Excerpt from
The Four Principles of Interfaith Dialogue
and the Future Of Religion
by Kenneth Cracknell
Part One: The Principles of Interfaith Dialogue
First, dialogue begins when people meet each other. Unfortunately, this is not a blindingly obvious truism. Sadly, very many people believe themselves to be experts on other people's faith and spirituality solely on the basis of having read a newspaper article about them. Even scholarly persons become 'experts' on Hinduism or Islam by working in their studies and libraries but without encountering real live Hindus or Muslims. But dialogue does not begin when the Bhagavad-gita meets the Bible, or when Confucianism is compared with Christianity. Dialogue takes place only when an actual Vaishnava meets face to face with an actual Christian, or when real followers of Confucius sit down together with real disciples of Jesus. Dialogue is about people not systems, and it takes place between persons not books. And it must be a real meeting between individual men and women, without stereotypical prejudices and premature pigeonholing, for other people will forever remain opaque to us if we are determined to classify them and to label them. Martin Buber got it right, decades before the contemporary interfaith dialogue movements got under way: dialogue (Zwiesprache, he called it) takes place 'between one open-hearted person and another'. Such dialogue can happen at any time: between two neighbours, two fathers at a PTA, at a wedding or in a restaurant. But at whatever level it always involves people rather than books.
Second, dialogue is about building up trust in the other person and learning to tell the truth about another religious tradition. Chiefly this is achieved through listening. An old Rabbi said that God gave us two ears and one mouth, so that our hearing may be twice as much as our speaking. And how much listening we all have to do! All studies of inter-group relations point to apparently inherent needs to caricature and stereotype non-members of particular groups, 'the outsiders'. It seems that such tendencies are acerbated when religion is the chief factor in forming group consciousness. So, from the 'inside' of Christianity we murmur about the legalist attitudes of Judaism, the stark monotheism of Islam, the idolatry of Hinduism, the militancy of Sikhism, the atheism of Buddhism and the brainwashed gullibility of followers of new religious movements. Yet an encounter in some depth with followers of any of these paths will put an end to such glib generalisations. Jews believe in love and forgiveness just as much as Christians; Muslims have often penetrated deeply into the meaning of what it means to call God 'the merciful, the compassionate'; very many Hindus are entirely monotheist and no more idolatrous than Christians who may use crucifixes and icons in their devotional life; few people are more gentle or generous than followers of the Guru Nanak; Buddhists have much to teach Christians about 'selflessness' and 'detachment' (the Buddha's silence about God is not atheism as we know it).
Third, dialogue enables us to work together for the proximate goal of a better human community. To be sure, in our meeting with other people and learning more about our religious ways we will discover profound differences as well as common ground. (Interfaith dialogue is not about saying that all religions are the same, though some people have thought so). These differences often turn on the ultimate nature and destiny of the self, the soul, the human spirit. Nibbana and personal salvation in a heavenly realm are incompatible visions and irreconcilable final destinies. But meanwhile Hindus and Christians, along with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains live in a world of threatening ecological disaster, in which there are finite and diminishing resources, violence and war, drug dependence and neurosis. The religious vision and experience of all humanity is needed now as never before if we are to avoid our cosmic cataclysm. No doubt 'religion' is a source of fanaticism, conflict, bigotry, vicious hatred (on religious 'systems' see below) , it often functions as the bearer of racist, classist, sexist ideology, and is capable of manipulation by malign and unscrupulous persons. But more, much more, it is the treasure-house and repository of the human spirit at its best, or at its most inspired. Try these visions for the creation of peace and the dispelling of fanaticism (so central to the message of the late Yitzhak Rabin): from the Bhagavad-gita 11.55, 'Have no hatred for any being at all; for all who do this shall come to me'; from the Qur'an, 'Do not strut about the land with insolence; surely you cannot cleave the earth or attain the height of the mountains in stature.' (Surah 17.37); from Buddhism in the Itivuttaka, verse 27, 'None of the means employed to acquire religious merit has a sixteenth part of the value of loving kindness.'; from Judaism, the words of the Prophet Micah, 'Do justice, love, mercy and walk humbly with your God.' (Mic. 6.8) and from Christianity, 'Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.' (1 Corinthians, 13.3).
