Inter-Religious Dialogue

Sean Dwan SSC writes that the desire by many Christians, and especially missionaries, to co-operate with, and engage in meaningful conversation with members of other religions, represents a huge change of attitude from the Christian side. For much of Christian history we have tended to treat other religions as an obstacle to the plan of God, an obstacle which ought to be removed by conversion.

While many individual Muslims and Hindus suspect that dialogue is a new trick to convert them to Christianity, many prominent religious people are enthusiastic proponents of inter-religious dialogue. The Dalai Lama, for example, justifies inter-religious dialogue in words which captures the attitude of many contemporary Christians. He says that of the many problems we face today, some are natural calamities and must be accepted and faced with equanimity. Others, he says, are of our own making, created by misunderstanding and can be corrected. These arise from the conflict of ideologies, political or religious, when people fight each other for petty ends, losing sight of the basic humanity that binds us all together as a single human family. In other words, inter-religious dialogue helps to mobilize the good-will and optimism which are required if the world's major problems are to be effectively tackled -- problems of poverty, environmental destruction, drug abuse, AIDS, racism, sexism and the depersonalizing impact of technology. In the midst of such serious problems it would be a great tragedy if religious leaders worried only about their own internal affairs, and self-preservation, like Nero fiddling while Rome burned!

The term "inter-religious dialogue" is usually distinguished from a ecumenical dialogue which refers to conversations between different Christian denominations. People who have engaged in inter-religious dialogue for several years say that there are different levels of that dialogue.

Donald Mitchell distinguishes four levels.

At a very fundamental level is the Dialogue of Life, a neighbourly encounter springing from an attitude of concern, respect, and hospitality Here the Christian respects the Buddhist's or Muslim's identity by sending greetings or gifts on the occasion of important religious festivals or cultural events. The second level of dialogue, the Dialogue of Collaboration, occurs when members of different religious traditions are inspired by their own tradition to co-operate in dealing with matters of public concern, such human rights or the environmental destruction, and for example. The third level of dialogue, the Dialogue of Theological Discussion, is more specialised and involves a systematic discussion and comparison of each other's beliefs and spiritual values. Many people incorrectly assume that this is the only form of dialogue. In fact, if people jump into dialogue at this level, the prospect of acrimonious wrangling can be quite high. Finally, the fourth level of dialogue mentioned by Mitchell, the Dialogue of Religious Experience, one shares how prayer, meditation, contemplation, the practices of silence, fasting, pilgrimage, liturgy, etc. impact on one's spiritual life. Perhaps, besides just talking about one's experience of God and prayer, it might be possible to actually pray together though this is no simple matter.

Clearly, inter-religious dialogue is a matter of sharing. It is not a matter of just gleaning information about the other religion by a form of naïve, not to mention aggressive, interrogation.

In inter-religious dialogue, we often assume that the difficult part is acquiring accurate knowledge about the host religions. The meaning of "dialogue" seems self-evident, something that happens naturally between everyone equipped with ears and tongues. But what is an appropriate model of true inter-religious dialogue-its not just chatting. In some respects, a deep inter-religious conversation is like a game! The players are not there to play their own private game, but to lose their usual self-consciousness in the movement or rhythm of the game itself. In the to-and-fro movement of the game of conversation the subject matter, the burning question itself, like the ball, demands a willingness to follow the question wherever it may lead. In the words of T. S. Eliot...

"But let me tell you, that to approach the stranger
Is to invite the unexpected, release a new force,
Or let the genie out of the bottle.
It is to start a train of events Beyond your control..."

Each player in this game of inter-religious dialogue has insights into the fundamental existential questions of the human spirit which are at the root of all religions - love, obedience, responsibility, guilt, trust, meaning, justice, power. No individual and no religious tradition could possibly have the last word on these experiences.

Many modern people, conscious of living in a religiously plural world, implicitly engage in inter-religious dialogue by reading the newspapers or watching TV specials. Even if they do not have the opportunity to personally meet Muslims, Buddhists, or the followers of a traditional religion like shamanism, yet they can be engaged in a kind of dialogue. Even at this passing level, there is often a growing consciousness, a sharpening awareness, of one's own religious tradition. What is true of language is also true of religion: "He who knows one, knows none!" Of course, in an era of mass tourism which caters for consumers, we must be careful of confusing a search for the exotic, a few days in a Tibetan Buddhist temple, for example, with a religious encounter.

Going beyond the desire to understand other religions and to promote harmonious relationships between all religions, theologians and missionaries are challenged by even more fundamental questions: what role do the different religions play in God's plan? Conscious of the religiously plural world in which we live, we must reassess how to approach theology itself.

According to David Tracy, Christian theology can no longer confine its attention to Christianity alone, nor to the issues which trouble the Western psyche and society. Inter-religious dialogue will make it inappropriate for Christian systematic theology to claim the traditional luxury of first interpreting Christianity and then quickly noticing, and even more rapidly interpreting, via principles of Christian self-understanding, the "other religions."

Sean Dwan SSC