How can interreligious dialogue progress? Participants share visions as "Critical moment" conference closes
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The future will see the World Council of Churches (WCC) more courageously challenging its members to take up interreligious tasks in their own contexts, and practitioners of interreligious dialogue committing themselves to enlarging their community.
An attitude of healthy self-criticism, as well as humility and gratitude for the other, will inform interreligious relations and dialogue, while passionate rejection of all forms of violence together with the recognition of the complexity of religious realities in today's world will be at the core of this endeavour.
These were elements of the vision shared by panellists at the final session of the 7-9 June "Critical moment in interreligious dialogue" conference hosted by the WCC in Geneva.
"The Council will need to be more courageous in the ways we encourage and challenge our member churches to take up the interreligious tasks in their own churches and their own settings," said Dr Marion Best from Canada, vice-moderator of the WCC central committee. Best also expressed her hope for more dialogue opportunities and networks between women of different faiths.
Reminding the participants of one of his grand-father's teachings, Msgr. Chidi Denis Isizoh from Nigeria, a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, urged them to commit themselves to enlarge the "dialogue community" back home. "If you learn something and keep it for yourself, you are selfish and useless to the community, but if you share it, you become a worthy member of it," he said.
For interreligious dialogue to progress, self-critique grounded in a theology of humility is needed, according to Rabbi Rabbi Ehud Bandel from Jerusalem, vice president of the International Council of Christians and Jews. "We need to engage in soul-searching, examining our history and asking ourselves whether we have lived up to what we preach," he said.
For Professor Anant Rambachan, a Hindu scholar from Trinidad, recognition of the need for the other is essential to the interreligious endeavour. But caring for the other is denied by violence. "There is a crying need for our traditions to passionately reject violence inflicted in the name of the state, religion or ideology," he said.
Since interreligious dialogue doesn't happen in a vacuum, the changing world landscape has to be taken into account, Professor Tarik Ramadan, a Muslim author and university lecturer based in Geneva, reminded the conference. "Our current discourse of love and peace is often perceived as naïve and simplistic," he said. "We need to reconcile ourselves with the complexity of our world, moving away from simplistic statements and building local spaces of trust to counter the new global ideology of fear."
The complexity and interdependence of the world were also highlighted by Venerable Bhiksuni Chuehmen Shih, a Theravada Buddhist monk from Taiwan who is chief executive of the International Buddhist Progress Society. "The 9/11 disaster" didn't make only Americans suffer. "Other countries from our global village were affected too," she emphasized. Shih stressed the need for interpersonal relationships in interreligious dialogue, "building positive friendships, understanding and cooperation".
Speeches, documents and free high resolution photos are available on the conference website:
www.oikoumene.org/interreligious.html