Similar wisdoms and aspirations in each tradition speak of working as communities of faith for the feeding of the hungry, the ending of drug dependency, the overcoming of racism and sexism. And, even more to the point, we have already seen such programmes implemented. I think for example of the World Congress of Religion for Peace (WCRP), not only internationally, but in the specific context of South Africa, and remember how my friends Farid Izaak, a Muslim from the Cape Coloured community, and Gerry Lubbe, an Afrikaner pastor, shared the same prison cell, having marched together to protest apartheid. I think of a visit I made several years ago to the Food Bank of the Interfaith Council of the Greater Metropolitan Washington Council of Churches, where people of many faith traditions came together to help the cold and hungry, only fourteen blocks from the White House. I think of a Conference in London about drug abuse and dependency where Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus taught westerners yet again about meditation and healthful patterns of living.
Fourth, dialogue becomes the way of authentic mutual witness. The question of mission and evangelism in relation to interfaith dialogue is never far from the surface when Christians get together. Is it really possible for adherents of missionary faiths to have dialogue with one another, or are we forever committed to monological proclamation? Many issues raise themselves here. What, for example, is mission? If it is synonymous with proselytism and propaganda (the desire to make clones of what one is oneself), mission will become demonic in ways which the Jews knew only too well in old Christendom. Forcible conversions, pogroms, ghettos and a 'final solution' make many Jews fear the very word 'mission' on the lips of Christians. Similar considerations make the term 'crusade' obnoxious to many Muslims and continue to make it impossible for a Christian 'missionary' to gain a visa for India or to cross the borders of Burma.
Yet, mission may be a much more neutral term. Large business corporations spend months in preparing their mission statements with the result that Coca Cola, for example, boasts of its mission to bring its product to every town and village in the whole world. All this makes the point that Christians do not have to repudiate the 'mission' of the church . All they need to do is be honest and say that they wish to share their faith and to bear their witness. And in dialogue they will be asked to do just that.
Thoughts?
The Four Principles of Interfaith Dialogue
and the Future Of Religion
by Kenneth Cracknell
Part One: The Principles of Interfaith Dialogue
First, dialogue begins when people meet each other. Unfortunately, this is not a blindingly obvious truism. Sadly, very many people believe themselves to be experts on other people's faith and spirituality solely on the basis of having read a newspaper article about them. Even scholarly persons become 'experts' on Hinduism or Islam by working in their studies and libraries but without encountering real live Hindus or Muslims. But dialogue does not begin when the Bhagavad-gita meets the Bible, or when Confucianism is compared with Christianity. Dialogue takes place only when an actual Vaishnava meets face to face with an actual Christian, or when real followers of Confucius sit down together with real disciples of Jesus. Dialogue is about people not systems, and it takes place between persons not books. And it must be a real meeting between individual men and women, without stereotypical prejudices and premature pigeonholing, for other people will forever remain opaque to us if we are determined to classify them and to label them. Martin Buber got it right, decades before the contemporary interfaith dialogue movements got under way: dialogue (Zwiesprache, he called it) takes place 'between one open-hearted person and another'. Such dialogue can happen at any time: between two neighbours, two fathers at a PTA, at a wedding or in a restaurant. But at whatever level it always involves people rather than books.
Second, dialogue is about building up trust in the other person and learning to tell the truth about another religious tradition. Chiefly this is achieved through listening. An old Rabbi said that God gave us two ears and one mouth, so that our hearing may be twice as much as our speaking. And how much listening we all have to do! All studies of inter-group relations point to apparently inherent needs to caricature and stereotype non-members of particular groups, 'the outsiders'. It seems that such tendencies are acerbated when religion is the chief factor in forming group consciousness. So, from the 'inside' of Christianity we murmur about the legalist attitudes of Judaism, the stark monotheism of Islam, the idolatry of Hinduism, the militancy of Sikhism, the atheism of Buddhism and the brainwashed gullibility of followers of new religious movements. Yet an encounter in some depth with followers of any of these paths will put an end to such glib generalisations. Jews believe in love and forgiveness just as much as Christians; Muslims have often penetrated deeply into the meaning of what it means to call God 'the merciful, the compassionate'; very many Hindus are entirely monotheist and no more idolatrous than Christians who may use crucifixes and icons in their devotional life; few people are more gentle or generous than followers of the Guru Nanak; Buddhists have much to teach Christians about 'selflessness' and 'detachment' (the Buddha's silence about God is not atheism as we know it).
