Towards maturity in inter-faith dialogue.

Asignificant development among liberal Christians over the last fifty years has been the encouragement of dialogue with people of other major religious communities of the world. A major driving force behind the movement was the perception of the need to go beyond the dismissiveness, antagonism and intolerance that had in the past characterized Christian attitudes towards other religious communities. This perception in turn appeared to be a product of late-colonial and early post-colonial reflections on the experience of Christian missionaries over the last few hundred years. Many missionaries had gone to such places as India and China holding firm convictions that they had the truth and people of other religious communities were in error; and that salvation came only through Jesus Christ, and hence that beyond the boundaries of the church no one could be saved. But the obvious piety and intellectual sophistication encountered in a place such as India constituted a challenge to these convictions. And as Western imperialism declined and the moral case for it came to be seen as unsustainable, many missionaries--and their home churches in the West--became aware of the highly ambiguous nature of their own enterprise, due to its entanglement with the imperial-colonial project.

In this context, then, the model for relating to people of other religious communities was one of cooperation and solidarity. In fostering good relationships with other communities in non-western areas where Christians were often a minority there was an attempt to develop through dialogue an appreciation of the religious ideas and practices of the majority community (or, in some cases, of the multiple communities sharing the same area). In the west, with the arrival of numerous immigrants from former colonies, dialogue became a significant part of the attempt to build good relations among the various groups in a highly pluralistic society. In both cases there was a general acceptance that it was good to acquire a knowledge of other people's ideas and values, and an understanding of their faith, to the extent that one could imaginatively stand in their shoes, see the world through their eyes. In our complex world, such thinking goes, ignorance is bad; knowledge, building to a mutual understanding among different religious groups, is good.

The processes of dialogue are rendered somewhat superficial, however, by a lack of clarity or consensus about the wider frame for such communication. Hence, for Christians such questions as the following have arisen: Does dialogue replace mission? Is it legitimate within the context of dialogue to proselytize? Is it acceptable to engage in dialogue in order to better understand where other people are coming from, so that one can work out how to tailor the Christian message to their particular take on life's problems?

Or a slightly different set: Is it acceptable that as a result of dialogue one might learn from another person, and one's view of the world might change? Can one think of dialogue as a process of mutual transformation? In this context, might one think of presenting the Christian message as just part of a process of mutual sharing of wisdom? But then, can one learn from another at a deep level--to the extent that one's view of the world is indeed affected, changed, by what one has learnt--and yet still remain a faithful participant in one's own religious community? Or is real dialogue confined to people who are firmly situated within and representative of their own particular community and its traditions, and not open to having their ideas change as a result of the encounter? Hence, further, are there limits to authentic dialogue: even if one allows the possibility of having one's world view transformed in the process of dialogue, can one go only so far in this? Are there ideas which cannot legitimately be questioned: for Christians, for example, the divinity of Jesus, or the doctrine of the Trinity; for Muslims, the view of the Qur'an as given by God without the interference of fallible human beings, Muhammad being merely the recipient of the perfect word?

And there is another question that raises a different set of issues: What about aspects, from the life of the religious community of the person with whom one is engaged in dialogue, which one judges problematic, perhaps even dangerous? Should one refrain from voicing one's criticisms, instead depending on the hope that the process of dialogue will itself foster self-critique on the part of all participants? This approach has often been given a two-fold rationale: first, that since negative criticisms were so often an illegitimate product of the missionary era, it is important that we leave that behind; and second, that there has been so much criticism of religion on the part of secularists that religious people need to stand together in support of one another.

But then the events of September 11, 2001, and the accompanying rationale on the part of radically militant Muslims in terms of the Islamic idea of jihad, have called for a response. Even persons from beyond the Islamic community, whose basic commitment has been to dialogue, have found themselves having to protest, having to conclude that to remain silent in the face of such horrific actions would be a travesty of their own faith, their own humanity. (In retrospect, we realize, of course, that Jews such as Elie Wiesel, in their ongoing dialogue with Christians in the wake of the shoah, have also found themselves compelled to critique and protest the longstanding Christian attitudes towards Jews, the teaching of contempt, as Jules Isaac noted, which rendered the Nazi genocide feasible.)

