Editor's Introduction

In the outskirts of Tokyo, a vast semicircular structure hosts the headquarters of Risshō-Kōsei-Kai, a Japanese new religious movement that was founded in 1938 by Nikkyō Niwano (1906–1999) and Myōkō Naganuma (1889–1957). In Japan, the late-nineteenth and the earlier part of the twentieth centuries witnessed the emergence of a variety of new religious movements, from alternative Shinto organizations such as Omotokyo, syncretistic organizations such as Tenrikyō, and neo-Buddhist groups such as Reiyūkai. This last movement, in particular, proved to be very successful in the difficult years that followed the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and the following economic depression—as a lay organization, it was not affiliated to any sect, and it managed to eschew the sectarian divisions that plagued the different Nichiren schools. Risshō-Kōsei-Kai's two founders started off as members of Reiyūkai, but chose to leave when some of Reiyūkai's leaders suggested that the movement's emphasis on the Lotus Sūtra—one of the most influential Mahāyāna sūtras—was out of step with the needs of Japanese society. Niwano would soon become the main teacher of this new organization, which would soon number thousands of adherents. Work on the daiseidō—the Great Sacred Hall—was begun in the wake of the war and was completed in the late 1950s. At the center of the hall stands a massive statue of the Eternal Buddha, the central figure of the Lotus Sūtra, and the key focus of Risshō-Kōsei-Kai's devotion. This iconographic choice stands in stark contrast with the Nichiren practice to honor a scroll or calligraphic image—known as gohonzon—inscribed with the title of the Lotus Sūtra and ascribed to the hand of Nichiren himself. By the time of Niwano's passing in 1999, there were over 200 Risshō-Kōsei-Kai centers in twenty countries, with over six million members.

On the one hand, Niwano's teaching focused on themes that were common with other traditional Nichiren sects: devotion to the Lotus Sūtra as the highest teaching in Buddhism, the presence of the Buddha nature in all beings, the centrality of Nichiren and his role as a bodhisattva, and a strong missionary impulse. On the other hand, Risshō-Kōsei-Kai took the lead among the Buddhist movements in Japan and already in the 1960s became involved in interreligious dialogue, especially with the Catholic Church and other Christian churches. In 1965, as the Second Vatican Council was drawing to a close, Niwano was one of the first Buddhist leaders to meet with Pope Paul VI. In 1970, he helped to establish the World Conference of Religions for Peace. A most singular development of Niwano's interreligious outreach was his extraordinary friendship with the Italian Catholic activist Chiara Lubich (1920–2008), the founder and spiritual leader of the Focolare movement. Lubich's intuition, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, was that people of faith could play a crucial in the reconciliation of the human family—a vision that not only anticipated the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, but also echoed—despite the obvious cultural and spiritual differences—Niwano's own hope for Risshō-Kōsei-Kai in the difficult reality of Japan under American occupation. In 1981, Chiara Lubich visited Risshō-Kōsei-Kai's headquarters in Tokyo and gave a talk in the daiseidō introducing her audience to her own spiritual experience—an unprecedented honor for a woman and a Catholic. This initial contact led to multiple exchanges between Risshō-Kōsei-Kai and Focolare, with many Japanese Buddhists finding their way to Loppiano in Italy, where Focolare had established its open university. The essay by Hiroshi Munehiro Niwano in this issue touches on the commonalities between the vision of the Italian Catholic movement and the spirituality of the Lotus Sūtra.