Third, dialogue enables us to work together for the proximate goal of a better human community. To be sure, in our meeting with other people and learning more about our religious ways we will discover profound differences as well as common ground. (Interfaith dialogue is not about saying that all religions are the same, though some people have thought so). These differences often turn on the ultimate nature and destiny of the self, the soul, the human spirit. Nibbana and personal salvation in a heavenly realm are incompatible visions and irreconcilable final destinies. But meanwhile Hindus and Christians, along with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains live in a world of threatening ecological disaster, in which there are finite and diminishing resources, violence and war, drug dependence and neurosis. The religious vision and experience of all humanity is needed now as never before if we are to avoid our cosmic cataclysm. No doubt 'religion' is a source of fanaticism, conflict, bigotry, vicious hatred (on religious 'systems' see below) , it often functions as the bearer of racist, classist, sexist ideology, and is capable of manipulation by malign and unscrupulous persons. But more, much more, it is the treasure-house and repository of the human spirit at its best, or at its most inspired. Try these visions for the creation of peace and the dispelling of fanaticism (so central to the message of the late Yitzhak Rabin): from the Bhagavad-gita 11.55, 'Have no hatred for any being at all; for all who do this shall come to me'; from the Qur'an, 'Do not strut about the land with insolence; surely you cannot cleave the earth or attain the height of the mountains in stature.' (Surah 17.37); from Buddhism in the Itivuttaka, verse 27, 'None of the means employed to acquire religious merit has a sixteenth part of the value of loving kindness.'; from Judaism, the words of the Prophet Micah, 'Do justice, love, mercy and walk humbly with your God.' (Mic. 6.8) and from Christianity, 'Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.' (1 Corinthians, 13.3).
Similar wisdoms and aspirations in each tradition speak of working as communities of faith for the feeding of the hungry, the ending of drug dependency, the overcoming of racism and sexism. And, even more to the point, we have already seen such programmes implemented. I think for example of the World Congress of Religion for Peace (WCRP), not only internationally, but in the specific context of South Africa, and remember how my friends Farid Izaak, a Muslim from the Cape Coloured community, and Gerry Lubbe, an Afrikaner pastor, shared the same prison cell, having marched together to protest apartheid. I think of a visit I made several years ago to the Food Bank of the Interfaith Council of the Greater Metropolitan Washington Council of Churches, where people of many faith traditions came together to help the cold and hungry, only fourteen blocks from the White House. I think of a Conference in London about drug abuse and dependency where Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus taught westerners yet again about meditation and healthful patterns of living.
Fourth, dialogue becomes the way of authentic mutual witness. The question of mission and evangelism in relation to interfaith dialogue is never far from the surface when Christians get together. Is it really possible for adherents of missionary faiths to have dialogue with one another, or are we forever committed to monological proclamation? Many issues raise themselves here. What, for example, is mission? If it is synonymous with proselytism and propaganda (the desire to make clones of what one is oneself), mission will become demonic in ways which the Jews knew only too well in old Christendom. Forcible conversions, pogroms, ghettos and a 'final solution' make many Jews fear the very word 'mission' on the lips of Christians. Similar considerations make the term 'crusade' obnoxious to many Muslims and continue to make it impossible for a Christian 'missionary' to gain a visa for India or to cross the borders of Burma.
Yet, mission may be a much more neutral term. Large business corporations spend months in preparing their mission statements with the result that Coca Cola, for example, boasts of its mission to bring its product to every town and village in the whole world. All this makes the point that Christians do not have to repudiate the 'mission' of the church . All they need to do is be honest and say that they wish to share their faith and to bear their witness. And in dialogue they will be asked to do just that.
Thoughts?
