on public proclamation or institutional influence. She is instead called to inhabit the logic of Nazareth: to dwell among others as a humble companion, to bear witness through shared life, and to communicate the Gospel through fidelity, service, and proximity. In this sense, the Nepali Church already lives the form of dialogue that theology has not yet fully articulated.
Conclusion
Interreligious dialogue in religiously pluralistic societies of South Asia, such as Nepal, must take into account the fact that the Catholic Church operates under conditions of legal vulnerability, cultural marginality, and institutional fragility. In a social order shaped by religious majoritarianism and regulated by anti-conversion laws, the Church does not function as a recognized moral authority or as a public interlocutor with political influence. She exists instead as a tolerated minority whose presence is closely monitored and whose public visibility is carefully constrained. In this context, interreligious dialogue cannot be conceived primarily as a symmetrical exchange of theological positions, but must be rethought in terms of proximity, witness, and shared life—forms of engagement grounded in everyday coexistence, service, and relational trust rather than public debate or institutional recognition.
[1] “You see reality better from the periphery than from the center.” Pope Francis’s March 10, 2015, interview was released to La Cárcova News, a popular magazine produced in an Argentine villa miseria. For the audio, transcribed and translated, see http://www.terredamerica.com.
[2] Husain Haqqani, “Religious Majoritarianism in a Diverse Region,” in Farahnaz Ispahani (ed.), Politics of Hate: Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia (Gurugram: HarperCollins India 2023), 1-23.
[3] Government of Nepal, Constitution of Nepal 2015.
[4] For an extensive description of the conditions of the Catholic Church in Nepal, see Enrico Beltramini, Arresting Gods in Kathmandu: Majoritarianism, Sovereignty, and Christianity in Postsecular Nepal (Leiden: De Gruyter Brill, forthcoming).
[5] In first approximation, the ecclesiological response to the Freedom of Religion Bill can be articulated in the terms of being digitally underground. It means that Christian life and communication are forced to move out of the public, visible, and institutional sphere and into informal, discreet, and often encrypted digital spaces. It does not mean disappearance, but strategic invisibility. It mirrors the logic of underground churches in authoritarian regimes: faith survives through relational networks rather than public institutions.
[6] John Heathershaw, Security after Christendom: Global Politics and Political Theology for Apocalyptic Times (Eugine: Cascade Books, 2024).
[7] The literature on this subject is extensive. Among the most recent works, see Daniel Soars, The World and God Are Not -Two: A Hindu-Christian Conversation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023) and Andrew D. Thrasher, An Advaitic Modernity?: Raimon Panikkar and Philosophical Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2024). For a theological study of Catholic theologians’ approaches to Advaita Vedānta, see Enrico Beltramini, “Advaita and Roman Catholic Theology: Diverse Strategies in Brahmanical School of Indian Theology,” Horizons (forthcoming).
[8] “Brahma satyam jagat mithya.” Adi Shankaracharya, Viveka Chudamani, verse 20.
[9] A recent example is provided by the political mobilization of the Z generation and the position taken by the Church in Nepal in response to it. Vatican News. “Nepal: Church Shares Young People’s Commitment to Nation’s Future.” September 19, 2025. Vatican News. Accessed September 19, 2025 at https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2025-09/nepal-apostolic-administrator-unrest-young-people-calm.html.
[10] John Helm, Weak but Strong: Towards a Theology of Weakness (Homebush West, N.S.W.: Anzea Books, 1985); John D. Caputo, The Weaknesses of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006); Catherine Keller, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Svetlana Konacheva, “The Political Aspects of Weak Theology,” in Alexei Bodrov and Stephen M. Garrett (eds.), Theology and the Political (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 145–159
[11] Sturla J. Stålsett, A Political Theology of Vulnerability (Leiden: Brill, 2023).
[12] Gianni Vattimo, After Christianity, trans. by Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
[13] Hansung Kim, “The Cross-cultural Missions of a Small, Poor and Weak Church,” Theology of Mission 69, no. 1 (03), 208-242 Professor Kim is also the author of “A Missiological Accessment of the State and Christianity in Nepal,” 복음과 선교 제27집 (Gospel and Mission 67) 213-255, and “From Nepal Mission to Mission Nepal,” Journal of Asian Mission 18, no. 1 (2017): 27-49.