Media Ecology and Religious Pluralism : Engaging Walter Ong and Jacques Dupuis Toward Effective Interreligious Dialogue

This book enunciates the need for Christians to acknowledge that religious pluralism is not only a de facto reality but also a de jure of God's relationship with all people. It further argues that this is an imperative theological assumption, indispensable for truly honest, lasting, respectful, and successful interreligious dialogues with peoples of non-Christian religions. Dupuis's model of inclusive religious pluralism, in alliance with Ong's media ecology of dialogic openness in a media society, can serve to promote the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations' search for successful interreligious dialogue in contemporary multi-religious settings. Ong's media ecology sustained by the understanding of the media as effective agents for communication across social and cultural plurality clearly makes him, in the mind of this author one of the best ideological functional partners with Dupuis in the search for social peace promoted by the media through interreligious dialogue.