To thine own true self, be
To thine own true self, be
We need to talk…interreligiously!!
Fires both real and emotional are raging across the world after the release of trailers of a “film” defaming the Prophet Mohammed, peace be to him. One antidote is to talk to each other, Christians and Muslims, in structured dialogues at the local, national and international levels, so that when outrages are provoked by extremists of either faith, faithful people can move swiftly to pour oil on troubled waters.
It has been my privilege to participate in several such dialogues, and to sit on bodies charged by the Church to help people understand how and why to enter into such dialogues. This are the Network for Interfaith Concerns of the Anglican Communion (presently) and the Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations (from 2003 to 2009). Both bodies have produced official Anglican/Episcopal teachings on the how and why of interreligious dialogue. They are meant for a wide audience, and aim to offer pratical and useful applications.
As someone who participated in the creation of these teaching documents, I was asked to write an essay summarizing both of them for the Christian-Muslim Summit in 2010. I am updating and re-issuing it in hopes it will be of some small help in getting more dialogues going.
Current Anglican theology of interreligious dialogue
The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon
Two major documents outline current Anglican theology of interreligious dialogue, Generous Love, published in 2008 by the Anglican Communion’s Network for Interfaith Concerns (NIFCON), and A Statement on Interreligious Dialogue, issued as an official teaching of The Episcopal Church in 2009. The 2012 General Convention resolution A035 directed fresh attention to the Statement, as it was felt that insufficient attention had been paid to it.
This essay seeks to summarize the essence of each document.
The Statement references Generous Love and applies only to The Episcopal Church, which is based in the United States although it also has dioceses and churches in fourteen other countries. (Our largest diocese, incidentally, is Haiti.) The document intends to encourage and guide the faithful of the church to engage in local dialogues with people of other religions and spiritualities. Generous Love is a succinct, systematic exposition of a theology for interreligious dialogue that grows out of Christian faith itself. Both documents seek to be accessible to potential dialogue partners, in order to inform them of Anglicans’ intentions in making invitations and engagements in conversation.
Generous Love
In a foreword to Generous Love, Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, sums up its argument thus: “we must regard dialogue as an imperative from Our Lord, yet must also witness consistently to the unique gift we have been given in Christ.” Generous Love begins by making the claim that no human religion, including Christianity, can encompass the fullness of the mystery that is God. Here is the underlying premise that informs both documents.
This develops a point found in the Roman Catholic document of the Second Vatican Council, Nostra Ætate, that church’s declaration on interreligious relations. The Council exhorts the faithful to regard
with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings [of other religions] which, though differing in many aspects from the ones [the Catholic Church] holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all…” (paragraph 2).
It should be noted that this represented a significant change from the way non-Christians were viewed in earlier times, that is, people who were utterly in error and requiring conversion to Christianity in order to avoid divine condemnation. In other times Christians had proclaimed, “there is no salvation outside the Church” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus*).
A certain modesty concerning its claims has always been a hallmark of Anglicanism, and Generous Love sets forth the grounds of that restraint in this epistemological statement about knowledge of God: no one can know God fully in this life. But a declaration of what Anglicans believe immediately follows: “…through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth the One God has made known his triune reality as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Rather than the church’s mission being to convert all people to Christianity, the church shares in God’s mission in the creation to renew and restore all things through spreading the divine life and love. Thus “we seek to mirror God’s generous love.”**
One hallmark of authentic interreligious dialogue is being clear about one’s own identity as a person or people of faith, and Generous Love provides this: Jesus Christ is “the one who shows us God’s face,” and so Anglicans want to give witness to his way to the Father, his truth, and his life offered to all. Finally, in this opening section, Generous Love asserts that the Holy Spirit is sovereignly free and active throughout the world, and when the fruits of the Spirit are present in others, we must celebrate that reality by engaging “joyfully” in that work.
In the next section, Generous Love acknowledges the contemporary context of religious plurality and the challenge of that fact in a world that is ever shrinking due to the power and ubiquity of modern communications. The experience of Anglicans after the Reformation of Christian plurality informs us now in a Trinitarian interpretation: the universe in all its manifest diversity has one source and one goal in God; Jesus of Nazareth ministered in particular situations, not ahistorical ideation; and the Holy Spirit establishes the ground of human social life in community. This gives us confidence that religious plurality can exist in a society that balances both liberty and order, yielding neither to a privatization of religious awareness nor an exterior authoritarianism.
In succeeding sections, Generous Love deploys the intertwined Anglican theological resources of “Scripture, Tradition and Reason” in a rather novel way. Interreligious contexts lead us to compare and contrast the Biblical writings, which Anglicans rely on as the primary Tradition, with the scriptures and teachings of other religions. In particular, we no longer view Judaism merely as “a living fossil,” but rather as the matrix from which Christianity came to be. Beyond repairing this relationship of the two faiths, so long estranged with dreadful consequences in times past, Generous Love points to the richness to be found by comparing the experience of listening to the Holy Scriptures alongside the Qur’an, the Vedas, Buddhist sutras, and the traditions of still other religions, as a singular motivator for engagement with people of other traditions than our own.
The Word of God in Scripture is for Anglicans interpreted by communal Reason informed by Tradition, which develops the mind of the church as we live our faith in particular cultural contexts. This leads to “marked pluriformity of Anglican theological approaches to inter faith issues. In every context, though, the Anglican experience has been shaped by a constant reference to prayer and worship, by a concern for the welfare of the whole of society, and by the centrality accorded to pastoral practice.” The Anglican Communion exists in particular churches active in 165 countries in the world. While some are very hospitable, others are not. We stand in solidarity with Christians suffering because of their faith. Nevertheless, Anglican Christians, wherever we are, must practice that “generosity which transcends retaliation” taught to us by Jesus Christ, who commanded that we love our enemies.
