12/31/2020 – The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue

Is interreligious dialogue impossible? Dudes and dudettes, we’re going to look at a scholar who wrote a book answering this question. Stick with us! This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This is the first of a two-part series on a religious scholar from Boston College named Catherine Cornille each focusing on one of her books. Today we’ll look at her 2008 book, The im-Possiblity of Interreligious Dialogue, and the next episode we’ll look at her more recent book, Meaning and Method in Comparative Theology from 2020.

Constructive conversation between people from different religions for the purposes of understanding others different from oneself is referred to in the academic field of religion as interreligious dialogue. This can take many forms such as discussion or debate, but scholars view this as a healthy activity towards a broader goal of learning about other cultures. Mutual cultural understanding is not only good for peace, but also for other things like better business relations [cha-ching], the sharing of knowledge in other fields like science and medicine, and a higher degree of political stability. But such interreligious dialogue is not always easy. In fact, a lot of factors have to be present in order for any encounter to even occur, much less a positive or fruitful encounter. Cornille’s 2008 book, The im-Possiblity of Interreligious Dialogue, sets forth five conditions which need to be present for such dialogue to occur. These are humility, commitment, interconnection, empathy, and hospitality. Let’s take a brief look at each of these conditions.

First, humility. We are limited creatures and certainly part of that limitation includes limited knowledge or understanding about a great many things. Now you might think the next step means limited knowledge about different religious traditions, and it is that, but it goes much deeper than that. One’s knowledge and understanding are also limited about one’s own religious tradition. Essentially, one’s own religious tradition is finite, not infinite. One must possess doctrinal humility which is a difficult thing for most religious adherents to do because many traditions, especially traditions like Christianity and Islam, often have exclusivism solidly embedded deep within what the tradition teaches about itself. For some reason it is easy for one to be humble about God, but hard to be humble about other religions. Lacking such humility and acknowledging that one’s religion might not have all the answers is a huge impediment to interreligious dialogue because it causes one to have the mindset of a one-way communication channel. I’m not interested in listening to you. I’m only interested in talking to you. Interreligious dialogue will be short-circuited before it even begins unless one chooses to adopt an attitude of humility, that you or your religion doesn’t necessarily have an exclusive market on faith and it’s possible to learn something from someone different from you. The degree of humility about one’s own tradition has a direct relationship to openness of dialogue.

Second, commitment. One may ask oneself if they are humble with regards to their own tradition, then are they really committed to it? Is another tradition a threat to my own? If one starts to learn about and engage another tradition will they be socially or religiously alienated from their own? Great questions. Dialogue assumes some degree of identification with a religious tradition or else what is one dialoguing about? One must align with at least some measure of essential teachings and practices of a particular religion which enhances one’s personal well-being or spiritual wholeness. One commits to being faithful to a particular religious authority, regardless of the form that authority takes. The diversity of religious traditions play a role in all of this. A Sunni or Shiite Muslim might communicate different representations of Islam just as a Methodist would communicate a different representation of Christianity from a Roman Catholic. The misunderstanding that occurs with commitment, however, is that dialogue is not convincing the other person regarding the truth of one’s own religion. It is learning what the other sees as truth in their tradition. It’s not about proclamation and apologetics, but about understanding. Those who are willing to take this step and learn about other religions can ultimately return back to their own tradition and share their insights and experiences with those who are unwilling or afraid to step out. Though religious traditions are often resistant to change, it can occur on a small-scale effort. Thus, commitment to a religion can either be viewed as an obstacle against interreligious dialogue, or as an opportunity for interreligious dialogue if personal openness to change is present.

Third, interconnection. In order for a conversation of any kind to take place, there must be some sort of a common ground between two or more conversation partners. It’s like when comparing an apple with an orange there must be some category of comparison such as size, taste, color, texture and so forth. The same with religions, but the problem is, many religions consider themselves somewhat unique and make great effort at trying to be distinguished from all other religions. Any suggestion that one’s own tradition is similar to another is often met with a suspicious attitude at best. Nevertheless, Cornille suggests three categories which have promise for the possibility of creating interconnection among different religious traditions.

The first is common external challenges. These include the common push against either secularization on the one side or fundamentalism on the other side. The idea is that multiple religions find themselves in a similar space and perhaps would have something in common with those conditions. Another suggestion is the strive towards peace echoing a famous religious scholar named Hans Kung who said, “There can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions.” Lastly, the alleviation of suffering which would include the ecological suffering of the planet as well as the economic suffering of the planet’s inhabitants, namely us.

