Navigating the Linguistic Quagmire of the “Interfaith” World

A few years ago at an interfaith conference I overheard a senior scholar complain, “‘Interfaith’ is so seventies!” He was expressing his belief that the term “interfaith” is no longer adequate in a religious landscape that now ventures well beyond the tent of Abraham. These days, almost without fail, any gathering of academics or community practitioners who come together to hash out various theories and practices of interfaith work will inevitably venture down roads leading to questions about language. In particular, what do we call this stuff? Interfaith, interreligious, multifaith, etc.? The list of terms has steadily grown over the years. The aim of this article is to explain how some common terms are often used, perceived, and (mis)understood.

Interfaith or Interreligious?

Interfaith and Interreligious are the two most dominant terms. Some suggest that while interreligious is more common in Europe, interfaith is preferred in the U.S. Inger Furseth observes that interreligious is more common among Catholics and interfaith is more common among Protestants.^[1] While both tendencies may be true, I have not noticed either to be the case necessarily. Regardless, I am not sure how helpful these distinctions are. In Europe, the term interreligious is used in the academic group known as the European Society for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies (ESITIS), while in the U.S., the academic group at the American Academy of Religion uses the two terms in tandem to form the Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit. The counterpart academic association to ESITIS in the U.S. that just launched (on November 17, 2017) also uses both terms in their moniker: Association for Interreligious/Interfaith Studies (AIIS).

Often the debate around language centers on these two terms (interfaith and interreligious) and can come down to how “faith” and “religion” are understood. Do all religions use the term “faith” or have it as an aspect? Does the term faith privilege those religions with a God or Gods? If so, are most Buddhists excluded, given their traditional nontheistic positions? Some perceive interfaith to only refer to the Abrahamic traditions. Some scholars go even further by declaring that faith is only a Christian word, and thus interfaith privileges Christians. Perhaps it is due to some of these reasons that “interreligious” is often more popular among faculty and scholars in academia, while for other reasons, “interfaith” is more popular among non-academic community organizations and houses of worship. Most scholars in academia (especially in the interdisciplinary field[s] of [inter]religious studies) use the term religion quite broadly and are thus less likely to be accused of leaving out nontheistic traditions.^[2]

What about the nonreligious, those without faith, or those who identify with traditions that explicitly reject religious labels (e.g., secular humanism, the “nones”)? Are they excluded from interreligious conversations? For some, yes, the nonreligious opt out (or are left out) of interreligious encounter by definition, while for many (perhaps most) others, these groups are most certainly included and enthusiastically welcomed. To address this concern, anyone familiar with the Interfaith Youth Core knows well their frequent refrain that interfaith work is for/about “people who orient around religion differently,” which implicitly includes the nonreligious.

One problem the term interreligious raises—especially for young people who increasingly shun organized religions but embrace spirituality (and thus embrace the label “spiritual-but-not-religious”)—is that it can be perceived as only referring to interactions between and among organized and institutionalized religions or high-level religious leaders (e.g., rabbis, priests, political leaders, etc.). Interfaith, on the other hand, can sound less stuffy, more open, more relational, more accessible, and more spiritual to these younger groups, in my experience working with undergraduates. This may be one of the main reasons why interfaith is often the preferred term among those who work on college campuses in the areas of student affairs and campus ministry divisions. Interfaith in these contexts might sound more intimate, more “bible-study-ish,” in that it intimates a coming together to share personal stories of life, faith, struggle, and spiritual experience. The suggestion here is not that interfaith is a better term for this reason but rather that it serves a different function than interreligious.

Finally, it should be recognized that interfaith can sometimes be misunderstood to refer to an effort to create a new syncretic super religion drawing on elements of all the other religions.^[3] Although some may use the term “interfaith” to mean this, the vast majority do not. Rather, this syncretic understanding of interfaith is perhaps closer to the term “transreligious.”^[4]

Other Terms?

Multifaith is quite common but generally assumes there is little to no interaction or relation between and among persons who identify with the various traditions. For instance, a Multifaith Center might serve as a place where people of various traditions can gather and practice their traditions independently of one another. For this reason, I’ve sometimes heard Evangelicals and theological exclusivists prefer it over interfaith, since it allows religions to stand on their own without ignoring the differences. A word of caution is in order here, however, since some will read multifaith to mean the practice of various traditions simultaneously and thus convey the stripping down of all religions to some common denominator and avoidance of differences (an idea that might certainly put off theological exclusivists, and theological inclusivists for that matter).

