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Making Hope Real: Interreligious Dialogue
By Rebecca Kratz Mays
Quaker teacher, staff member at the Dialogue Institute,Temple University
Since 9/11 many people have agonized over how to make real the hope for respect and nonviolence among differing faith traditions. Some are fearful; others are just confused, reminded of religious violence in their own neighborhoods. For many, a deep desire to reconcile differences brings fresh urgency to a growing movement: interreligious dialogue.
Speaking recently about the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, President Obama encouraged the hope: "I do believe that if we can talk to one another openly and honestly, then perhaps old rifts will start to mend and new partnerships will begin to emerge. In a world that grows smaller by the day, perhaps we can begin to crowd out the destructive forces of zealotry and make room for the healing power of understanding."
For 50 years, Leonard Swidler, professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia has envisioned just such a global community.
As early as the 1970s, Swidler wrote guidelines for respectful dialogue and effective collaboration. This Dialogue Decalogue helped International Scholars' Abrahamic Trialogue conferences to engage Jewish, Muslim, and Christian scholars in dialogue with one another and with religious, business, and community leaders in areas of conflict--the former Yugoslavia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East.
In 1964, he founded (together with his late wife Arlene) the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (J.E.S.), the first peer-reviewed academic journal to provide a forum for scholarly interreligious interchange. Out of this work, Swidler established the Dialogue Institute to build trust and respectful relationships among people with religious differences within and outside the academy.
Now, when people with religious differences need to listen to and learn from one another more than ever, this visionary globetrotter, the J.E.S., and the Dialogue Institute have ready a global network of scholars, businesspersons, politicians, and religious leaders who can help.
How do we participate? Scholars, theologians, clergy, and people at the grass roots know dialogue can revive the perennial values at the heart of each faith: humility, sincerity, and trust. The task is not easy, but necessary as will be the need for forgiveness--also valued in all faiths. The hope of dialogue is to keep the search for truth grounded in openness to new insight without losing the wisdom of tradition.
In Swidler's words, "Whether I claim that the Bible or the Qur'an or the Gita is God's truth, it is I who affirm that it is so. But if neither I nor anyone can know everything about anything, how do I proceed to search for an ever fuller grasp of reality, of truth, especially about the most complicated claims to truth, religion? Dialogue becomes a whole new way of thinking and acting. In dialogue I talk or collaborate with you primarily so I can learn what I cannot perceive from my place in the world, with my personal lenses of knowing. Through your eyes I see what I cannot see from my side of the globe, and vice versa."
When the sincerity of my truth pushes me to challenge the sincerity of yours, trust in God's mystery requires both the inspired zeal of my conviction and the humility that I cannot know everything. We crowd out the destructive forces of zealotry the instant we seek to know why the other person holds to her or his truth with such conviction. To begin to understand why is to make room for the healing power of understanding. Dialogue Institute administrator, Dr. Julie Sheetz-Willard, calls such a moment of understanding a "meeting"--when we realize that, "even though it's true that we have real, meaningful differences, it's also profoundly true that we are connected, bound together in some common desire for seeking God's purposes in a shared world."
These "meetings" require patience and perseverance. Many individuals are already at work. They include those scholars/activists who trained in 2007 and 2008 with the Dialogue Institute as part of the U.S. Department of State's Fulbright Interfaith Community Action Project.
The President of Al Qasemi Academy in Baqa El-Garbiah, Israel, went back to incorporate dialogue methodologies in the Arab education system. The director of the Interfaith Commission for the Scottish Government returned home and set up the Scottish-American Faith Exchange. Muslim scholar-activists returned to Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, France, and India. One will teach a seminar about "The Common Word," a document to strengthen Christian-Muslim relations; another will open a center for Jewish-Muslim relations.
Graduate students also serve as interns for the Dialogue Institute, preparing to be interfaith activists. Angela Ilić, a native of Hungary, works in the U.S. and Eastern Europe to help create greater trust and cooperation among religious communities. Per Faaland, an evangelical Christian, explores the challenges to dialogue within his tradition.
This network of seasoned scholars and activists carries forward the momentum from the President's agenda for change. The most satisfying work, Institute Director Dr. Racelle Weiman says, is to motivate and to equip grassroots initiatives: "Whether from minority or majority religious perspectives, most people take great satisfaction in being a part of an open and dialogical community. These communities will lead the way to a world where violence and intolerance in the name of religion will not be acceptable anywhere."
Any one can begin to help anywhere. A conversation in a living room, an interreligious service project in a neighborhood, a book discussion group, a smile or a handshake on the street--the possibilities are limitless where humility, sincerity, and trust are the tools and the goals. Interfaith Dialogue at the Grass Roots, a new outreach book from the J.E.S./Dialogue Institute, recounts stories and suggests practical steps for how to convert fear and confusion to trust and understanding, for how to help make hope real.
Rebecca Kratz Mays is a Quaker teacher and editor. She is on staff of the Dialogue Institute at Temple University, where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Interreligious Dialogue.
By Rebecca Kratz Mays |
March 12, 2009; 10:26 AM ET
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Posted by: clearthinking1 | March 18, 2009 4:45 PM
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Ms. Mays,
You seem to overlook a very important and basic fact about dialogue. It requires mutual respect.
There are many good,decent, respectful, and peaceful people in any religion. They are not the problem. Reasonable people are reasonable and can be reasoned with. But what to do about the others?
The problem is that most "religions" have become supremacist cults. The prophet or founder is key in these "cults of personality". The idea of the superior or superseding prophet or religion creates supremacist emotions. This is true for major religions with founders like Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Zoraster, Mahavir, Guru Nanak as well as smaller cults around the world.
The only "religion" that does not have a founder is Hinduism. It is based on a philosophy of Unity (Vedanta). It has innumerable texts and philosophies to chose from. Questioning and reforming are allowed. These critical differences have allowed for extensive dialogue over the millennia about spirituality and philosophy. Different points of view are simply different points of view. It is acknowledged that one method or one way is not the best for all.
Dialogue among reasonable people will not cure the ill of religious violence. We must work towards a "religion", like Hinduism, which allows for diversity of opinion while providing the structure necessary for individual spiritual evolution. This will create the culture necessary for more peaceful and respectful societies. Diversity, tolerance, pluralism, nonviolence, and even vegetarianism and environmentalism require a culture that sees Unity and Oneness at the deepest level. Duality and division will always create conflict.