now the question we must ask is…what kind of _practices_ [theology] motivates, what kind of _gaze_ onto others, the guest, the new arrivant, it offers us to carry with us; _not_ who my neighbors are _but_ to whom I am being a neighbor.
Cosmopolitan discourse is in a way a response to the issue of solidarity. Although the precondition for solidarity can be a _community_, solidarity requires more intentional commitment and performance than does community.
Theology should be a discourse that helps the sociopolitical approach to justice to maintain its human face and not to become impersonal.
Cosmopolitan theology is a theology for _the impossible_.
Cosmopolitanism emphasizes and is grounded in a _singular relationality between and among people
Cosmopolitanism is a radical affirmation of the idea of neighbor/enemy-love-as-self love…Cosmopolitanism is about a cosmic scope of justice and hospitality––another name for _love_.
Cosmopolitan theology affirms and radicalizes the belief that the Divine creates each and every human being as equal to every one else as a _citizen-of-the-cosmos and that no one is either superior or inferior to the other.
I believe theology should be about one’s way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a mode of one’s profound existence in the world.
Cosmopolitan discourse…provides one with a _public gaze_ with which one can relate oneself to others in a different way.
The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.
I want to affirm that thinking and living, knowing and doing, theory and practice intersect.
Theological discourse can be, in and of itself, a form of identity and solidarity.
How can one maintain a theological confidence in what one claims to be _true_ while acknowledging the existence of multiple religions that also claim to be _true_?
Cosmopolitanism starts from the _singular_ individual rather than the _faceless_ collective
Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.
_For what ends_ does one claim cosmopolitanism? _Whose interest_ does it serve?
Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all.
the overall theme of theology can be twofold: the search for meaning and the responsibility one has to the others.
the cosmopolitan gaze of planetary love and hospitality _is_ what constitutes being _religious_.