Seeing Through Text: Doing Theology Among the Srivaisnavas of South India

by Francis X. Clooney

Seeing Through Texts: Doing Theology Among the Srivaisnavas of South India is the Suny Series toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions.

About the Author:

Francis X. Clooney, S.J., a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus, joined the Divinity School in 2005. After earning his doctorate in South Asian Languages and Civilizations (University of Chicago, 1984), he taught at Boston College until coming to Harvard. His primary areas of scholarship are theological commentarial writings in the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions of Hindu India, and the developing field of comparative theology, a discipline distinguished by attentiveness to the dynamics of theological learning deepened through the study of traditions other than one's own. He has also written on the Jesuit missionary tradition, particularly in India, and the dynamics of dialogue in the contemporary world.

He is on numerous editorial boards; was the first president of the International Society for Hindu-Christian Studies; and, from 1998 to 2004, was coordinator for interreligious dialogue for the Jesuits of the United States. Professor Clooney is the author of numerous articles and books, including most recently Beyond Compare: St. Francis and Sri Vedanta Desika on Loving Surrender to God (Georgetown University Press, 2008), The Truth, the Way, the Life: Christian Commentary on the Three Holy Mantras of the Srivaisnava Hindus (Peeters Publishing, 2008) and Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming). His current projects include an exercise in dramatic theology, the reading of Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons on the Song of Songs along with Nampillai's commentary on Satakopan's Tiruvaymoli, a study of 18th and 19th Jesuit Indology.