The fact that such terrible aspects of religious life clearly call for honest critique has the effect of calling into question the basis of much thinking about dialogue. Indeed, the assumption behind dialogue has often been one articulated among Hindus of the late nineteenth century who in response to the arrogance of Christian missionaries, drew on a longstanding Hindu tradition of religious tolerance. They presented an alternative view of religious diversity, in two versions: of the various religions as just different paths towards the same ultimate goal; and of religious people from different traditions as all relating themselves to the same ultimate reality even though they use different names for that reality.

It is not clear that this Hindu approach is quite as easily applicable to our contemporary experience of religious diversity as it seems initially. First, it is not so clear that across the full range of religious communities we are all talking about the same ultimate reality. A typical Christian or Jewish view of God as a personal being and the Mahayana Buddhist idea of shunyata, emptiness, for example, appear to be vastly different takes on the ultimate nature of things. And, second, there are basic features of the historic Hindu tolerance that do not appear easily transferable or helpful. First, the idea of reincarnation or rebirth allowed for the corollary idea that arrival at wisdom or devotion leading to liberation might be the result of innumerable rebirths as one moved up the scale of beings-conceived also as a kind of moral and spiritual scale. And this meant that spiritual rivals who held a religious viewpoint different from one's own could be treated positively, but seen as reflecting a slightly lower stage of development. Second, the Brahmanical version of human hierarchies could take the same general viewpoint and give it more negative implications. For example, males who were not classified as belonging to the three twice-born classes (varnas) were not permitted to participate in rituals presided over by the Brahmans. They were allowed their own rituals, with which the Brahmans did not interfere. However, this tolerance as non-interference could mean that the ability to critique the often inhumane results of the inequalities of the social system, and ideas and ritual practices engaged in by the people of the lower castes--which might sometimes be justly judged as repulsive in their violence and ignorance--was seriously undercut.

With this background, then, it is evident that the easy acceptance of different religions as equally legitimate paths to the same goal is rather too easy. But then the question arises: If dialogue needs to go beyond a too easy acceptance, to include elements of mutual critique, what basis of critique can we offer?

A few years ago, in the wake of 9/11, Charles Kimball wrote a book, When Religion Becomes Evil (Harper San Francisco, 2002), which took up the challenge for religious people of beginning to talk frankly about problematic aspects of religion, particularly in the contemporary world. Kimball mainly focuses his attention on the fact that religious people sometimes become violent and destructive towards others, and he attempts to identify the warning signs of a potential towards violence: absolute truth claims; blind obedience; establishing an ideal time; a view that the end justifies any means; and declaring holy war. In effect Kimball is seeking to unveil the dangers inherent in, the negative dynamics of, the desire for absolute certainty.

There are two problems with this approach. First, in concentrating on a trajectory from the need for certainty to the perpetration of violence, Kimball barely touches on other aspects of religious history to which the word evil might just as well be applied: religious support for slavery, racism, ethnic chauvinism; the denial to women and homosexuals of their full humanity; opposition by religious leaders to new ideas which threaten their power, or threaten the accepted ideas of their community (and persecution of those who bring forward these ideas). Second, a pragmatic argument against absolutisms--that they are problematic because they lead to violence is undercut by the fact that non-absolutists have also at times found themselves persuaded that violence is a necessity.

It seems to me, then, that in attempting to develop a more adequate frame of reference for mutual support and understanding, and for a shared critique, another dimension needs to be added to the theoretical understanding of dialogue. We need to take seriously the modern view of the study of history as an empirically based endeavor, involving an interplay of rigorously accurate description and theoretical explanation, which results in a view of history as an ongoing dynamic developmental process involving both continuity and change--a view now shared at some level by all educated people. With respect to religious ideas and practices, we see that they are developed through processes that involve a complex mix of appropriation, rejection and major or subtle shifts in meaning. That is, religious ideas and practices have a history; a complex of ideas, for example, may be persuasive for centuries, but then, as a result of the development of a different intellectual context, cease to be so. The resultant awareness of this process is often referred to as "historical consciousness," an awareness that all of our ideas are historically situated, culturally conditioned. To live with intellectual integrity in the twenty-first century necessitates a full critical appropriation of this awareness.

