Interreligious dialogue often entails an implicit (sometimes explicit) attempt to categorize the religious other for the sake of comparison, conversation, and ease. For instance, in labeling a dialogue Muslim-Christian, certain assumptions come into play in defining what it means to be Muslim and what it means to be Christian (even if those involved in dialogue readily self-identify as Muslim or Christian). Such a dialogue also posits assumptions about what being Muslim or Christian does not entail. Without these identifications, labeling the dialogue “Muslim-Christian” becomes more difficult. Acknowledging the internal diversity of our traditions, I contend, is one of the primary aims of constructive interreligious understanding today. Instead of shying away from and ignoring the oppressive and violent tendencies within our traditions, we ought to tackle them head on not only in the interest of illuminating intrareligious difference but also for fostering interreligious understanding.
Well-known Jewish scholar of the New Testament Amy-Jill Levine recognizes the interfaith maxim that interreligious dialogue is not between religions but between religious persons. The conversation is not between Christianity and Judaism but between Christians and Jews. Levine writes, “The conversation will not be between ‘church’ and ‘synagogue’ but between Ari and Christine, Worthington Wentworth Smyth-Jones-Windsor VIII and Frima-Sarah.”[1]
This process of religious identification by its very nature holds an element of exclusivity in determining who is in and who is out. For this reason, constructive Catholic theologian Jeannine Hill Fletcher draws our attention to this “logic of identity,” which refers to the “grouping of persons into the various categories of ‘the religions’ and the assumptions made on the basis of those groupings.” [2] Such grouping “too easily erase[s] the diversity and difference within any one community,”[3] which also too easily dilutes the rich internal diversity of a religious tradition by lumping together all Muslims (regardless of whether they identify as Sunni, Shia, etc.) and lumping together all Christians (regardless of denominational affiliation or creedal confession). It often erases “the diversity and difference”[4] within the traditions and reinforces one of the major obstacles to constructive interreligious encounter today: the over-simplification of the religious other.
On one hand, a positive consequence of this is that it can bring together (or “forge solidarity”[5] among) those with different identities within a religious group (e.g., Protestants with Roman Catholics with Eastern Orthodox). On the other hand, a negative consequence may outweigh this positive one. Erasing the diversity and difference that exists within religious groups can strip individuals of important elements that make them different from one another. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether this sacrifice is worth it for the sake of categorization.
Ignoring the rich internal diversity of religions and their varied identities, the application of the logic of identity replaces “Pakistani Urdu-speaking Sunni Muslim female – Norwegian-American English-speaking Lutheran male dialogue” with simply “Muslim-Christian dialogue,” or, as Levine’s words above infer, it replaces Ari-Christine dialogue with simply Jewish-Christian dialogue. This is not to suggest the absolute futility of the latter (since there are indeed instances that simple categories are needed) but rather to point out its limitations.
Ignoring the internal diversity of any tradition can lead to infighting over the strict parameters of its boundaries. Oversimplification of other traditions, perhaps especially of one’s own tradition, can result in significant bickering over who is in and is out, who is “really” Christian, “really” Muslim, “really” Heathen,[6] and so forth. This directly violates Leonard Swidler’s well-known fifth rule of interreligious dialogue: “Each participant needs to describe her/himself. For example, only a Muslim can describe what it really means to be an authentic member of the Muslim community.”[7] The suggestion here is that it can be more helpful to allow others to identify themselves but then also to allow the robust internal diversity of religious traditions to freely surface, even the corrupt, violent, and oppressive elements of our traditions. This raises the importance of wrestling with the internal diversity of our traditions.
Sociologist Cawo Abdi, in her article “Where is My Islam?” attempts to “reclaim Islam” from groups like ISIS and Boko Haram without denouncing these groups’ claims to religiously identify as Muslim. Instead, she remarks that the “groups executing these atrocities represent an extreme in their readings of Islam.”[8] In so doing, she illustrates the power of Islam to rise above and foster beautiful religious identities beyond the oversimplified narratives dominated by terror groups and extremists presented in major media. To declare ISIS and Boko Haram as not “really” Muslim is not dissimilar to saying the Nazi party or the Ku Klux Klan are not “really” Christian, or that the 9/11 bombers were not “really” Muslim. Of course, all of these groups claim(ed) a religious identity. Oversimplified views of Islam (or Islams), and of all religions, has led to rather black-and-white understanding of traditions, often well removed from their very complicated realities.
