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.)