The freedom of the Spirit of God to act outside the Church as well as within it gives Anglicans confidence that interreligious dialogue can and should lead to common action for the welfare of individual communities, nations and the world. It is also necessary to struggle against other, powerful spirits, for there
is abroad in all communities a spirit of defamation of ‘the other’, of the hardening of differences into divisions, of the suppression of variety, of the disempowerment of the vulnerable. There is abuse of religion for self-advancement, for the promotion of sectional interests, for the justification of comfortable lifestyles and of the exploitation of others.
The obligation of all Christians to practice gracious hospitality is central to the work of interreligious dialogue. Generous Love concludes by reiterating its opening affirmation: The Christian experience of God as Holy Trinity of Persons indwelling perfectly each other is such that we can affirm that God is love. Thus Anglican Christians must collaborate with this
sending and being sent by the Father of the Son and the Spirit which is eternal, yet which also reaches out into our time and space to draw us into God’s life. In our meeting with people of different faiths, we are called to mirror, however imperfectly, this dynamic of sending and abiding.
A Statement on Interreligious Dialogue
The official Statement of The Episcopal Church does not break new theological ground after Generous Love, which it references. However, as it is meant to help the dioceses develop local dialogues, the Statement is significantly longer as it develops the basic points of Generous Love touched upon above.
The document opens with a strong, succinct mandate for Christians to engage in interreligious dialogue:
We affirm the foundational Gospel proclamation that "Jesus is Lord" (I Corinthians12: 3), and therefore accept the Summary of God's Law: "love the Lord your God with all your hearts, with all your souls, and with all your minds, and to love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:29-31; BCP, Catechism, page 851). For this reason we reach out in love and genuine openness to know and to understand those of other religions.
Dialogue is then commended in terms of mutual respect, common ground, hospitality, and greater understanding, rejecting any proselytizing. In the current context, “the neighbor often seems to be the Other rather than the one whom Christ calls us to receive as a gift and to love as we would be loved ourselves.” (paragraph 11). Informed dialogue seeks to overcome that.
Episcopalians follow the Anglican way of interpreting the Scriptures, the Word of God, through a process of communal Reason informed by the church’s tradition. It is within this way that we base our confidence in being able to engage in authentic transformative dialogue. The Statement goes on to give a comprehensive summary in the fifth section of Christian belief, in the conviction that people of other faiths will tend not to want to meet with people who are unable or unwilling to be clear about their own beliefs.
This summary makes several points: salvation is by divine grace alone and begins now, not just in a hereafter; that grace is mediated through Jesus Christ who is the full revelation of God; the Incarnation, Episcopalians believe, has already begun the transformation of all creation; Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead reconciles us to God and gives us eternal life; by baptism we become part of his Body and sent forth as “ambassadors of reconciliation.” This section ends in highlighting that
Professing salvation in Christ is not a matter of competing with other religious traditions with the imperative of converting one another. Each tradition brings its own understanding of the goal of human life to the interreligious conversation. (paragraph 27)
The final section commends several ways of being and acting toward people of other religious traditions. The church is to be: a witness to Christ who also listens as well as tells; to imitate pilgrims in humility and eagerness to learn; servants attentive to our partners’ needs; prophetic in proclaiming God’s intention for the whole creation; credible ambassadors of our own traditions as Episcopalians; excellent hosts who are hospitable and respect the customs of others; and finally, sacrament. This latter is an affirmation that the Church itself is the “outward and visible sign” of God’s gracious invitation to reconcile all people to God and each other.
The Statement’s peroration is a summary of three “gifts” The Episcopal Church has to offer potential dialogue partners:
(1.) “Our comprehensive way of thinking by which we balance Scripture, reason, and tradition in relationship building;
(2.) “Our belief system that centers on the incarnation of God in Christ, and on the Crucified One who leads us to self-emptying, forgiveness, and reconciliation; and
(3.) “Our practice of focusing mission in terms of service, companionship, and partnership between people as demonstrative of God's embrace of human life.”
Like Generous Love, the Statement on Interreligious Dialogue ends as it began, invoking the love of God, with a quotation by the late American prophet Dr. Martin Luther King:
Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about human reality is beautifully summed up in the first Epistle of St John: “Let us love one another; for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. The one who loves not does not know God, for God is love. If we love one another God dwells in us, and God's love is perfected in us.”
Notes
* Cyprian of Carthage is best known for this teaching. His exact words are Salus extra ecclesiam non est, found in his Epistula 4.4 and Epistula 73:21,2. Yet as far back as Pope Pius IX, we can find these words: “We all know that those who are afflicted with invincible ignorance with regard to our holy religion, if they carefully keep the precepts of the natural law that have been written by God in the hearts of all men, if they are prepared to obey God, and if they lead a virtuous and dutiful life, can attain eternal life by the power of divine light and grace. For God . . . will not permit, in accordance with his infinite goodness and mercy, anyone who is not guilty of a voluntary fault to suffer eternal punishment.” Quanto conficiamur moerore, paragraph 7 (1863)
** Italics added. This declaration develops from the Lambeth Conference 1988 Report entitled “Christ and People of Other Faiths,” which argues the point at length.
*** These categories come from Companions in Transformation (p.4f) an important official teaching document outlining the global mission of The Episcopal Church, approved by the General Convention 2003. Companions also deserves fresh new attention, as it remains completely relevant to today’s situation.
17 septembre 2012/ Hildegard of Bingen