Many Reasons to Give Thanks

Since the last blog we have hosted four events at Buxton. Our first event was for the Young Buxton and we should a film produced by Unity Productions Foundation title, On a Wing a Prayer which documented Monem, a Muslim gentleman who wants to learn how to fly. The story centered on him and his wife, Iman, and their life as Muslims raising a family in a very small town in Washington.

On October 20th we were honored to have Dr. Eboo Patel from the Interfaith Youth Core speak at a luncheon on his book Acts of Faith. Eboo did an incredible job with giving the audience a deeper meaning and vision for interfaith dialogue. For someone with little background in interfaith dialogue like myself, I could easily follow Eboo’s passion and drive to see the positive outcomes that interfaith dialogue could produce. I do not think anyone walked away from that luncheon without some hope for the future and a tangible idea of how we can bring about peace.

Lately I have begun a project on the history of interfaith dialogue. Finding an exact time that interfaith dialogue started has been a challenge because there was never one decisive moment in which interfaith dialogue was created. The World Council of Churches website has an interesting article on the history of interfaith dialogue. According to them the difficulty with defining the beginning is largely due to the fact that, “the history of Christianity is also the history of Christian relationships with other faith traditions.” The World Council of Churches has dealt with interfaith dialogue issues for nearly a century.

During the meeting in Jerusalem in 1928 the growing amount of secularism caused the conference to affirm “’values’ in other religions and called on Christians to come together to impact secular culture.” After World War II the environment of the world was changed and there was a revival of nationalism and religious traditions. New churches in the newly independent countries had to work and struggle with people of different religious traditions. By 1967, with the meeting in Sri Lanka, there was serious talk of interfaith dialogue. In 1970 the first multifaith dialogue convened under WCC support of Hinduism, Buddhism, Muslims and Christians.

Even amongst the fears of syncretism, at the 1975 council meeting in Nairobi, 5 persons of other faiths were invited to a WCC assembly as special guests. There are still some who struggle with the meaning of interfaith dialogue especially within World Council of Churches, but most people at this point have come to recognize the necessity of creating meaningful ways to dialogue with those of differing faiths.

From the beginning of time people have had to interact with those of different faiths, race, backgrounds, economic status etc. Some people fear this interaction. My fear is not interacting with those who are different from us; it is when this interaction stops that I become fearful. It is in these interactions that we learn about our common humanity and through this it becomes more of a challenge to demonize one another. I felt at times apprehensive about engaging others of differing faiths because I do not speak their language, but this is exactly why I should. Interfaith dialogue, from my understanding, is not about ignoring that which sets us apart but acknowledging our different faiths, talking about the things that set us apart and using that platform to engage and learn from one another. It is an uncomfortable process, but once you start it gets easier. Everyone wants to be known and by starting with the faith that defines that person, you are closer to understanding who they are. My faith calls me to love without prejudice, Christian or Muslim, Jewish or Sikh. Jesus didn’t specify and so I am left with the only option of loving everyone as if they were myself. This is a challenging calling, but one worth trying with all my might to achieve.