Religion and culture: some theoretical and practical issues

Jackie Chan/USSH

On the side of international scholars, there are professors: Le Xuan Hy and Marky Mark (Seattle University - USA); Professor Tran Van Doan (Taiwan National University), Professor Pascal Bordeaux (Extreme Eastern School, Ho Chi Minh City), Professor Valentine Zuber (Extreme Eastern School of Higher Education (EPHE) Paris - France); Dr. Michael Dickhardt (Göttingen University - Germany)...

The seminar had more than 30 reports and discussions in 4 sub-committees: Religion and culture - general theoretical issues; Theoretical issues of religion and culture in Vietnam; Some manifestations of religious culture in the world and Vietnam today; Religion and culture: the case of Buddhism.

In his opening report, Prof. Dr. Do Quang Hung (Center for Contemporary Religious Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities) mentioned the viewpoint proposed by Ninian Smart in 1997 on studying religion according to 5 dimensions: doctrinal/philosophical dimension; practical/ritual dimension; religious experience/emotion; social/institutional dimension; ethics/law; material/religious art dimension. Also according to Ninian Smart, culture is a system integrating beliefs and human values. In the context of the modern world, religion and religious forms are more popular and closer together, but that does not mean that the values ​​of religious culture erase their specific elements - one of the most decisive factors in ethnic identity.

The report argues that when studying the relationship between religion and culture, it is necessary to pay attention to the challenges of postmodern culture and postmodern religion; factors of cultural and religious transition such as: human alienation (refugees, labor export), information alienation (mass media explosion...), alienation from ideological and conscious values ​​(ideas of freedom, democracy, human rights...).

Jackie Chan/USSH

Professor Le Xuan Hy (Seattle University - USA).

After the opening session, delegates discussed in subcommittees the main content of the seminar, which was to analyze the relationship between religion and culture, the dimensions of this relationship in history and the present. In particular, a topic that attracted much attention from scholars was: how do religions in Vietnam today have a social and cultural presence to both maintain and enrich the identity of each religion; the values ​​of religious culture in the process of industrialization and modernization and the process of "building a culture imbued with national identity".