Religions in Dialogue

From Theocracy to Democracy

alan Race, Ingrid Shafer, Alan Race

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351728454
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2002. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as Abrahamic religions, share much theological common ground and the momentum for dialogue between them at theological levels has greatly increased in recent decades. This book explores the relationship between religion and the modern democratic state from the perspective of these three monotheistic traditions. It investigates how the three religions in dialogue might overcome their historic antagonism as a prelude to working for the development of the global common good. As part of the test of religious ideals, some of the contributions bring theory down to earth by examining the role of religion in three democratic states with different histories - Turkey, Indonesia, India - and also in relation to a culture of human rights. Drawing together leading Muslim, Christian, and Jewish authors from America, Europe and Asia, the book presents a rare collaboration of faiths and ideas to make a contribution to studies of inter-religious dialogue and the changing role of religion in the democratic state.

Part I
Setting the Dialogical Scene

Introduction: Why Democracy and Why Three Religions?

Alan Race and Ingrid Shafer

This book brings together two major contemporary concerns: first, the growing dialogue between people of the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – and, second, the role of these religions in the democratic nation-state during a period of intense international geopolitical change and realignment. As members of the Abrahamic religions, Jews, Christians, and Muslims share much theological common ground, although their different historical developments have very much prised them apart. However, the momentum for dialogue between them has greatly increased in recent decades, and, in turn, this has brokered the necessary trust for future cooperation in other ways. When this dialogue is applied to the relationship between religion and the state, especially in the context of democracy, some intriguing issues emerge.

Although the dialogue between religions is still in its infancy, it is already transforming the way in which religion is being approached, studied and embraced in an emerging global environment. For dialogue affects not only the self-identity of any one particular religious tradition but also makes its own impression on the place of religion in society as a whole. Dialogue takes numerous forms and is typically located in many arenas, such as: a form of relationship between confessionally-based religious institutions, at both leadership and popular levels; a discipline worthy of academic scrutiny in its own right; and a matter of everyday life and work among citizens, including specific humanitarian and activist projects with the intention of creating a better world. However, there is every sign that dialogue between religions is also significant in relation to the wider shape of political and international relations.

We can point at least to two main reasons why religion continues to be a potent force in global political life. First, with the increasing movement of peoples around the world, most nations and states (apart from those which remain closed or isolated internationally, or intentionally monochrome in cultural or other ways) are evolving as culturally and religiously plural societies. The impact of plurality on the appeals that a state makes, for example, to its inherited traditions (which will include religious traditions) in the management of its affairs, is bound to be profound. This might seem more obviously true for societies that retain close ties with their religious heritage, such as in Indonesia or Ireland, but even in so-called avowedly secular societies there is no reason why religious tradition ought to be eclipsed from public life and debate. Besides, any religion worth its salt would not allow itself to be so removed from public view.

Second, dialogue between religions is necessary in connection with political and international relations. As a persistent marker of cultural and national identity, religion as such continues to exert influence as a player in negotiations to chart a way through the maze of political fragmentation which paradoxically accompanies the unifying momentum of globalization. This has been demonstrated in relation to international events following the end of the Cold War in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall – an obvious example being the confrontations and wars that erupted in the Balkans, in the 1990s, between various cultural and political groupings, and which were conducted along religious as well as ethnic lines.

A further example of the role of religion in modern politics stems from the debate surrounding the terrorist attacks on the national institutions of the United States of America (the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, together with the foiled attempt on the part of hijackers to strike a third target) on 11 September 2001. These attacks precipitated a protracted discussion about the relationship between Western liberal democracy and politically motivated 'fundamentalist' religion – in this case, Islam in a global environment.

This book was prepared prior to the terrorist attacks in the United States, but we are writing this Introduction in the period of its immediate aftermath. However, even at this stage, it is clear that religion is being invoked both for having fuelled the aggression and for denouncing its immorality. Historically speaking, there is nothing unusual in this observation. Religions, like any product of human cultural history, can be used for the good or ill. However, a sign of a new phase emerging in world affairs has been the univocal condemnation of the terrorist aggression by leaders and representatives of many religions standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Ironically, revulsion and outrage at an act intended to strike at the heart of Western secular modernity has managed to further the cause of interreligious solidarity and dialogue.

For the purposes of this book, the terrible events of September 2001 and their aftermath have exposed the interconnectedness of its two themes – interreligious dialogue and the relationship of religious commitment to democracy. There is an urgent necessity both for dialogue between religions to continue to increase on many levels and across many divides, and for the religions to enter into critical solidarity with the democratic spirit in order to help them overcome their own historic craving for absolutism and theocratic rule.

