A Christian Science Monitor article From Fear of Islam to Outreach notes that
Over the past 10 years, the percentage of US congregations involved in interfaith worship has doubled – from 7 to 14 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of congregations performing interfaith community service nearly tripled – from 8 to almost 21 percent – according to a new survey by Hartford Seminary’s Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut. In doing so, these congregations have joined the colorful, decades-old American interfaith movement. Since 9/11, the movement has gained new momentum and, more than ever before, has drawn Muslims into its ranks.
This is the sort of quiet, on-the-ground development that generally goes unnoticed in the press, as the Christian Right sucks all the oxygen out of the room. More on the flip.
Interfaith efforts are part of a tradition of religious inclusivism that goes back at least as far as the Book of Jonah, which satirizes the notion of religious and national superiority by telling a story of how God instructed a cranky prophet to preach a message of repentance to Israel's enemies, rather than blast them into smithereens. Throughout history, periods of exclusivist violence and inclusivist cooperation have alternated. Diana Eck, director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, defines four working points of religious pluralism:
First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. Today, religious diversity is a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement. Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will yield increasing tensions in our societies.
Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.
Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.
Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both common understandings and real differences. Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one another. Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table -- with one’s commitments.
The interfaith efforts reported by the CSM (not to be confused with the FSM) show that the points advanced by Eck are not just abstract hypotheticals, but actually part of our religious and cultural landscape. While Islamophobia is a real threat to our traditions of religious tolerance, there has been much progress toward mutual understanding in the last decade. From the CSM article:
As interest in American Muslims surged, many Muslim leaders went to great lengths to explain Islam to outsiders and to develop partnerships beyond the Muslim community – often, for the first time.
"Before 9/11, most mosques were fairly insular. Today, most mosques, if not all, have intensive programs of reaching out and having dialogues," says Sheikh Rahman, who helped found the Interfaith Community Church in Seattle.
In the weeks immediately after Sept. 11, mosques and Islamic community centers around the country held open houses. Then, in 2008, a multinational group of 138 Muslim scholars, called Common Word, invited senior Christian leaders to Yale University to discuss commonalities among their faiths.
In another article the CSM notes the efforts of Eboo Patel, a Muslim, to
help young people champion religious tolerance. He directs the
Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that helps young people work across religious differences. Patel's story is also one of organizational success:
The IFYC has grown from a scrappy operation run out of a Chicago basement at a time when few young people were a part of the interfaith movement, to a major organization that last year worked with students on about 60 college campuses, sponsored 50 interfaith fellows in the United States and abroad, and hosted its sixth interfaith youth conference at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
Another organization that actively advances religious pluralism is the
Interfaith Alliance, directed by Rev. Welton Gaddy.
Suggested Reading
John Hick and Paul Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions
Diana Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras
Farid Esack, Qur'an, Liberation, and Pluralism