RELI 216
ENCOUNTERING RELIGIONS
CASE STUDY 1
BULDING BRIDGES AMONGST THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS
This case study will focus on the theme of building bridges amongst the three Abrahamic religions- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The theme is highly relevant in the modern world where violence and warfare is a serious threat to the very existence of humankind. Various scholars and religious leaders have addressed this issue in various ways. Some have adopted a historical approach to identify the exact causes of the interreligious conflicts so that steps can be taken to avoid them in the future. Others have focused on the commonalities among the Torah, the Quran and the Bible and have highlighted the fact that all of them promote tolerance and diversity. Finally, another group of activists, leaders, and scholars have advocated an active collaboration of the three religions to combat threats to human existence such as nuclear warfare and climate change. This study will aim to prove that effective interfaith collaboration amongst the Abrahamic traditions can be achieved through a combination of a historical analysis of interfaith conflicts, the appreciation of commonalities amongst the three religions, and the identification of the greater threats to humankind that can be thwarted only through interfaith cooperation and dialogue. To establish this point, the case study will analyze voices that address disparate issues such as the causes of conflict, the suitable platforms for collaboration or even how such fruitful collaboration can be achieved in the modern world. The strengths and weaknesses of each voice will be analyzed before synthesizing the crucial points raised by them.
The first voice that will lend perspective to the issue of building bridges amongst Abrahamic religions is the Tedx Talks video titled “The Interfaith Amigos – Breaking the taboos of interfaith dialogue”. The video communicates to the viewers the opinions of Rabbi Ted Falcon, Pastor Don Mackenzie, and Imam Jamal Rahman, who are close friends as well as religious leaders of the three main Abrahamic religions. The discussion in the video stresses the importance of interfaith dialogue in establishing stable and friendly relationships among Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions. The leaders have quite precisely identified two of the major obstacles to fruitful interfaith dialogue in the modern age. One major obstacle is the human tendency to remain trapped in certain age-old patterns of behavior (TEDx, 2011, 1:50). The second is the confusion of the particular with the universal. Humans fail to recognize the fact that various religions offer equally good alternatives to achieve communion with God, who represents the universal. Instead, each religion tries to arrogate the universal exclusively to itself, leading to hostility and violence (TEDx, 2011, 5:12).
The three leaders have also emphasized the need to appreciate the common teachings of all the three religions and the importance given to compassion and diversity in their religious scriptures (TEDx, 2011, 8:00). However, a major limitation of this voice is its tendency to gloss over the specific sociopolitical causes of extreme hostility during events such as the Crusades, the Jewish Holocaust, and more recently the Israel-Palestine crisis. It is necessary for the people of all religions to have a better understanding of the underlying causes of these conflicts so that they are not repeated in the future. Although the Interfaith Amigos have identified problematic aspects of the scriptures such as exclusivity, homophobia, and inequality, they have not suggested how a collaborative reworking of the scriptures can be achieved in the context of modernity.
The second voice that has been chosen for this case study is a scholarly article by Jame Schaefer called “Motivated for Action and Collaboration: The Abrahamic Religions and Climate Change”. This voice eliminates a major limitation of the previous voice by suggesting environmental activism as a suitable platform for the collaboration of the Abrahamic religions (Schaefer 2016, 1). Like the previous voice, this article too identifies a major commonality among Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. All three religions condemn the destruction of nature, which is God’s creation (Schaefer 2016, 14). The importance of interfaith dialogue in nullifying threats to humanity such as climate change was explicitly mentioned by Pope Francis (Schaefer 2016, 5). This article reiterates the stance taken by the religious leaders in the TEDx Talks video that dialogue is the best way to resolve animosity amongst the three faiths.
The article is quite significant from the perspective of fruitful collaboration of the Abrahamic religions. The leaders who have been quoted in this article have all highlighted the importance of togetherness in the face of adversity. All the leaders have agreed that climate change has accelerated due to the indiscriminate profit-making activities of business organizations and the lack of co-operation from certain major political figures (Schaefer 2016, 14). Thus, the causes of global warming are political and/or economic in nature and it is religion that can avert tragedy through effective collaboration. However, this article focuses exclusively on the issue of climate change and ignores the importance of interfaith dialogue in the context of world peace. Additionally, it focuses on the scientific community and shuns a historical analysis of the commonalities and the differences among the Abrahamic faiths. It suggests a suitable platform for collaboration but fails to provide concrete measures to achieve this objective.
