Interreligious Learning and Teaching

A Christian Rationale for a Transformative Praxis

Kristin Johnston Largen

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781451488777
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451489699
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

There is still resistance in Christian institutions to interreligious dialogue. Many feel that such a practice weakens Christian faith, and promotes the idea that Christianity is merely one among many different religious options. When it comes to higher education, there is the fear that both college and seminary students will “lose their faith” if they are invited to study other religious traditions from a positive perspective.

Unfortunately, this attitude belies the current culture in which we live, which constantly exposes us to the beliefs and practices of others. Kristin Johnston Largen sees this setting as an opportunity and seeks to provide not only the theological grounding for such a position but also some practical advice on how both to teach and live out this conviction in a way that promotes greater understanding and respect for others and engenders a deeper appreciation of one’s own faith tradition.

Largen’s synopsis of interreligious education and suggested action includes contributions by Mary Hess and Christy Lohr Sapp. Hess and Sapp provide practical commentary regarding the successful implementation of Largen’s proposed approach. As a group, Largen, Hess, and Sapp create a text that extends pedagogical innovation in inspiring but practical ways.

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Our Interreligious Life in the Twenty-First-Century North American Context

Kristin Johnston Largen

“How Interreligious Is Your Life?”

What’s your experience with interreligious dialogue? That’s the question I first thought I wanted to address in the opening pages of this book, but as I contemplated it more, I realized that there is an even more fundamental question that conveys much more clearly and directly the reality in which we live today: “How interreligious is your life?” That is the first question we need to be asking—both of ourselves and of the people in our churches, and, of course, of people in theological education. The main reason for beginning with this particular question is that when you ask people if they are engaged in “interreligious dialogue,” the first response for many is to say “no”: many Christians have never been to a synagogue, mosque, or temple, and many Christians still have few, if any, non-Christian friends. So, they don’t think of themselves as actively engaging in “dialogue.”

The reality, however, is that here in the United States in the twenty-first century, we all live in a pluralistic, interreligious context that marks us and shapes us in ways we sometimes don’t even recognize or realize. It is naïve to assume (and narrow minded to desire) that all our children’s friends, our neighbors, our doctors, and our co-workers are Christian; and there is no Internet/news bubble in which one can insulate oneself that does not include important news involving non-Christian religions.

Praxis Point #1 One of the surprising and disheartening consequences of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 was a realization of the ignorance many Americans had around issues of the religious other. The Sikh community was among the first to experience backlash. In a 9/11 retaliatory attack, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a practicing Sikh, was gunned down while working at his gas station in Arizona.^[1] He was shot by a Caucasian man who claimed to want to shoot an “Arab” and who wanted justice for Americans. Sikhs are not “Arabs”; many are Indians. Some are Caucasians, and many are also Americans. Members of the Sikh tradition have been living in the United States for over a century, and about a million Sikhs live in North America today.^[2]Sikhism is the world’s fifth largest religious tradition. Many Sikh men are easily identified by their long beards and turbans. The murder of Mr. Sodhi demonstrates that at the time of the 9/11 attacks many Americans did not know much about the religious other. The Sikh community was not the only one targeted in the backlash from 9/11, and the entire interreligious landscape of the United States changed on that day. Our collective naïveté and ignorance was no longer permissible. Muslims, in particular, had a great deal of work to do to educate their neighbors about their tradition, and the place where a large portion of this education happened was in local congregations. Those who had established interreligious relationships were able to draw on those to offer words and acts of support. Those who did not suddenly found a new urgency in forming such relationships. This all goes to show that events in one specific locale can have an impact the world over. Thus, we need an expansive understanding of the word community. While many individuals might not see themselves as having many interreligious relationships in their lives, that does not exclude them from participation in the wider world. My students often respond to the challenge of learning to make room for a theology of the religious other in their lives with the realization that they will be working in rural communities that are marked by homogeneity. Yet, with eyes to see, they realize that even those in rural communities watch the news or movies. Even those in homogenous communities form opinions of the “other.” As we teach people in our schools and our religious communities to reflect thoughtfully about “otherness,” we teach them to become better citizens of the world. We also equip them with the skills to handle myriad types of otherness. Often, students find that the skills they learn in interreligious dialogue come in handy in awkward moments of political or ideological difference, of racial reconciliation, and gender stereotyping. In much the same way that the skills of critical thinking and articulation developed in debate serve students well in other disciplines, the particularities of listening, learning, and communicating honed in dialogue serve pastors and teachers well in many situations.—Christy Lohr Sapp

