An intra-Lutheran perspective on the interreligious movement.

Appreciation

The world today needs more Harold Vogelaars. Harold knows, loves, and can describe with clarity the beauty, power, and spiritual depth of the Islamic religion.

In just a few months after his arrival at LSTC, Harold had met many Imams and visited most of the mosques in the Chicago area. Often he was accompanied in the classroom by a professor from the Islamic College of America, a newly established institution on the near north side of the city. By midterm he had organized a Saturday marriage workshop for Christian-Muslim couples.

During the Bosnian conflict, Harold arranged for the two of us to visit a mosque in the suburbs. There we listened to a young Imam from Bosnia and two longtime members of the congregation tell of the atrocities Christians were visiting daily on Muslims in their home region. It was very painful for them to describe and heart-wrenching for us to hear. Harold's purpose in arranging this meeting was to give us an opportunity to apologize for the brutal actions of our Christian brothers and sisters. It was a hard but necessary deed.

At one of my last commencements as president of LSTC, I had the historic privilege of conferring an M.Div. degree on a Muslim student who was preparing to be a Chaplain in the U.S. Navy. At that time, this was the only way this very fine young man could accomplish his goal. The armed services required that all chaplains have an M.Div. degree in spite of the fact that Muslims and other religious communities do not prepare their clergy in this way. Harold proposed that we help. He served as the student's advisor and arranged a creative course of studies with colleagues at the Islamic College that met the requirements of the M.Div. curriculum.

When I retired from LSTC, a Muslim professor who frequently visited the seminary said, "This is one Christian institution in the city where we Muslims feel safe." I accepted this compliment as a tribute to Harold Vogelaar and his ministry at LSTC. In this time of more frequent contact and, in some places, heightened conflict with Muslim believers, Harold has provide safe places where Christians and Muslims, sometimes together with Jews, can undertake a critical work of our time--building relationships of understanding, respect, and friendship for the sake of the common good.

It is a privilege to contribute this essay in his honor.

Lutherans in dialogue

Intrareligious discussions (those within a religious or spiritual tradition) have moved to the forefront of the global interreligious movement. At the 2004 Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona, Spain, intrareligious programs accounted for one-third of the more than four hundred program offerings. The intrareligious emphasis has been initiated by people who have been engaged in interreligious discussions. As a result of searching, probing interreligious conversations or encounters, participants often feel the need to gather with members of their own religious communities and explore at a deeper level their own tradition in relation to other religions. What does our faith community believe about people of other faiths? What gifts do we have to contribute? What gifts might we receive? What obstacles prevent us from participation in interreligious engagements? What compels us to reach out?

This essay is intended to contribute to the Lutheran intrareligious discussion of questions like these.

Lutherans have proud traditions. They work well for those of us who have been born and bred within the church and for some who come to this expression of the Christian faith by way of transfer from other denominations or conversion from other religions. "Justification by grace through faith" is the heart of this global communion. This organizing principle, identified by Martin Luther from the writings of St. Paul, has centered and defined our tradition around the world and throughout history. This principle frees us for lives of service; it is a clarifying lens to interpret scripture and history. It shapes many of our religious and liturgical practices and is a guide that directs our ethical decisions.

While the word of grace is the precious core of Lutheranism, it is also a central theme of all Christian traditions. It is safe to say that the "doctrine of grace" sets Christianity in general and Lutherans in particular apart from other world religions and spiritual traditions. This is so because the Christian understanding of sin that permeates human life and the whole created order and that requires God's dramatic grace-filled action to redeem and restore the whole creation is alien to virtually all other religions. Jews, for example, do not think of themselves as alienated and separated from God by sin in the same way. They are God's chosen and imbued by nature with a sense of a covenantal connection to God. Islam is rooted in the same Abrahamic soil and sees no need for a savior. Rather, its followers are guided by a meticulous recitation of the Islamic way of life given in the sacred Koran and in the writings about the Prophet's life, even as they prepare for an all-determining final judgment at the end of life.

Eastern religions have a different starting point. Hinduism's beginnings are veiled in the mystic origins of human consciousness. Together with Zoroastrians, Jains, and Buddhists, with their founding teachers and teachings, these ancient religions form a vast repository of wisdom about the nature of life and ways human beings can navigate its pitfalls and perils. Goals differ--the search may be for happiness, escape from suffering, or a path toward a more perfect life. But the Tao (the way) is prescribed by the Gurus of the past and present, and the capacity to follow the way lies within all sentient beings.

Other spiritual traditions, ancient and modem, tend to select strands from the great storehouse of human spiritual wisdom and weave their own distinct design of the way to be in the world.

So the Lutheran focus on justification by grace is a strange notion to most people of other religious and spiritual traditions. Moreover, the perception that human beings are sinful creatures, separated from God, each other, and even themselves and that they need God's grace-filled intervention to be freed and forgiven, is a radically foreign, even repugnant, idea to many.