Sometimes we see the well-intentioned move to revoke any genuine religious identity from those who perpetrate violent and hateful acts in the name of their tradition. Stephen Gregg, scholar of lived religion, voices concern with this because it avoids any deep analysis of the complicated contexts at play. He argues that to suggest “anyone that commits a violent act, in the name of religion, isn’t a real Muslim”[9] is akin to “thinking of suicide bombings in Sri Lanka in the Civil War—they’re not real Buddhists; or sexual abuse by clergy isn’t something that a real Christian would do.”[10] Scholars of religion will readily ferret out the obvious reductionism and essentialism at work here, which is to say that particular religious identities are being boiled down to (over)simplified boundaries. Scholars of lived religion, such as Gregg, are put off by this reductionism since it “takes away the everyday experience of people that I hope you disagree with in the name of religion, but they are doing so in the name of religion.”[11]
Is it better to acknowledge that groups like these claim inspiration from their religious traditions? Would this help us to be ever aware of the destructive potential that lurks within the human person to harness religious zeal for hateful and destructive purposes? Would this put us in better and more informed positions to combat them? Scholar of religion Stephen Prothero argues that failing to recognize the religiosity of Nazis, terrorists, racists, hate-groups, and the like is “terrifying” since it allows those within those traditions to “absolve themselves of any responsibility for reckoning with the dark side of their tradition[s].”[12]
People have perpetuated much harm and violence in the name of religion. Why not acknowledge this in our own traditions? Why shouldn’t contemporary Christians acknowledge that Nazi theology draws on the disturbing idea that continues to lurk within some circles of Christianity that blames Jews for killing Jesus? Label it a perversion, a misunderstanding, or downright wrong, but it seems rather clear that it is more helpful to acknowledge that these hate groups are inspired by Christianity instead of pretending that they are not, nor ever have been, a part of the history of Christianity. Acknowledging this can allow Christians to set about the hard work of countering their narrative. This is not an argument for why we should insist those in other traditions condemn the violence in their traditions (in which case I concur with Todd Green). It should go without saying, I would hope, that our friends and neighbors of traditions other than our own condemn hatred, violence, oppression, terrorism, and the like. To insist our neighbors constantly condemn such acts can demonstrate an offensive lack of trust on our part. Rather, this is a call to avoid dismissing the violent and oppressive tendencies that lurk within our own traditions, when they do surface, for the sake of interreligious understanding.
Rabbi Shira Lander, professor of Jewish Studies at Southern Methodist University, is instructive at this point. She writes,
Rather than dismissing the radical or fundamentalist wings of religion as “hijacking” the faith and distancing ourselves from them by denying any relationship between our own version of religion and that of religious fanatics, we need to take full responsibility for the harmful elements within our traditions without fear that those who oppose us will use our words against us.[13]
Drawing on her Jewish tradition, Lander encourages “rather than dismissing and condemning these folks as lunatics and radicals, my own tradition requires that I sit down and begin a conversation with them, or at least their allies and supporters, articulated as ‘seeking peace and pursu[ing] it’ (Ps 34:15: bakkesh shalom v’rodfehu).”[14] It may not always be reasonable to sit down and begin a conversation with ISIS or the Nazi party, although it might be reasonable to converse with their non-violent supporters and sympathizers.
Recognizing the internal diversity of our traditions remains one of the key aims to constructive interreligious understanding today. It helps to recognize the complexity of religious identities, but it also makes us ever aware of the oppressive and violent tendencies that draw on our traditions. With an increased sense of both, we become more equipped to root out and combat these tendencies in a manner that those outside our traditions can take seriously and support.
Note: This article was adapted and revised from a section of a longer essay first published as “The State of Interreligious Encounter in North America: Contemporary Challenges and Concerns for Interreligious Dialogue,” Wake Up, Lazarus!, December, 2016.
Photo: © Hans Gustafson, 2017
Endnotes
[1] Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006), 14.
[2] Jeannine Hill Fletcher, “Shifting Identity: The Contribution of Feminist Thought to Theologies of Religious Pluralism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 19, no. 2 (2003), 14; Fletcher borrows “logic of identity” from political scientist Iris Marion Young.
[3] Hill Fletcher, “Shifting Identity,” 14.
[4] Hill Fletcher, “Shifting Identity,” 14.
[5] Hill Fletcher, “Shifting Identity,” 5-24.
[6] Heathen here refers to reconstructed Germanic/Norse Paganism; Jennifer Snook’s American Heathens: The Politics of Identity in a Pagan Religious Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015) addresses at length the internal battles waged among American Heathens over who can authentically claim to be “really Heathen.”
[7] Leonard Swidler, “Dialogue Principles,” Dialogue Institute, accessed September 20, 2016, http://dialogueinstitute.org/dialogue-principles.
[8] Cawo Abdi, “Where is my Islam? The identity crisis of 21st century Muslims,” CNN, August 24, 2015, accessed September 20, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/opinions/islam-identity-crisis-cawo-abdi/.
[9] Stephen Gregg, “The British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) and the Impact of Religious Studies,” panel/podcast with Steve Sutcliffe, Stephen Gregg, Christopher Cotter, Suzanne Owen, and David Robertson, Religious Studies Project, podcast audio, March 12, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018, religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/the-basr-and-the-impact-of-religious-studies.
[10] Gregg, “The British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) and the Impact of Religious Studies.”
[11] Gregg, “The British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) and the Impact of Religious Studies.”
[12] Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 10.
[13] Shira Lander, “The Role of the Religious Voice in the Twenty-First Century—A Jewish Perspective,” in Religious Identity and Renewal in the Twenty-first Century: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Explorations, ed. Simone Sinn and Michael Reid Trice (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015), 88.
[14] Lander, “The Role of the Religious Voice in the Twenty-First Century—A Jewish Perspective,” 88.