Intercultural is a nice broad term that has many advantages, especially when used in tandem with these others. It can often be less threatening for many people who may, at first, be weary of interfaith or interreligious work. Further, it takes seriously the reality that “religions are collections of ideas, practices, values, and stories that are all embedded in cultures and not isolated from them.”^[5] Once people get involved in interreligious encounter, it doesn’t take long for them to realize that interfaith work is inherently intercultural.

Interspiritual and interbelief are sometimes used to emphasize either the experiential or belief dimensions of religion. For instance, the St. Paul Interfaith Network in Minnesota holds a series called Inter-Belief Conversation Café, which focuses on “questions of beliefs as they affect our world.” The downside (or perhaps upside for some) of interbelief is that it privileges belief, which might be seen to privilege those traditions in which belief plays a central role (e.g., American Protestantism). Interspiritual, of course, carries with it the same concern (and promise) about privileging spiritual experience. While it may be more open to the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd, it might not appeal to those who gravitate towards the centrality of belief. Regardless, the broader terms interfaith and interreligious can also be used to assume any number of emphases, including spirituality, belief, practice, community, and other dimensions of religion.

Interideological is a term famously used by Leonard Swidler in his well-known Dialogue Decalogue to include nonreligious worldviews such as Marxism, atheism, and secular humanism. Swilder uses interideological in tandem with interreligious.

Finally, I want to mention the emergence of the preference for the term “worldview” in the field of religious studies. Thus we have a new cumbersome term: interworldview. It is perhaps the broadest and most accommodating of all the terms. However, it can be too broad for those contexts where more focus and precision is desired.

Navigating the linguistic quagmire of interfaith can be exhausting, but important. This language problem is nothing new to scholars of religion, who continually ask: What does the word “religion” even mean?^[6] Given the potential tensions between and among religions, and the great possibility of misunderstanding, some problems might be avoided by being clear about how we understand and use these terms. However, at some point we must get beyond the limits of language, get to the real work of constructive interfaith encounter, and relegate our debate over language to mere friendly banter down at the local tavern (as the sign on the bottom of the image above suggests).

Postscript: In this article, I dwell only on those terms that follow inter- or multi-. However, there is a great need for understanding how intra- functions in the context of these terms and, more importantly, how intrafaith and intrareligious engagement facilitates and supports interfaith and interreligious encounter.

Image: © Hans Gustafson, 2017

Endnotes

^[1] Inger Furseth, “The Return of Religion in the Public Sphere? The Public Role of Nordic Faith Communities,” Institutional Change in the Public Sphere: Views on the Nordic Model, edited by Fredrik Engelstad, Hakon Larsen, Jon Rogstad, and Kari Steen-Johnsen (Warsaw: De Gruyter Open, 2017), 225n.

^[2] In the interest of full disclosure, I serve as a scholar and faculty member at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), where I have the honor of directing an academic center with “interfaith” in the title: the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning. I also teach courses with titles like “Interreligious Encounter” and “Interreligious Dialogue.” As a scholar of (inter)religious studies and theology, I tend to use “interreligious” more often than “interfaith,” however I recognize there are contexts in which “interfaith” is preferred over “interreligious.” To alleviate some of the problems and shortcomings of both terms, I am drawn to thinking about the term “interfaith” to presume the understanding of “faith” as laid out by Wilfred Cantwell Smith: “Faith is a human activity … a quiet confidence and joy which enables one to feel at home in the universe and to find meaning in the world and in one’s life, a meaning which is profound and ultimate and is stable no matter what happens to oneself at the level of immediate event.” Faith in this sense contrasts with belief, which for Smith is “the holding of certain ideas. Some might even see it as the intellect’s translation (even reduction?) of transcendence into ostensible terms; the conceptualization in certain terms of the vision that, metaphorically, one has seen” [Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Faith and Belief: The Difference between Them (Oxford, Oneworld, 1998), 12; also quoted in James L. Fredericks, Faith Among Faiths (New York: Paulist, 1999), 81-82].

^[3] On several occasions, I’ve encountered people who assume this definition of “interfaith” upon them hearing that I direct a center for interfaith learning at a university.

^[4] For more on “transreligious,” and the prefixes of uni-, intra-, multi-, cross-, and inter- in the context of dialogue and theology, see Hans Gustafson, “Is Transreligious Theology Unavoidable in Interreligious Theology and Dialogue?” Open Theology 2 (2016), 248-60.

^[5] AAR Religions in Schools Task Force and Diane L. Moore, Guidelines for Teaching About Religion in K-12 Public Schools in the United States (American Academy of Religion, 2010), 14; accessed Nov. 22, 2017; [http://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/files/hds-rlp/files/american_academy_of_religious_-_curriculum_guidelines.pdf].

^[6] See Russell McCutcheon, Studying Religion: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2007).