Charles of Liminality has just posted his latest essay, which is a response to my book, Water from a Skull. It's an excellent meditation and well worth your time. As Charles says, this essay isn't so much about my writing as it is about his own thoughts after finishing the book. He deals in part with one of the major themes running through my essays on interreligious dialogue: the willingness to be reinterpreted by the Other.*
A phrase that pops up a few times in Water from a Skull when talking about interreligious dialogue is “the willingness to be reinterpreted by the Other.” In other words, interreligious dialogue is about be willing to listen to people who don’t share my beliefs talk about what they think about my beliefs. This is a harder thing to do than it might seem at first. Of all beliefs, religious beliefs in particular tend to be the most dearly held. In fact, this is why interreligious dialogue is so important—when you have a bunch of people with conflicting views running around, and each one of them is convinced that they are right, you have a powder keg waiting to explode. All we have to do is turn on the news to see this powder keg exploding around the world every day.
If you are convinced you are right, there would seem to be little need to be reinterpreted by the Other—after all, if your truth is the Truth, why do you need to listen to what anyone else is saying? So interreligious dialogue is, on a deeper level, about admitting that you might not have all the answers, no matter how strong your convictions may be. But if you admit that, is it still tenable to hold to an exclusivist position? If there is the possibility that you are wrong, how can you maintain an exclusivist position?
After thinking long and hard about it, I have come to the conclusion that I do not know everything, and that I may be wrong in some of my beliefs. This does not mean I am abandoning my faith, though. The core elements of my faith are still intact, but I am willing to admit that of the many different interpretations of certain theological issues, mine is only one. Some of these, like what I consider the “core elements,” are matters of faith—I cannot argue them logically, but I still believe them to be true. When it comes to peripheral elements, though, I am willing to consider other views.
Charles notes toward the end of his essay that "exclusivists can engage in interreligious dialogue." I believe it is absolutely essential for exclusivists to join in the ongoing exchange. Otherwise, what you have is a round table of religious liberals, none of whom are really desirous of convincing the others of the rightness of their faith, and few of whom are actually in tune with the exclusivistic majorities of their traditions. How sad that interreligious dialogue, which many of us consider indispensable, routinely fails to include most potential participants.
For more on the question of exclusivism and interreligious dialogue, I highly recommend a paper I've cited a few times on this blog: Kate McCarthy's "Reckoning With Religious Difference," which can be found in Chapter 3 of Twiss and Grelle, Explorations in Global Ethics (Oxford: Westview Press, 2000). The book is an excellent collection of papers on the subject of global ethics. Many papers are from specific religious points of view (Buddhist, Muslim, etc.).
*If I were to point out another theme in my work, it would be the empirically based notion that religions are as they are practiced. Charles's essay is actually a fine example of good religious practice.
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"...none of whom are really desirous of convincing the others of the rightness of their faith..."
ReplyDeleteUh, I have some doubts about the total validity of that statement.
I've been around a few colleges for far too long...
Back home now, near my former undergrad school, there is, in fact, a new "church" opened by prof of the universalist faith....and I am not sure the tenets of it or if they call it a religion but they do seek to covert and practice exclusionism when others don't - though they would not agree with me here...
I am also thinking of an item over at Newsbusters.com (the conservative media watchdog group) where a major Harvard scientist has been sending threatening emails to another well-educated person at a think-tank that disagrees about Global Warming - telling the man and his center they had better publically disavow their former statements on GW or face the full fury of the power of the forces the other prof could align against them - including the IRS and more...
You have to read it to get a sense of how middle school the whole email exchange was......and these are think-tank men from the most respected halls of learning our country (and thus the world) have to offer.....
US,
ReplyDeleteI'm using the term "religious liberals" in a specific sense: non-traditional members of established religious traditions.
These are the type of people who assembled in 1993 for the second Parliament of the World's Religions (the first was in 1893). They are already very open to dialogue, are already open to the truth claims of other faiths, and are often dangerously close to claiming that all religions are essentially variants of each other-- a form of pluralism I no longer accept.
To be fair, the representatives at the 1993 event weren't all of this exactly persuasion, but for most of them, convergence on a global ethic was a major motivator for attending. This tendency was a turn-off for many religious conservatives, who felt the uniqueness of their religions was being steamrollered into stultifying sameness.
True, such liberals are exclusivistic in their own way (anyone holding a specific position on anything is going to exclude someone), but they are religiously liberal insofar as their theologies and metaphysical beliefs do not dovetail with those of the more conservative mainstream in their traditions.
A Christian example might be a person who does not affirm that Jesus Christ is the unique Savior of us all, but who instead believes there may be a multiplicity of saviors.
I hope that makes my meaning clearer.
Kevin
"This tendency was a turn-off for many religious conservatives, who felt the uniqueness of their religions was being steamrollered into stultifying sameness."
ReplyDeleteI might have more on this later, but this is what the group of profs in my local area are doing, and it seems to be a trend in higher education in the US, but especially aimed at Christianity - since it is the largest religion in the US.
My problem with this isn't even on religious grounds but an intellectual one:
I like the idea of open exchange of thought - like in the recent talk on foreknowledge we had - because it sharpens a personal understanding of what each individual believes.....it also opens the door to personal evolution of thought and even (the dreaded) conversion (though it usually falls far short of that)....
What doesn't seem to make sense to me is to have such exchanges in a setting where the primary goal is to eviserate what each person thinks (technically the religion or thought-system they say they believe in) in order to create some new system which everyone will be "encouraged" to now follow...
...which is exactly what the profs at this new "church" in my local area have decided is the really progressive thing to do....
I am ultimately being a hypocrite here.....If that is what they want to do....then it is actually all fine and good....
...because.....adults have brains strong enough to use the free will they inherently have to decide if they want to follow these profs or not....
It's just that.....things like this.........One of them was a leader in the religion department at my old school. He would begin one of his introductory courses on Christianity (and other courses too I think) by ---- asking the Christians in the student body to raise their hands if they thought this and that about Christianity including whether it was the one true way to heaven.
Then, at the end of the semester, he would have the students raise their hands again to see how many had changed their minds....
.....which I just wish he could have seen was exactly the kind of conversion/proselytizing he despised so much when talking outside of class....