Of course, interreligious dialogue and democracy reinforce one another. Democracy is necessary in order to create the space for mutual respect in which dialogue can flourish; and dialogue is necessary in order to keep democracy alert to the different needs and the gifts that spring from diverse cultural histories. In this sense, interreligious dialogue and democracy offer challenges and opportunities to each other.

The structure of this book deliberately reflects the two-way challenges that transpire between democracy and our three religions in dialogue. Following an explanation of the principles and dynamics of dialogue in Part I, theologians from the three religions develop their own reasoning in relation to the democratic vision. This manifests one of the central principles of dialogue: that religions speak from their own roots and histories, yet with a willingness to listen and learn. These chapters display varied approaches in terms of their reliance on scriptural or philosophical and theological principles, and in the extent to which they portray the balance between the two kinds of challenge that we have outlined. At one level they exist as parallel arguments with minor cross-references between them. However, the very fact of their positioning is itself a statement of dialogue and a stimulus to the readers to record, in their own way, the overlaps between the traditions and so make the dialogical connections between them.

Just as interreligious dialogue takes a number of forms, so inevitably does the embodiment of democracy in the world's diverse cultural, national and religious settings. This will be evident even from a cursory glance at the confessionally-based arguments for democracy in Part II. However, the ideal in religion is not always reflected in the historical settings of actual political life. Therefore, part of the value of the theological and ethical principles employed in the religious interaction with the state and democracy lies in the need to demonstrate how the religions might make a difference in specific historical circumstances. In order to do this, Part III tests the application of the religions' support for democracy in two ways: first, by taking the specific examples of Indonesia, Turkey and India as three very different contexts where cultural and religious plurality is valued but democracy remains strained and even fragile; and, second, by measuring the rhetoric of religious support for democracy against its application in the field of human rights. Again, it will be clear that the three religions ground their support for human rights in different ways, a fact which is itself a further stimulus to dialogue. The final section, Part IV, returns the discussion to the matter of interreligious dialogue and expands the discussion in ever widening circles, embracing a European discussion and a reflection about religious ethics that argues for the urgent need for ethical thinking which is global in scope and dialogical in temperament.

In a democratic context, where the principles of freedom, toleration and human rights are highly prized, the three traditions are challenged to re-examine their attitudes and effectiveness regarding the basic vision of democracy itself. Historically speaking, the three religions have shown very different responses to the democratic vision and have often exhibited ambivalent attitudes. But in the circumstances of modernity/postmodernity they now face the task of searching their sources, histories and theologies for seeds and principles that reflect less ambivalent approaches. Moreover, as part of this search, the fundamental principle of human equality inherent in democracy is a challenge to dialogue in so far as the religions are required to find ways of overcoming their history of mutual antagonism if they are to live freely in the democratic state. Democracy therefore makes its own demands on the religions to move beyond stereotyping and suspicion by developing models of cooperation and pluralistic understanding. All three traditions will only be able to accomplish this from a deep sense of religious trust, dialogical commitment, and intellectual integrity.

As democratic countries struggle to evolve their understanding of democracy in order to respond to the emergent issues of living in multicultural and multireligious societies, religions in dialogue bring their own challenges to democracy in so far as the latter might be tempted to settle for a lazy-minded secularism as its modus operandi. Under conditions of radical plurality, historic assumptions about the 'common good' or 'shared values', even in long-established liberal contexts, no longer seem as stable as they once were. The three religions can make a timely contribution in contemporary discussions of the meaning of shared values in the future democratic state. In particular, as inheritors of the prophetic spirit, the three Abrahamic religions contain resources for reminding the state and its peoples of their shared responsibilities towards the least protected and the most vulnerable members of society.

When the Cold War ended, a number of voices predicted that Western liberal democracy would inevitably proceed politically unchallenged and reshape the consciousness of nations. This was unduly optimistic. Since then, the terrorist attacks in 2001 on America's symbols of economic, political and military power have injected a more sober tone into international affairs. Meanwhile, the growing disparities between the rich and poor nations, together with the problems of international debt, threaten a crisis that needs heeding – as do the looming environmental problems. Then there are the genies of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that show no sign of returning to their bottles. Other commentators on international affairs have predicted a 'clash of civilizations'. There is nothing inevitable about the triumph of democracy or, for that matter, about anything. Such is the free disposition of human beings.

Yet neither is there any need to sink into despair or rehearse apocalyptic scenarios prematurely. This book is offered in the double conviction that the democratic arrangement of human beings in society has proved itself the best experiment in human living so far, and that the three Abrahamic religions – from the best corners of their storehouses – have abundant riches to offer to the future by way of prophetic criticism and their traditions of human dignity, community and mutual valuing of one another. If the religions can do this in critical awareness of their own darker side (particularly of their pretensions to absolutism), in critical dialogical relationship with one another and in critical solidarity with society as a whole, then the hope which is found at the heart of both the democratic vision and the three Abrahamic religions stands a chance of being realized.

