the journal, you will likely receive comments from reviewers (two, or possibly three) with their suggested changes. At this point, it is amazing how many writers who receive revise and resubmit letters never actually resubmit the essay. After receiving the reviewers’ comments, it’s probably a good idea to read them and then wait a couple of days before responding. More than once we have received reviews with comments we initially thought quite wrong, only to find ourselves agreeing with them after a few days. When resubmitting your essay after receiving reviews, you should submit a cover letter detailing the changes suggested by the reviewers and describing any changes you have made to the essay in response. Respond directly and professionally to every reviewer comment. You don’t necessarily have to comply with every suggestion; but if you disagree with a comment and disregard the suggestion, you should provide your justification for doing so.
Celebrate!
You may experience some hesitation before submitting the essay. This is understandable, for once it’s submitted you lose some degree of control over it. It’s a difficult thing to submit a manuscript for publication. Even if it’s rejected from your first‐choice journal, submitting it is still an accomplishment and your work during the submission process will make it more likely that your second‐choice journal will accept it. So reward yourself in some way!
In Conclusion
Learning to write at the highest level of the academy is hard. But we are committed to the view that stating complex and technical arguments with stylistic clarity can be learned through examples. We chose models of writing that reinforce certain basic principles – a good piece of academic writing has a signpost, it is fair to the opponents, it illustrates a grasp of the literature, and it always goes back to the primary sources.
We are hopeful that this book will assist those who aspire to write research articles. We hope the ultimate result is a growth in the academy, in the church, and in the world of thoughtful exponents of creative theology.
John Allan Knight and Ian S. Markham
Notes
1 1As you begin to write your dissertation, keep in mind that you will eventually want to publish it as a book. The following works are very helpful in this task: William Germano, From Dissertation to Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); idem, Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Beth Luey, ed., Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); and Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato, Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction–and Get It Published (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002). While revising our dissertations for publication, however, we found it extremely useful to submit some portions (usually not a whole chapter) to journals for publication. We found the feedback from the anonymous reviewers to be extremely helpful. Thus, we have focused most of our comments on writing article‐length essays. In our comments here, we are indebted to Victoria Reyes, “How to write an effective journal article and get it published (essay),” Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/05/09/how-write-effective-journal-article-and-get-it-published-essay; “How to get published in an academic journal: top tips from editors,” The Guardian, Jan. 3, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jan/03/how-to-get-published-in-an-academic-journal-top-tips-from-editors; and Faye Halpern, Thomas A. Lewis, Anne Monius, Robert Orsi, and Christopher White, A Guide to Writing in Religious Studies, https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/religious_studies.pdf.
1 Knowing God through Religious Pluralism
Tinu Ruparell
RESEARCH LEVEL 2
Editors’ Introduction
Good academic writing is clear and elegant. This opening essay meets both of those conditions. It is a provocative thesis: All serious theology must be shaped by religious pluralism. He believes that this has always been the case; and now it must continue to be “consciously” so in the future. He suggests five characteristics of such theology, which he sets out as the heart of the essay. He then concludes by responding to some of the objections that the reader might have to his argument.
Theology is always hybrid (see Box 1.1).
Box 1.1
Tinu Ruparell puts his thesis front and center. All theology draws on a range of traditions and sources. He then unpacks this assertion by insisting that all serious theological systems must take religious pluralism seriously. This is a shocking assertion. It means that all those who primarily work as theologians within a tradition are, in the view of Ruparell, not doing serious theology. The opening of this essay is controversial and provocative. The reader is invited to engage with the argument.
I propose this statement as axiomatic for any theology which takes religious pluralism seriously, and of course all theology must take religious pluralism seriously. Indeed I contend that no theological system can be taken seriously if it does not countenance the facts of religious plurality at its very foundation. To fail to do so is to be blind to the conditions of human thinking about the religious. The religious traditions we encounter, study, may participate in, critique, and/or promote have all originated, developed, and continue to exist within a context of religious plurality. This, I submit, is an empirical fact needing little further argument.1 Moreover, all theology, like all theorization, is inherently comparative.2 In order to understand and create theology the scholar partakes in comparative and generalizing activity, which requires emic and etic reference. Religious pluralism is thus an intra-religious concern as much as it is an interreligious one. No tradition, and therefore no theology, can thus be considered without conscious reference to the Other since all traditions were originated and continue to develop with explicit or implicit reference to other traditions which form their contexts. The importance of religious pluralism for our understanding of the theology, as well as for the production of novel, creative theology, cannot be understated. In what follows I will argue that the practice of theology must be recast to be explicitly pluralistic in a way that has not hitherto been the case. Theology must be more obviously interreligious and hybrid because theology is already interreligious and hybrid, but currently does not recognize itself as such (see Box 1.2).3
Box 1.2
Footnote 3 is a lovely note. The author is anticipating an obvious objection: If all theology is – as a matter of current reality – hybrid, then why is this program so radical and provocative? He uses the footnote to answer this objection. He is writing alert to potential criticisms to his arguments.
In redescribing theology through religious pluralism, I argue, it becomes more powerful, more relevant, and more useful. More powerful in its increased capacity to accurately describe the human condition; more relevant as it breaks out of its chains as a chauvinist practice of merely priestly interest; and more useful as it regains a role in broader economic, social, political, and cultural spheres.
Before I proceed to describe some elements of a pluralistically remade theology, an issue of terminology needs to be clarified (see Box 1.3).
Box 1.3
Ruparell is a