The third voice that will contribute to the case study is the official website of the Interfaith Encounter Association. This voice is valuable in the context of the case study because it delineates the concrete steps the organization has taken to build bridges amongst the Abrahamic religions (Interfaith Encounter Association, 2016). The previous two voices were deficient in this aspect because they did not actively implement any concrete measures to promote interfaith dialogue and cooperation. Instead of remaining silent on current interfaith conflicts, this organization has decided to confront such issues through programs such as the Israeli Palestinian dialogue and the Middle East Abrahamic Forum (Interfaith Encounter Association, 2016). It recognizes the fact that most of these conflicts are rooted in political issues and has hence adopted a non-political approach to interfaith dialogue. Thus, it has succeeded in bringing people from the three Abrahamic faiths together to combat threats to world peace. This adds a new dimension to this case study because the threat of nuclear war is as relevant to the modern world as the threat of climate change. The weekend retreats program of the Interfaith Encounter Association has also proved to be instrumental in encouraging the exchange of religious beliefs while ensuring that divisive political debates are avoided (Interfaith Encounter Association, 2016). The only limitation of this voice is that it does not undertake a historical analysis of the causes for conflict amongst the Abrahamic religions. It also does not advocate a reworking of those sections of the religious scriptures that incite violence and divisiveness.
The effective synthesis of these three voices will require an analysis of the reasons for interreligious conflict from antiquity to the modern age. An overview of these causes has been provided by Professor Howard Joseph in his podcast lectures dealing with Jewish-Islam and Christian-Jewish relations. In these lectures, Professor Joseph has explained how the Jews and the Muslims have always shared cordial relations until the 20th century (Joseph 2005, Podcast 6.6). The Muslims referred to the Jews and Christians as “dhimmi” or the protégés and offered them protection within the society. The conflict between Jews and Muslims reached a crescendo only in the 20th century when the United Nations decided to partition Palestine for the creation of the State of Israel (Joseph 2005, Podcast 6.6).
Similarly, the reasons for the Christian-Muslim and Christian-Jewish conflicts in history were mostly socio-political in nature. The Holocaust, in which six million Jews were exterminated, is also an event that was triggered by nationalistic fanaticism in Nazi Germany. Hence, such historical analysis will make it evident to the followers of the Abrahamic Religions that the instances of violence and hostility amongst them were triggered by political factors rather than religious differences. As the religious leaders in the TEDx Talks video have succinctly observed, people need to break free from habitual patterns of behavior to understand that all the Abrahamic faiths have numerous overlapping beliefs and promote tolerance of others rather than violence.
Howard Joseph has also drawn attention to the fact that the threat of Aristotelian philosophy to religion as a whole succeeded in bringing Jews, Christians and Muslims together in the medieval ages. Scholars across religious boundaries produced literary works that aimed to counter Aristotelian rationalist thought and affirm the importance of religion (Joseph 2005, Podcast 6.6). This observation provides cues for the successful implementation of interfaith dialogue. When human beings are made aware of the greater threats to humankind such as climate change and nuclear war, religious differences will soon recede into the background, as was observed in the article on climate change. Hence, it can be concluded that the process of building bridges amongst the Abrahamic faiths entails a careful analysis of historical conflicts, identification of the commonalities amongst the religions, and finally using the greater threats to human existence as a springboard for interfaith collaboration.
Bibliography
Interfaith Encounter Association. 2016. English Brochure of The Interfaith Encounter Association. Jerusalem: Interfaith Encounter Association. Accessed on February 2, 2020. https://interfaith-encounter.org/brochures/english.pdf.
Joseph, Howard. 2005. A Profile of Jewish-Muslim Encounters: From the pact of Umar to Contemporary Dialogue. Podcast Audio. Accessed on February 2, 2020. http://www.econcordia.com/courses/encountering_religions/lesson6/index.aspx.
Schaefer, Jame. 2016.”Motivated for Action and collaboration: The Abrahamic Religions and Climate change.”In Geosciences 6, no. 3 : 31. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/6/3/31.
TEDx Talks. 2011. “The Interfaith Amigos – Breaking the taboos of interfaith dialogue.” YouTubevideo. Accessed on February 2, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPnZArtsG_c.