This Currents feature presents the perspectives of two member school presidents on a religious, social, or cultural topic. In this issue, they discuss the ingredients of good discourse between faiths and the potential benefits and pitfalls of such dialogue.

Phyllis Anderson
President, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

For three years, I participated in a monthly interfaith dialogue group in Seattle. As Muslims, Jews and Christians, we shared the sacred stories that I know from the Book of Genesis. We called ourselves “Children of Abraham.” From that sustained and deeply personal experience, I learned what makes interfaith dialogue really work. I also discovered how it can break down.

Our group preferred to call our work “interreligious dialogue” rather than “interfaith dialogue.” “Faith” is a distinctly Christian concept, and some of my partners found the term to represent Christian imperialism, however unintended. I was forced to check my assumptions and listen for nuances so as to not offend others.

Interreligious dialogue is related to, but distinct from, Christian ecumenism. Ecumenism in the traditional sense has unity as its goal. Jesus prayed that his church would be one. Christians receive unity as a gift from Christ and seek with all their might to make their essential unity more and more operative among the many separate denominations that currently make up the church. Interreligious dialogue does not try to make all religions one. The goal is rather growth in mutual respect and understanding. Dialogue partners celebrate distinct religious traditions, each with its own truth and beauty and power. In time they ask probing questions and expose their prejudices and honest critique.

The conversation works best when it is clear about its end goal. Our “Children of Abraham” group got off track when we sought to downplay the distinctions among our three traditions in favor of some new “interfaith spirituality” that transcended all three and missed the depth of each. We were at our best when each of us chose a single word or concept, like “sin” or “heaven” or “forgiveness” or “law” or “monogamy,” and explained to the others what it meant to us in our own words, out of our own heritage and piety.

Interreligious dialogue takes us to a wider world where the stranger becomes a friend without ceasing to be profoundly other. The skills we learn there have direct application for all human relationships, from the most intimate to the global.

Rebecca Parker
President, Starr King School for the Ministry

Theologian Hans Kuhn has said there will be no peace in the world until there is peace among the world’s religions. From a Christian perspective, religious pluralism represents God’s creativity and is a sign of resurrection. Interfaith dialogue is most effective when we focus on common human values that celebrate life and stand against death.

If we contemplate Jesus’ prayer for the unity of his disciples?right before his betrayal into the hands of his enemies?we can hear it asking all religions to confront together, without being torn asunder, the principalities and powers that continue to destroy the sacred ones of God. We find solidarity in our shared struggle for justice, for resistance to oppression, and protection of beauty.

Even as we celebrate our religious differences, we must not run from mutual accountability and confessional self-criticism. Those of us who are Christians know that the Christian community has a long history of helping out the devil one way or another. Within our interfaith engagement, we still have to ask: “Is this belief or practice one that aligns people with sin, or does it serve the flourishing of life for all people and for the earth?”

When we choose to embrace the world fully in both its horror and wonder, we strengthen our communal efforts for a sustainable public good. Regardless of our faith, this willful knowing grants us gifts: the equanimity that comes with courage, the justice that comes with struggle, the love that comes with openness, the pleasure that comes with embodied life, the joy that comes with beauty, and the peace that comes with wisdom. It is this knowing that matters most to the fate of the world.

I believe people of faith are called to embrace the beauty of diversity, resist the crucifying powers by ministries of solidarity, accept mutual correction through struggle with sincere differences of discernment, and above all love this earth as paradise, here and now?the place Jesus promised us when he said, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

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