How then are Lutherans to relate to people of other faiths in this interreligious age? What should our attitude be toward other religions? Should we seek opportunities to be involved in interreligious gatherings and events? What aspects of our Lutheran tradition prepare us for these encounters? How are we to think of our responsibility to people who do not know Christ, do not believe, and are not baptized?

First, any intra-Lutheran discussion of these and other questions about our relationship to people of other religions and spiritual traditions must be grounded in our central affirmation of justification by grace through faith. Many familiar passages and positions flow from a focus on the unconditional love of God as our starting point. The "once for all" nature of God's act in Jesus Christ strongly implies that what happened in Christ has universal implications--for those who know and those who do not know the details of the redemptive drama of the New Testament.

Second, the missiological insights of previous generations are important to this discussion. We affirm that it is the task of Christians to tell the story of Jesus with confidence and that it is the Holy Spirit working in the lives of people who calls, gathers, and enlightens the whole church on earth. Belief, conversion, and salvation are the Spirit's work, not ours. We need to decide how best to be channels for the Spirit, to embody the Spirit in our lives in general and especially in our relations to people of other religions.

Third, our contemporary reality casts the intrareligious discussion in a totally new light. In this globalized world, religions are no longer identified exclusively with a set of countries or a continent. Harvard professor Diana Eck calls this phenomenon the "marbleization" of religions. Just as the colors of a richly textured piece of marble flow in and among each other, so the religions of the world are present to one another as never before. The skylines of our cities today are marked with not only steeples and crosses but also domes and minarets. The religion sections in secular bookstores are a digest of the world's religions, and in some places it may be hard to find a Christian text in the mix. The interreligious movement is a product of this new age and raises the intrareligious questions with new specificity.

Many Christians today are in firsthand contact with people who live by a totally different set of spiritual presuppositions about life. It is challenging to imagine the worldview and the spiritual feelings of a Buddhist, for example, with no concept of an omnipotent God and no reason to turn to God. Likewise, it can be a confusing experience to describe what Christians believe to someone who can scarcely fathom the appeal of a crucified God and is likely to turn glassy-eyed at the story of a resurrection from the dead and an ascension into heaven. Nevertheless, challenging and confusing as these exchanges are, they are real and are happening today with increasing regularity in interreligious gatherings and in everyday contacts. Minimally, our intra-religious reflections should lead us to welcome the opportunity that these exchanges present simply as a way to meet one of the responsibilities most Christians feel at some level, namely, to tell the Story.

Although the stories of the various religious and spiritual traditions differ widely and have little in common at the conceptual or theological level, many discoveries of deep commonalities are being made at the ethical and spiritual levels. It is not an overstatement to say that love is the common ethical principle of all religions and spiritual traditions. Buddhists can affirm the Golden Rule as fully as Lutherans. In most traditions, love is not left an abstract principle but is spelled out in terms of rules or codes of conduct that detail what love means in relation to self, neighbor, other creatures, and the world around us. Indeed, there is much to admire, to inspire, and to marvel at in the ethical wisdom of the world's religions. Many of the derivative expressions of love such as forgiveness and care for the welfare of others are prominent in the practices of other religious traditions. The formulations of these attributes in stories and sayings, poetry and images, may be strange, but common ethical conclusions are readily apparent.

Working from these three dimensions--the centrality of grace, the role of the Spirit, and the interreligious engagements of contemporary life--should free Lutherans and lead us to conclude the following in our relation to people of other faiths:

First, we should take full advantage of this "day that the Lord has made," embracing every opportunity to engage with people of other faiths as, indeed, people of faith. We will quickly find that, at the ethical level, in our commitment to serve the common good and work for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world, we share much more with people of other faiths than we do with people of little or no faith.

Second, our faithfulness to Christ does not oblige us to covert our neighbors of other faiths. Our understanding that this is the Spirit's work should be real and sufficient. We should, however, take every opportunity in interreligious settings to tell the Story, to make our motivations plain, and to demonstrate, especially by our deeds, that it is our faith that shapes our love.

Third, the once-for-all act of God embedded at the center of Lutheran teaching as the doctrine of justification should equip us to approach our lives in this interreligious age in the confidence that what has happened for us has happened for all human beings and, indeed, for the whole creation.

For these reasons, Lutheran Christians can enter wholeheartedly into discussion, dialogue, common purpose, and common action with people of other faiths. We should learn what they believe, how they live, and what they are motivated to be and become in this life. We will be amazed at how much we share. The revelation of God's grace in Jesus Christ is unique. We should share it with conviction but without contention. Many will admire our story and find strength in it, even if they never come to the font and the table.

And we should prepare to be deepened ourselves. Some of the practices, disciplines, and convictions of others will change us. Prayer, for example, may take on aspects of meditation with more emphasis on adoration and fewer petitions of request. Almost certainly, as we learn more about the depth and greatness that is hidden in the world's religions, our own sense of the awesome mystery of God will be magnified.

William E. Lesher

President emeritus, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago 

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