Two decades after Niwano's passing, the interreligious engagement of Risshō-Kōsei-Kai's founder continues today in the annual International Lotus Sūtra Seminar, where scholars from all over the world come together to discuss this foundational text bringing insights from a variety of disciplines and religious traditions. The 2019 seminar brought together a small group of scholars who over the course of four days were able to engage in lively conversations about different aspects of the Lotus Sūtra, while also visiting some local Buddhist sights and being exposed to some of Risshō-Kōsei-Kai's initiatives. In 2018, Buddhist-Christian Studies published the proceedings of a 2017 international conference held in Pistoia (Italy) on the work of the eighteenth-century Jesuit Ippolito Desideri, one of the first Catholic missionaries to reach Tibet and the first to master its language and truly familiarize himself with its religious tradition. In a similar fashion, the editors of the journal are happy to introduce to our readers the proceedings of the 2019 International Lotus Sūtra seminar. So as to make all papers from the conference available in the same place, the editors chose to derogate from the journal's exclusive focus on Buddhist-Christian relations, including two papers by Yusuf Imtiyaz—from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia—and Mira Niculescu—Associate Researcher at CéSor, Paris—that explore the world of the Lotus Sūtra from an Islamic and a Jewish perspective. Other papers—such as Thomas Cattoi's reflection on the Lotus Sūtra and the spirituality of the Philokalia or Leo Lefebure's considerations on the Lotus Sūtra and the notion of Christian wisdom—are more firmly situated in the tradition of comparative theology; the contributions by Dominick Scarangello, Ruben Habito, and Kristin Largen ponder the import of the worldview undergirding the Lotus Sūtra for a contemporary speculative understanding of religious pluralism; and finally, J. Jeffrey Franklin introduces us to the Rezeptionsgeschichte of the Lotus Sūtra in the nineteenth-century Western literature.

The second half of the issue is divided into short thematic sections. Four papers engage different aspects of the Buddhist and the Christian contemplative traditions in a lively conversation, ranging from Martin Repp and Nicholas Worssam's reflections on the Pauline—and Lutheran—vision of soteriology and spirituality and their echoes in the Mahāyāna traditions, to Stephanie Cloete's excursus on God's presence and the notion of Buddha lands and Dennis Stromback's overview of Nishitani Keiji's critique of Western modernity from the perspective of Japanese Buddhism. The second group of papers range from the more speculative—Joel Daniel's reflection on the Holy Spirit from a Buddhist perspective, as well as Mark Unno's mapping of a relational approach to interreligious dialogue—to the more historical, such as Peter Feldmeier's look at the Vatican declaration Nostra Aetate from a Buddhist perspective, and Briana Wong's historical overview of Buddhist-Christian relations in Cambodia in the mid-twentieth century.

The following section comprises a few instances of textual and visual encounters between Buddhism and Christianity, starting with Sunghye Hwang's juxtaposition of the Gospel of Thomas and the Pali text of the Itivuttaka and continuing with two startling papers that combine comparative theology and art history: Li Huijun's reflection on the "Chinese Madonna" from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and Junhyoung Shin's visual comparison of Byzantine imperial iconography in Ravenna and the pictorial hagiographies of the Binjiang caves in China. These last two papers are particularly significant as they remind us that the work of comparative theology does not merely unfold through the exploration of texts, but also through the engagement of material culture and artistic artifacts.

The last section moves beyond the purely theoretical and speculative dimension to explore the applied and pastoral import of the intersection between the two traditions. Keith Neigenfind asks whether nonviolence and pacifism are crucial or merely optional components of Buddhism and Christianity, while Wioleta Polinska takes a detour into psychology with her exploration of the notion of empathy and Kristin Beise Kiblinger asks what contribution Buddhist speculative thought can give to the contemporary conversation around dementia. The last two papers take up the very topical question of race: Aizaiah G. Yong reflects on the multireligious roots of compassion spirituality for a multiracial society, whereas Carolyn Medine reflects on Jan Willis's autobiographical rendering of her experience as an African American woman with a dual identity as a Baptist and a Buddhist practitioner.

In these difficult times, when the whole world is enveloped in an unprecedented health crisis because of the Coronavirus pandemic, interreligious dialogue may appear irrelevant, or an unnecessary destruction from the more pressing issues at hand. Some religious institutions struggle to offer a compassionate spiritual response, and many appear to turn the pandemic into yet another chapters of our never-ending culture wars. It is in moments like these, however, that the relevance of the contemplative traditions can shine through layers of institutional infighting and fatigue. The Lotus Sūtra 10: 2–11 tells us that anyone wishing to expound the wisdom of this text should "enter the sanctuary of Tathagata, put on the robe of Tathagata, and sit on the throne of Tathagata." If the throne of Tathagata is the awareness of the emptiness of all phenomena, "the 'sanctuary of Tathagata' is a mind of great mercy and compassion towards all living beings," while "the 'robe of Tathagata' is a heart of gentleness and patience."

On behalf of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, the editors of the journal wish to extent a warm word of thanks to Jonathan Seitz for his many years of service as editor of the Society's "News and Views." We also wish to welcome his successor John Becker, whose first bulletin is included in this issue of the journal.