Essential Diversity: A Religious Studies Take on Schmidt-Leukel’s Celestial Web

abstract:This article offers a critical engagement with Perry Schmidt-Leukel’s The Celestial Web, a comparative study of Buddhism and Christianity that challenges essentialist views of religious traditions. The book’s approach, grounded in Schmidt-Leukel’s fractal theory of religious diversity, posits that both interreligious and intrareligious pluralism follow similar structural patterns. While acknowledging the theological orientation of the work, the article highlights its value for religious studies but also raises some methodological questions, advocating for a more historically grounded and discourse-focused comparative method.