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The new interreligious neighborhood we’ve been exploring offers an unprecedented set of learning opportunities. On your own, in a classroom, a congregation, the new demographics mean most of us have resources nearby to study interreligious dialogue and relationships and start to take our learning seriously. Teachers abound, starting in your congregation and your neighbor’s. They know how to lead a class through the remarkable documents we’ve described, and compare them perhaps, with passages in their own traditions and literature.
      Until you are able to include the ‘stranger’ in your classroom, of course, studying interfaith relations stays two-dimensional. One of the best first steps is to invite members of other faiths to visit and perhaps speak to your community. A panel allows several religions to be represented. Taking an interfaith group to a series of sanctuaries or communities, each representing a different tradition, is another popular way to get acquainted.
      Making the stranger-to-friend transition gracious and relaxed is the prelude to good interfaith relationships. Whatever the program, whoever is invited, following a few guidelines can help this highly sensitive beginning, when people meet each other:

Offer Hospitality – Most racial, ethnic, and religious traditions have elaborate hospitality rituals and conventions, though they tend to get lost in today’s bustling world. The stories and lore of hospitality are well worth rediscovering whenever strangers are meeting for the first time. Food is important. Music is usually a winner. Graciousness is the key. Mutual respect, as we noticed several times already, offers the ground we walk on.

Deep Listening – The art of listening turns out to be a crucial factor in building healthy communities. Strong personal relationships among people from different traditions depends on listening carefully. Careful listening deepens into a discernment that goes beyond words. Faith and practice regularly take us to regions beyond words, so this is no surprise; yet, when you share sacred time with people from different forms of faith and practice than your own, its startling to feel the whole universe gets a little bigger, along with your appreciation.

The Power of Dialogue – In the past decade, the nascent interfaith community locally and globally has learned to depend on engaged dialogue – one-on-one conversation about issues that matter and small group work, punctuated by plenary sessions where learnings are shared.
      Keynote speakers and panels are important, clerics and lay leaders are often wonderful contributors, and every tradition has wisdom to share. But conversation among members of different traditions – where everyone in the circle is heard, is the force growing the interfaith movement. When people are offered a friendly place to talk about what is most important to them, vitality and trust start to seep into the community.
      How do you deal with red-hot issues that are too sensitive to talk about, particularly with strangers? The key is to initiate your conversations (and relationships) around issues of value focused on what people find most important, not the issues which come with complex disagreements and conflicted emotions. The questions in chapter 3 are an example of the kind of conversation people can have safely – that is, where they don’t stumble over differences but learn to profit from them. The questions focus our attention on what we most value from our respective backgrounds and help us frame a vision of a religiously peaceful world we can start to create.
      One of the most involved interfaith dialogue networks in the world, the Interfaith Encounter Association, with offices in Jerusalem, organizes ongoing dialogue programs in Jerusalem, between Palestinian and Jewish communities, and throughout the Middle East (www.interfaith-encounter.org). They include youth meetings, meetings for women, and those for the whole community. Rather than talking about their disagreements, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, by the hundreds, even thousands, listen to each other with respect as they talk about scripture, theology, holy days, fasting, religious education, life-style, and dozens of other issues. They do the work to keep from demonizing the enemy and to enrich themselves, and they are providing a lamp of hope in the Middle East.

From Learning to Doing – Learning about faith and practice usually includes moving from the idea to the act, challenging us to walk the talk. The emerging interfaith community is finding its significance and vitality in networking, developing connections with similarly minded people near and far. Without any traveling, you can become both locally and globally connected by starting a United Religions Initiative circle in your own community, perhaps with a circle of friends or a group of congregations. Those who have attended the twice-a-decade Parliament of the Worlds Religions typically come home with new local friends they met thousands of miles from home.
      These associations, formal and informal, strengthen your own interfaith work. The mantra among activists is collaborate and build capacity. The internet in particular has given collaboration all sorts of new meanings.
      Parallel networks outside of the religious community exist, full of secular people with deeply spiritual lives who probably share many of your values and dreams for the future, and it is worth connecting with them. A number of interfaith groups are focused on the environment, for instance. They will find valuable colleagues who share many of their values at the Earth Charter Initiative, a global network of people whose Charter echoes and resonates with the themes we’ve explored in Towards a Global Ethic and elsewhere (www.earthcharter.org).
      The International Bill of Rights project (IBOR) is a nonprofit group started in the late nineties supporting “a process for individuals, organizations and governments to draft – in a single document – an International Bill of Rights enforceable in the local courts of all countries.” IBOR (www.ibor.org) represents a strong potential partner for the aggregate faith community, a place where secular and religious folk can work on common cause and learn to enjoy their differences. Interfaith dialogue can be introduced into all sorts of community activities, enriching the local community while making it safer. The local Rotary Club, for instance, is an interfaith organization these days, and the local library serves an interfaith constituency. Paying attention paves the way to action.

How should we study interfaith dialogue and relationship? Finally it is a personal question and a congregational question. Answering it for yourself and in your community is a tangible step towards healing a wounded world.


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FOR REFLECTION OR DISCUSSION

• What have you gained from this interfaith dialogue?
  
  
• Of all the things that you have read and heard, what do you think you will remember long after the end of this course?
  
  
• What kind of tangible difference does interfaith dialogue make in your life? Have you made any new commitments or decisions based on what you’ve learned?

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