Religion and the Other: Experience between Knowledge and Truth

Abstract: By examining anthropological and phenomenological turns of religion, as proposed by Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Long, respectively, I observe that religion and the other are inextricably bound and even reflect one another. Religion, like the other, is irreducibly other: ambiguous, ubiquitous, and of infinite possibility. Religion’s power is derived from its irreducibility. religion and the other create the possibility for experience. Our orientation as “conquest of” or “exposure to” in the forms of knowledge (power) or truth (goodness), respectively, shape our experience of them. To possess (or “have”) religion is to treat religion as tool and a totality with the possibility of employing it for totalitarian aims, including the conquest of the other. To seek religion, however, is to treat religion as infinity and be opened to it as the exposure to the other. Thus, religious experience is the experience of the other. These become sites for resistance and the otherwise with phenomenological implications for the term “religion” and the study of religion.

Presenter bio: john clayton gehman (he/him) is a first-year Master of Divinity candidate at Harvard Divinity School. Born in San Luís Potosí, México, john clayton is a transracial adoptee who lived in Pennsylvania for most of his life. Not traditionally considered in the “borderlands,” john clayton experienced new ways of being and becoming because of is social, spatial, and geographical situatedness. john clayton attended Boston College, earning an AB in Philosophy. Opting for a gap-year, john clayton completed a Grace Year Fellowship in Millbrook, NY, directing an ESL program and co-directing a BIPOC collective action non-profit. As a minister, john clayton hopes to create spaces for security, imagination, and flourishing.

Presenter affiliation: Harvard Divinity School