Cultivating Peace
DOV in Australia

Developing Inter-Faith relationships in the Decade to Overcome Violence

The development of positive inter-faith relationships is integral to the Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace.  For this relates directly to the fourth of the four themes of the Decade highlighted by the World Council of Churches: valuing religious identity and plurality.

The Need for a Global Ethic

1. No world survival without a world ethic
2. No world peace without religious peace
3. No religious peace without religious dialogue
(Prof.Hans Kung)

Key contemporary issues of violence and religions:

* religious components are part of many of the most inexorable conflicts of our day: (from Palestine to Kashmir to Sri Lanka to the Sudan to N. Ireland)
* religious argument and theological language and imagery form a central dimension  the 'war on terrorism' (cf. the statements of terrorists' and of Western leaders)
* there is great reluctance to call the 'war on terrorism ' a religious war, but many presumptions remain unexamined (including views of Islam and other faiths regarding violence)

Recent signs of hope...

* growing inter-faith interest in general
* increasing number of Inter-Faith gatherings
* growing number of Inter-Faith groups and projects
(Goodness and Kindness, World Peace Forum, Young Ambassadors for Peace...

Key contributors to religion as a force for violence

* exclusive visions of God
* exclusive understandings of truth and salvation
* exclusive identities
* selective interpretation of sacred texts
* unwillingness of religions to be critical of themselves
* failure to enter significant dialogue and social action together

Five ways religions may relate to one another (from Avery Dulles (first 4) and Joseph Hough)

1. Coercion - most popular!
2. Convergence - religions seen as essentially the same: ignoring questions of revelation & salvation?
3. Pluralism - each religion a blessing, reflecting certain aspects of the divine: works best for relativists?
4. Toleration - popular contemporary (esp. secular) practical Western position: avoiding engagement?
5. Inclusivity - if God is free and sovereign, can s/he bring transforming liberation through others?

Some key features of positive Inter-Faith relationships

Four Principles of Dialogue (from the former British Council of Churches):
Dialogue begins when people meet each other
Dialogue depends upon mutual understanding and mutual trust
Dialogue makes it possible to share in service to the community
Dialogue becomes the medium of authentic witness

'What makes dialogue between us possible is our common humanity, created in the image of God.  We all experience the joys and sorrows of human life, we are citizens of one country, we face the same problems, we all live in God's presence.'    (BCC Relations with Peoples of Other Faiths)

'The Religious encounter must be a truly religious one...
if the Christian or Buddhist approaches another religious person with the a priori idea of defending his own religion by all (obviously honest) means, we shall have a valuable defence of that religion and undoubtedly exciting discussion, but no religious dialogue, no encounter, much less a mutual enrichment and fecundation.'
 (Raimundo Panikkar Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics)

(true Dialogue is) speech from certainty to certainty...from one open-hearted person to another open-hearted person.  Only then will common life appear, not of an identical content of faith which is alleged to be found in all religions, but that of the situation, of anguish and expectation.  (Martin Buber, Between Man and Man)

Image of the tree of the living God in which we all have our roots or are grafted:
if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches.  If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.
(St.Paul, Epistle to the Romans 11.17-19, re. the salvation of the Gentiles)

a) Commitment and Openness to Mystery

(the missionary) will begin by recognising that if (his hearers) have enough serious purpose in them to want to talk about religion, or to listen to what he has to say about Christ, they have already within them encountered the Divine Logos, though perhaps unconsciously, have been found by Him, and have been moved by Him to take some step towards further knowledge...
This is perhaps what C.F.Andrews meant when he was asked how he approached earnest Hindus, and answered: 'I always take it for granted that they are Christians, and as I talk to them, I often see the light of Christ come into their eyes.  (A.C.Bouquet Christian Faith and Non-Christian Religions)

I confess that I boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian, not because the doctrines of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as are neither those of the other Stoics, poets and historians.  For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the seminal Word. 
(Justin Martyr, 2nd century CE)

In the whole universe all the parts, though differing one from another, preserve their relation to the whole.  So then the barbarian (Jewish) and Hellenic philosophy has torn off a fragment of eternal truth from the theology of the ever-living Word.  And he who brings together again the separate fragments and makes them one will, without peril, contemplate the perfect Word, the truth.  (Clement of Alexandria, late 2nd century)

b) Sharing Silence

A common concern for silence draws eastern and western Christendom together.  Aspirants are able to study the masters of spirituality in Christianity and other faiths.  The art of contemplation can be learnt in all faiths...All emphasise silence in the inner life of the soul...in silence we begin to ask the right questions about God, about the world and about ourselves.      (N.W.Goodacre)

Only in the cave of the heart can true dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism take place: contact at any other level can never be more than superficial and fleeting.  Too often in the past Christians have given the impression that we are not even aware of the existence of this space within the secret places of the heart where resides the Supreme Bliss: and too often, perhaps the impression was true.  Now, however, the time has come for Christians and Hindus to recognise in each other the gift of the Spirit, and for that both must go silently down to the depths of their own being, to the place where the Glory dwelleth'.  
(Sister Sara Grant, translator of the Benedictine monk Henri Le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda))

c) Learning one another's languages

Let heart speak to heart, but there must also be an engagement of the mind which demands its own asceticism.   (Gordon Wakefield)

Merton never thought or wrote of ceasing to be a Christian.  Christianity was, quite simply, his language, and could not more be renounced than any native tongue; but this did not mean that other languages might not be loved and yield striking new insights in the old familiar phrases and ideas.  In a number of the Buddhist and Hindu teachers Merton met in Asia, he found holiness and a deep knowledge of the realities of prayer, and he was humble enough to listen and learn.  (Monica Furlong on Thomas Merton, the great 20th century Christian monk and proponent of non-violence)

d) A sense of life as Pilgrimage/journey

e) Cultivating Peace ('dialogue of action') together

f) Connecting with Indigenous spirituality and this land

Maybe there is only one truth, but different paths to that truth.  This truth cannot be discovered in words, but only in action.  But it has a universal language and that is love and compassion...Spirituality is the ultimate answer to reconciliation in Australia and everywhere else in the world.  ...We must choose which ripples to send into our universe...
(Bob Randall, Songman)

The Revd.Dr.Jon Inkpin  Aug 2003