The second category which has promise for creating interconnection among religions is common experiences. Here Cornille draws upon mystical experiences that many religious adherents both past and present have claimed to have had. These often occur through some form of meditation or other spiritual practice.

The third category which has promise for creating interconnection is the possibility of a common transcendent reality. This could either be a neutral reality that all religions are oriented towards, such as that described by John Hick [see my earlier video here], or a shared confessional ultimate reality like the God of Abraham for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Whereas the first common category is external, the second and third ones are internal. Cornille seems to indicate that internal common grounds are better for creating the type of effective interconnection that she is describing.

On to the fourth condition necessary for interreligious dialogue which goes beyond the intellectual: empathy. Such empathy might happen through reading of texts, participation in another’s religion, or some sort of prolonged engagement with a member of another religion. Even though religions will not likely share fully duplicate experiences, there may be similarities which will be relatively familiar. Such experiences tend to make a more empathetic resonance when the kind or quality of the experience is familiar rather than necessarily the content. One must situate oneself in the broader religious context of the other person. Imagination allows one to enter into the symbolic expressions of one’s own religion and likewise one can see how this also happens with another person in their religion. Seeing it in person is an even more effective way to generate empathy. This is why religious site visit assignments are common in educational settings as people often emotionally connect better with sights and sounds of the environment around them. There are limitations to empathizing with another in that one is always conditioned to resonate with similar feelings as one’s own tradition generates, and if another tradition is not similar enough, the empathy may fail to be produced.

The fifth and last condition for interreligious dialogue is hospitality. Hospitality means one must be open to the possible presence of truth in another religion. If one were to deny this, then interest in dialogue would essentially evaporate and all of the preceding four conditions would no longer even matter. This condition of hospitality, similar to the first condition of humility, is problematic for many religious believers. This is due to the idea that most adherents feel their religious beliefs are sufficient and thus other religions pose some sort of an ideological threat to them. As such, few religious traditions at face value are not oriented towards hospitality to other traditions and instead posit an attitude of superiority. Some exclusive adherents engage in dialogue with other religions for the sole purpose of apologetics so they can create counter-arguments against them. This is clearly not a fruitful endeavor for understanding much less one with pure motives towards the other. Cornille suggests two models around this impasse: hospitality towards similarity and hospitality towards difference.

Hospitality towards similarity is obvious: being hospitable to those religions whose teachings or practices resembles one’s own religious teachings or practices. There will still be differences, but some commonality becomes the basis for future relationship-building. Cornille highlights two possible drawbacks with this approach. First, one might view the other as only “on-the-way” to my religion. Having a conversation is only for the purposes of preparing them for conversion. Second, if one always interprets the other only in the language of one’s own religion, and never crosses over to fully understanding the language of their religion, the dialogue ceases to be a dialogue and degrades into a monologue – literally, one language. For example, the word “God” means many things to many religions. If I impose my understanding of what “God” means onto another religion’s usage without attempting to understand how that religion is using the word “God” then I am in full monologue mode regardless of whether or not I realize that is what’s happening.

Another form of hospitality is hospitality towards difference. If something is so radically different in another religion, maybe there’s something there worth investigating. In doing so, one must find categories in one’s own religion to allow for such possible truth in the other tradition despite it being different. Humility might be one of those categories. But where is the line between confidence and arrogance? If one’s beliefs are never to be challenged, then how is one to grow? Through interreligious dialogue and understanding one could learn that there is a lack of attention to certain aspects of religion that one was not even aware of before, such as social action, or connecting with God in a new way. As an example, how does the foundational Buddhist concept of emptiness relate to Christianity’s concept of Christ’s emptiness or vice versa? There are many ways to meet each other, but without hospitality and some degree of acceptance, none of them will have any degree of effectiveness.

So again, the five conditions are humility, commitment, interconnection, empathy, and hospitality. Some may say that these conditions make interreligious dialogue impossible, which is the obvious intentional hook of the book’s title, The im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue, and while the author is quite honest about the potential challenges, the book really focuses more on the potential positive side, by drawing attention to resources so that one can move closer to helpful and genuine interreligious encounters. Ultimately, the capacity for dialogue is a process. Open yourself up, crack the door just a little, and see what you can learn.

I hope this vlog has helped you better understand this topic. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. This is TenOnReligion.