The theme for "After Religion" this coming week is "the invention of 'world religions'" and one of the assigned course materials is a museum in Taiwan. 世界宗教博物館 claims to be the world's only Museum of World Religions and I'm hoping students brave the virtual tour. If they do they'll see this, looking back along the exhibition's central axis.
It's a model of the cathedral at Chartres, and you can see reflected in the glass behind it some of the other Greatest Sacred Buildings represented, from the Dome of the Rock to a 9th c. Buddhist temple in Shanxi, Ise Jingu to the Golden Temple in Amritsar; if you turned around, you'd see a scale model of Borobodur, near the center of the room, and on the wall behind it a display of Taiwanese folk religion. 
The religious architecture display, united by what appears to be a stream of water flowing in a loop underneath the models, is elevated a little above the main exhibit which encircles it, with displays dedicated to a selection of world religions: on the side through which you enter the space Daoism, Shinto, Maya, Sikhism and Hinduism, on the other Christianity, Judaism, Ancient Egypt, Islam and Buddhism. A relatively standard set except for Maya and Ancient Egypt which, 
while not represented among the monuments, mark the midpoints of the displays. (Here you see the Day of the Dead, presented as part of Maya, reflected in the vitrine of Ancient Egypt.) I'm hoping the layout here gets students thinking about how to think about religious plurality and how to represent it: I've learned from teaching with the Rubin Museum over the years that thinking about curating is a stimulating way to encourage analysis and synthesis. The most
observant might look at the whole museum, which has fun rituals built into the visit involving water and pilgrimage and handprints, and will notice that there is a particular theology of world religions organizing everything. Look again at the picture of Chartres above. The glass behind it reflects the world religions but you can also make out a round shape behind it. It's the heart of the building, a 3-story-high
suspended golden sphere called Avatamsaka World. (If it calls to mind the Hayden Planetarium at AMNH that's no coincidence; the same architectural firm designed both.) Visitors to the museum pass under this sphere as they enter, and walk past it on their way to the World Religions exhibit. The glorious Avatamsaka (Flower Garland, 華嚴 huayan/kegon) Sutra is centrally important to East Asian Buddhism, and definitely not what the western concocters of "world religions" had in mind! Do you suppose any of the students will look it up?