One of the effects of such a critical appropriation is to be seen in how we look at the creative, foundational phase for a number of the great religious movements that have been dominant in the world over the last couple of thousand years or so and are still highly influential. With respect to the Buddhist, Christian and Islamic communities we can observe that powerfully charismatic and creative figures, within particular intellectual environments and facing particular pressing issues, developed new positions, fresh visions of how human life should be lived, in such a way as to draw an ongoing positive response from others. This response included conceptual formulations that preserved the basic teachings of these figures and extrapolated from them further teaching which were then attributed to the foundational figure, and articulated theoretical accounts of the unique relationship of these figures to the ultimate nature of things.

If we fully appropriate some such way of looking at what happened, how we now articulate the significance of these creative figures will be very different from what it has been traditionally. Let me try to indicate what I mean by looking at some examples where this "historical consciousness" has been in play, but where the full appropriation of the position has not been realized, indeed, has been truncated by the perceived doctrinal needs of the community.

Mainline Protestant biblical scholars have made wide use of the historical-critical method for at least a hundred years. But many used the historical-developmental model as a modern version of a traditional account of the relation between the old covenant of God with the people of Israel and the new covenant of God with humanity presented in the person of Jesus, i.e., of the New Testament as the culmination and fulfillment of Old Testament history. The historical-developmental model was also used in relation to ongoing Christian history, but the way it was utilized was radically different from that for the pre-Christian period; i.e., in this context the empirical evidence was used as a way of exploring the faithfulness--or lack of it--to the pristine, perfect New Testament vision.

High-church Anglicans/Episcopalians, on the other hand, using a fairly similar developmental model, tended to make the perfect culmination of the development the portrayal of Jesus as the uncreated son of God, co-eternal and of one substance with the Father, and both fully human and fully divine--as developed in the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, presented succinctly in the creeds, and argued systematically in orthodox doctrine. That is, the Christian message is in effect judged to be seen in its fullness not within the rather messy arrangement of New Testament texts, but in the fully articulated Trinitarian worldview of several centuries later.

The traditional Roman Catholic position in some ways accorded more easily with a systematic view of ongoing historical development, in that its combination of the authority of both scripture and tradition was such that the process was not truncated, in intellectual terms, either at the period of the New Testament or, say, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E. However, it is evident that the Roman development did not afford an adequate interplay between the foundational central vision of the Christian community and the church hierarchy. That is, drawing on further critical dimensions of historical consciousness, we can observe the development of a highly authoritarian system, often destructive and dehumanizing, and sometimes murderous, towards those who threatened the unity and power of the church (i.e., those branded as heretics).

A further dimension of our discussion is evoked by another set of phenomena. Many years ago I undertook a study of ecstasy and associated phenomena as found in two different Christian traditions that emphasized these experiences: post-Reformation Catholic devotional mysticism and Protestant Pentecostalism. One of the things that I found most interesting was that Catholic mystics characteristically had visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, while Pentecostals experienced visions of the last days, of the kind recorded in the Book of Revelation. Subsequently I realized that in many different cultures people had visions of, or were possessed by deities, or other super-human beings that were part of their traditional religious worldview. It was surprising, yet not surprising, that people did not recount visions of significant figures beyond their own worldview. Surprising because such experiences were typically interpreted as an encounter with a higher level of reality than that afforded by our ordinary consciousness of the world, yet they were obviously limited to what was already a part of the subject's own religious traditions. It made most sense to see the experiences as a culturally conditioned product of the human imagination. Yet, on further thought, this was not so surprising: what resources for interpretation of such experiences would a person have other than what is provided by the symbols of her or his religious traditions?

Important issues of religious interpretation arise out of such observations. One might argue that such experiences, so obviously a projection of the human imagination, are merely that, and obviously not real; they are essentially delusionary. An alternative approach, however, might be to acknowledge that since all our human worlds are products of the human imagination, these experiences represent an authentic take on reality; but not, in fact, of the order of those who interpret them with a naive literalness. (Although to explore this would take us too far afield, we might observe that further input into discussion of the validity of such experiences might be afforded variously by Freudian, Jungian and other theories of the human psyche.)