Chapter 1
From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Global Dialogue

Leonard Swidler

Dialogue: The Way Forward

In the past it was possible, indeed, unavoidable, for most human beings to live out their lives in isolation from the vast majority of their fellows, without even having a faint awareness of, let alone interest in, their very existence. At most, and for most, the occasional tale with distorted descriptions of faraway foreigners satisfied their curiosity. For the most part, everyone talked to their own cultural selves. Even the rare descriptions of 'the other' hardly ever came from 'the other', but from some of their own who had heard, or heard of, 'the other'. Put briefly, until the edge of the present era, humans lived in the age of monologue. That age is now passing.

We are now poised at the entrance to the age of dialogue. We travel all over the globe, and large elements of the entire globe come to us. There can hardly be a large city in the world which does not bristle with foreign accents and languages. Our streets, businesses and homes are filled with foreign products. Through our television sets we invite into our living rooms a myriad strange nations, cultures and religions.

We can no longer ignore 'the other', but we can close our minds and spirits to them, look at them with fear and misunderstanding, come to resent them, and perhaps even hate them. This way of encounter can all too easily lead to hostility and, eventually, war and death.

Today nuclear, ecological or other catastrophic devastation lies just a little further down the path of monologue. It is only by struggling out of the self-centred monologic mindset into dialogue with 'the other as s/he really is, and not as we have projected her/him in our monologues, that we can avoid such cataclysmic disasters. In brief, we must move quickly from the age of monologue to the age of dialogue.

I understand religion to be the 'explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly', or, if that explanation is not based on a notion of the transcendent, an ideology or belief. Since our religion or ideology is so comprehensive, it is the most fundamental area in which 'the other' is likely to be different from us, and hence it is possibly seen as the most threatening. This is not overdramatization. The current catalogue of conflicts which have religion/ideology as a constituent element is staggering, including such obvious flashpoints as Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, Sri Lanka, Pakistan-India, Tibet, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Armenia-Azerbaijan and so on.

Hence, if humankind is to move from the age of monologue into the age of dialogue, the religions and ideologies must enter into that transition full force. They have, in fact, begun to make serious progress along this path, although the journey stretches far ahead, indeed.

Dialogue: A Way of Thinking

Dialogue, especially dialogue in the religious and ideological area, is not simply a series of conversations; it is a whole new way of thinking, a way of seeing and reflecting on the world and its meaning. Regardless of whether or not one is a theist, dialogue is ever more clearly the way of the future in religious and ideological reflection on the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly.

I am convinced that it is necessary to think beyond the absolutes that we as Jews, Christians and Muslims (and others) in our different ways, have inherited and move towards a 'de-absolutized' view that is more consonant with our modern thought-world.¹ Hence, I would like to reflect here on the ways in which all humans need to think about the world and its meaning now that more and more individuals and institutions are gaining sufficient maturity to notice that there are entire other ways of understanding the world than that shaped by our forebears.

Beyond the absolute way of understanding the world and its meaning there is beginning to emerge a much richer, 'truer' way of understanding the world – the dialogical way of thinking. Each person's dialogue partners in this new paradigm or model of understanding the world are, in fact, all the ways of understanding the world and its meaning – all the world's religions and ideologies. This means that each should strive eventually to engage in dialogue with at least the world's major religions and ideologies, reflecting on what can be learned about and from each. But beyond all these dialogue partners is the often unconscious, but always pervasive, dialogue partner for an ever-increasing number of people – modern critical thought.

Those who are open to dialogue – that is, those who are open to going beyond prior absolutes to learning from 'the other' – live in a de-absolutized, 'relationized', modern, critical-thinking thought-world. In this sense, those engaged in dialogue can no longer live on the level of the first naïveté, but are at least striving to live on the level of the second naïveté. On this level, they see their root symbols and metaphors as symbols and metaphors, and hence neither mistake them for empirical, ontological realities, nor simply reject them as fantasies and fairy tales. Rather, they correctly appreciate them as indispensable vehicles for communicating profound realities that go b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface: Religion, Common Values and Dialogue
• PART I: SETTING THE DIALOGICAL SCENE
• PART II: RELIGIONS IN THE DEMOCRATIC WAY
• PART III: TESTING THE THEORY IN PRACTICE
• PART IV: THE BIGGER PICTURE
• Subject Index
• Name Index