Harmony and Reconciliation in Christianity and Daoism - Alleviating Identity-Based Suffering

This book presents an analytical investigation of the Christian concept of reconciliation and the Daoist concept of harmony. It poses the question whether Christian reconciliation and Daoist harmony could be operationalized in ways to ease human suffering caused by interpersonal, intergroup, national, and international conflicts. Christianity and Daoism both describe the loss of harmonious connections with fellow humans, nature, and the sacred, but they also point to ways of reconciliation, to returning to harmony through re-connection. As an interreligious dialogue between Daoism and Christianity has hardly ever been described before, this study focuses on the question—within a hermeneutical context of singularity, difference, and concordance—whether early Daoist views on harmony and early Christian views on reconciliation could be operationalized relevantly in order to contribute to endeavors towards a resolution of interpersonal and intergroup conflicts.