The fact is, our lives are marked by interreligious engagements in all kinds of ways, whether we want that to be the case or not; and consequently, as Christians, we sometimes find ourselves in situations that are confusing and leave us unsure how to respond. Therefore, it seemed wise to me to begin a book that hopes to introduce both a Christian rationale for interreligious engagement and also some concrete strategies for facilitating such an engagement with four such “situations”: concrete examples of lived interreligious experiences that many of us have encountered, but to which fewer of us have consciously formulated a “proper” Christian response. And, even more, in at least one or two of the cases, it’s not entirely clear what a “proper” Christian response should be, and what the grounds might be for making such a response.

So, in what follows, then, I discuss the practice of yoga, the inflammatory media stunt of Qur’an burning, Buddhist meditation, and the growing trend of “Christian” Seder meals. To be sure, there are a host of other beliefs and practices—with more coming to the fore every day, such as the Hindu festival of Holi or the Muslim observance of Ramadan—that could be addressed on the basis of their influence on North American society. However, I have selected these topics due to both their fame and infamy, as well as their ability to convey key aspects of interreligious education. Each one of these practices has its own challenges and motivations, and all of them have seen quite conflicted responses from various Christian communities. My main goal in discussing and describing each of these practices is not to make a final pronouncement either for or against (except in the case of the Qur’an burning—does anyone really want to argue for such a practice?), but, rather, to introduce some of the issues involved, offer some background information, and, finally, demonstrate the practical necessity for interreligious education and dialogue that seems to be of critical importance for daily life in the world today.

Praxis Point #2 What is explored here are two “categories” of potential offense in interreligious dialogue: (1) misappropriation of another’s tradition, and (2) flat-out disrespect for another’s tradition. The latter can easily be addressed for Christians by the Golden Rule and/or the Eighth Commandment. Jesus clearly charges his followers to treat others with the respect and dignity that they deserve as co-inhabitors of the earthly kingdom. The Eighth Commandment also challenges us to look out for the welfare of our neighbors. It does not say just to concern ourselves with our Christian neighbors. In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther expands the understanding of this commandment to include acting on the other’s behalf, helping the other protect his name, his property, and his reputation. Disrespecting a person’s religious tradition by maligning, abusing, or otherwise desecrating a sacred relic, text, or leader is not living into that help which Luther suggests we should offer. If anything, it does the opposite, and doing the opposite also means breaking the commandment. In regard to the first category, often misappropriation of another’s tradition can begin innocently enough. Krister Stendahl, the late Swedish Lutheran bishop, New Testament scholar, and pioneer in Lutheran-Jewish relations, encouraged people to develop “holy envy” for others’ traditions. By this, he meant that we each should find something in the others’ traditions that we wish we had in our own. This holy envy is a beautiful thing when it helps us to see the poetry of another’s text or the piety in another’s actions, but it crosses a line to misappropriation when we take that envy and turn it into imitation. While some say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, others know that imitation can actually result in just the opposite—irritation and offense. It reminds me of sibling rivalry. Nothing can annoy the older sibling more than when the younger sibling copies what she does. The younger simply wants to be like the older, but the older finds the imitation to be insulting. That is what inappropriate uses of yoga, meditation, and Seders can be. When we take elements of other traditions and try to “Christianize” them, this at its most innocent level fails to recognize the deep history of the traditions behind the elements, and, at its more sinister level, strips them of the elements of their inherent worth—suggesting that they do not have value in and of themselves as Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and other traditions but, rather, that they need to be “validated” by Christian patina. We need to train our religious leaders to walk the line between holy envy and misappropriation—to draw inspiration from others without needing to claim or own those enviable...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Additional Praise for Interreligious Learning and Teaching
• Acknowledgments
• Our Interreligious Life in the Twenty-First-Century North American Context
• Chapter Response: What Are Students’ Questions?
• A Christian Rationale for Interreligious Teaching and Learning
• Chapter Response: How Do We Understand
• Outcomes, Strategies, and Assessment for Interreligious Teaching and Learning
• Chapter Response: How Do Theologies of the Pluralism of Faith Help?
• Epilogue: Returning to the Questions with Which We Began
• Endings and Beginnings
• Works Cited