Apologetics

Apologetics is the field of study concerned with the systematic defense of a position. Someone who engages in apologetics is called an apologist or an "apologete".

Apologetics in World Religions

As the world's religions have encountered one another, apologists from within their respective faiths have emerged.

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One of the earliest Buddhist apologetic texts is The Questions of King Milinda, which deals with ethical and intellectual problems. In the British colonial era, Buddhists in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) wrote tracts that challenged and rejected Christianity. In the mid-nineteenth century, encounters between Buddhists and Christians in Japan prompted the formation of a Buddhist Propagation Society. In recent times A. L. De Silva, an Australian convert to Buddhism, has written a text designed to refute the arguments of Christian evangelists. At a sophisticated academic level, Gunapala Dharmasiri has challenged the Christian concept of God from a Theravadan Buddhist perspective.

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Apologists for Islam have defended the Qur'an using rationalist and empiricist arguments, and using cosmological arguments to prove God's existence. Muslim apologists have also challenged both Jewish and Christian beliefs. The late South African, Ahmed Deedat, was a prolific popular writer who debated Christian evangelists by arguing over discrepancies in the Bible, and claiming the Gospel of Barnabas is the only authentic record of Jesus' life.

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Hindu apologetics designed to counter Christian missions developed in the British colonial era. Richard Fox Young has collated examples of these early apologetic tracts.

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In a famous speech in 1805, Seneca chief Red Jacket was an apologist for Native American religion, as opposed to Christianity.

Related Topics:
1805 - Seneca - Red Jacket - Native American

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