A discussion of this kind is obviously very pertinent if one turns to the Islamic context, to think about the nature of the Qur'an. It is generally accepted that much of it was received by Muhammad in a paranormal experience, God speaking to Muhammad via an encounter with the angel Gabriel. And theologically it has been held that the Qur'an is God's final, perfect word to humankind, the perfection guaranteed, as we have noted, by the fact that Muhammad is mere recipient, so that the word is not affected by human fallibility. However, the Qur'an makes reference to Jewish and Christian materials. It tells the story of Mary and the birth of the baby Jesus, though in a form more reminiscent of Christian folktale extrapolations than of the New Testament accounts. It makes reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, though not the subtle version of the theologians, but a version often held at the level of popular thinking, and probably better described as tri-theism. It retells the story from Genesis of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, but with the figure of Ishmael, long identified as the patriarch of the Arabic peoples, replacing Isaac in the story. And the Qur'anic view of the day when the trumpet sounds, the sun is darkened, the stars fall, the mountains are shaken, etc., and a division is made between those on the right hand and those on the left, suggests a composite of rather different ideas found in Matthew 24-25 and I Corinthians 15.

The traditional Islamic way of interpreting the discrepancies between the Qur'an and the Jewish and Christian materials is to see the Qur'an as correcting errors that crept into earlier texts. But within the framework of historical consciousness, it is impossible not to see the Qur'an as composed by Muhammad within a particular religio-political context, and presenting a vision for human life, partly by appropriation, modification and re-interpretation of Jewish and Christian materials.

I am arguing, then, that the time has come for a full appropriation of the implications of historical consciousness for our religious life; that we need to develop a much more complex process of thinking together about foundational visions for human life and fulfillment, as presented in the various religious communities, and of developing an understanding of how such foundational visions may be articulated with integrity in the contemporary setting; and that we all need to encourage and support each other in a shared discourse, a conversation, marked by the intellectual honesty that the rigorous appropriation of historical consciousness affords.

I am not arguing this on pragmatic grounds, but on the grounds of integrity in relation to what we can observe. However, it does offer something greatly needed in the context of our times when the violent consequences of absolutist thinking are so potentially devastating. If we can together develop such a position to the point where it is widely accepted, it will become increasingly difficult to hold to absolutist positions with honesty.

It will be evident that what I am calling for is not easy. Thinking back to our examples of the way the appropriation of historical consciousness was truncated by liberal Christians--in the views variously of the coming of Jesus, or the doctrine of the Trinity, as the culmination of religious history--we can discern a strong desire to have a solid basis for Christian faith. And one of the characteristic features of the militantly conservative groups that have popularly been branded as "fundamentalist," or "absolutist," is that they constitute a particular modern version of the desire for a solid foundation for faith. At one level such groups constitute a form of psychological resistance to the uncertainty that is inevitably a product of the modern awareness of a plurality of religious communities all claiming to offer the truth.

Part of the conversation I am envisioning would involve ongoing discussion of why some people experience the prospect of uncertainty as such a threat. Those who have studied fundamentalisms in depth have identified various effects of rapid social change--social dislocation, identity diffusion, breakdown of community, economic deprivation, etc., as contributing factors. And such discussion would necessarily deepen into a collaborative inter-faith effort to encourage socio-economic changes that will have the effect of lessening the appeal of absolutist positions. This would also include critique of the ways in which religious organizations and power structures contribute to the conditions that foster absolutist positions. There is, of course, a somewhat more straightforward reason why many people reject the idea of the validity of religious ideas of people from other communities than their own. Acceptance of the full legitimacy of religious plurality is equated with relativism--which is then interpreted as "anything goes," hence underlining the need for a clear divine imperative, with faith understood as obedience to divine fiat.

A major problem here is what is implied about the nature of religion. If one thinks of religion as basically a set of rules, then the fact that people in other communities have different sets of rules might be a threat; and one might therefore require some way of underlining the trustworthiness of one's own rules. If, on the other hand, religion is thought of in broader terms--and deeper, existential terms--as having to do, for example, with well-being, the good life, how we human beings might live fruitfully and well as responsible inhabitants of planet Earth, then what are offered by our religious communities and traditions are experiences and ideas and practices whose validity is marked by their ability to plumb the depths of our humanity--in all its wonder and complexity, the agony and the ecstasy, the folly and the glory. In this context, different religious visions--relativistic, in the sense that they have been developed in different cultural complexes, with different languages and concepts--do not constitute a threat but an enrichment of the sense of who we are as human beings.