Interreligious Dialogue - There is no alternative

Group of people during the interfaith procession against terrorism in the streets of Lugano, Switzerland. Photo: bigstockphoto.com/Fotoember

Group of people during the interfaith procession against terrorism in the streets of Lugano, Switzerland. Photo: bigstockphoto.com/Fotoember

"There is no alternative: we either build the future together or there will not be a future."

Pope Francis, Abu Dhabi, 4 February 2019

84% of the world’s population identify with a religion. 33% of the world’s population are Christian. “Interreligious dialogue” is how the Christian 33% engage with the other 51% of religious believers, just over half of the world’s population. It’s as simple—and as complicated - as that!

Love Your Neighbour

Interreligious dialogue is believers from different religions relating to each other. In recent decades, with waves of migrants seeking a better life, the relative ease of international travel, and refugees fleeing famine and conflict, believers from different religions are now living, working and playing side-by-side in cities and towns across Australia. This mixing of people from different religions—from A to Z (from Aboriginal to Zoroastrian)—is unprecedented. In this new situation of religious diversity, or perhaps more accurately, of religious proximity, interreligious dialogue is simply following the Gospel command of “love your neighbour”. (Mk 12:31)

And if there are no Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims or Zoroastrians living in your neighbourhood, you’re still not off the hook, because they have come into your living room! They have entered through your TV and computer screens. You are carrying them around in your pocket, on your mobile phone! Yes, instant international global media means that the whole world is literally in our hands! This new fact of religious diversity is inescapable. How we relate to believers from other religions, whether across the fence in our physical neighbourhood or online in our virtual neighbourhood, is interreligious dialogue.

Four Types of Dialogue

There are four commonly accepted forms of interreligious dialogue. They are:

  1. The Dialogue of Life is believers from different religions living out their faith through their relations with each other in their daily lives, without talking about religion at all! It is showing kindness and consideration. It is supporting one another in the joys and sorrows of daily life - births, deaths and marriages. It is showing mercy, being a good neighbour (cf Lk 10:37). A child survivor of the Holocaust once shared with me that when he moved into a new suburb in Australia, the next-door neighbour gave him, “a glass of milk and an ANZAC biscuit”. He said, with tears in his eyes, “It changed my life. I never knew anyone could be so kind.” His sharing changed my life too. I have never forgotten, even if I don’t practise it very well, the importance of showing kindness to others.
  2. The Dialogue of Action is believers from different religions, based on shared religious values, working together on matters of common social concern. It might be seeking improvements in health, education and social services; responding to the needs of the poor and the homeless, or caring for the environment. The social issues on which people can act together are as many and varied as the different situations in which they live. I have been impressed that in the recent crises of drought, bushfire, flood and COVID lockdown, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and other groups have provided food for the needy. But I cannot help but think how much better it would be if they did it together, witnessing to our common humanity in caring for our sisters and brothers in need!
  3. The Dialogue of Theological Exchange is believers from different religions talking about their doctrines, beliefs, rituals and moral codes. Through this exchange, we learn not just about the other religion, but our horizons are expanded. We learn more about God, our world, and even ourselves. This dialogue is not just for theologians and experts. If I ask a woman respectfully, “Why do you wear a veil?” and she replies, “I am wearing it because God requires me to be modest”, then we are having a theological exchange. She is talking about God’s expectations of her, and I can share how I understand God’s expectations of me.
  4. The Dialogue of Religious Experience is believers from different religions sharing about spirituality, prayer, worship, how we pray and meditate, and how we seek and find God’s direction in our lives. It can involve visiting each other’s places of worship and ‘tasting’ the spiritual riches of the other religion. Through sharing, our lives are enriched. I am always moved by the obvious dedication I see when Muslims bow and prostrate before God in their prayers. I can share in return that such surrender to God is precisely what I see in the life of Jesus who said, “I do the will of him who sent me” (Jn 5:30), expressed fully in his prayer on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46), which we celebrate in the Eucharist. In the sharing, we discover that we are both following God, each in our own way, and this recognition builds a sense of ‘spiritual communion’, that we are sisters and brothers in faith, all worshipping the one God who is Creator and Merciful Judge.

Why Dialogue?

There are many reasons for dialogue. There is the very practical one, that we all share this one planet and we need to get along. There are also common beliefs which unite us across some religions. For example, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all believe in the one God Who is Creator, Who speaks to us in scripture, and Who is Merciful Judge – but we each understand those divine blessings differently!

Ultimately, each religion must find in its own traditions reasons for dialogue that are convincing to its followers.

As a Christian, for me, the most compelling reason for dialogue is the Holy Trinity. God is a community of infinite, eternal love between the Father and the Son which is the Spirit. God is relations! God is dialogue! This love between the three Persons overflows in creation and redemption. We are made “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:26), that is, in the image and likeness of relations, of dialogue. We are made for dialogue with God, with each other, with all our sisters and brothers.

I cannot truly be a Christian if I do not reach out in love and service towards my sisters and brothers of other religions whom God also loved, created and redeemed through his Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as God did me. That is why I feel so privileged that my Columban missionary life in Pakistan and now in Australia has led me to be deeply involved in interreligious dialogue. I am daily being immersed in the love of the Holy Trinity.

Columban Rev Dr Patrick McInerney is the Director of the Columban Centre for Christian-Muslim Relations (CCCMR).

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