Ecumenically minded religious leaders should seize the initiative in imposing rationality and discipline among those claiming to be "true believers" either within their own faith or against the faith of others. To date, however, even as it succeeds in lowering the barriers between us, interfaith dialogue has largely failed to establish credibility with the truly devout. This becomes clear at just such times when a mature response is needed most.
This past week, we were awed by the sight of the brave first-responders dashing straight into the carnage of the Boston Marathon bombings, even before the smoke had cleared. The other "first responders" mobilized almost as rapidly across the blogosphere and social media, pre-emptively condemning all from President Obama and on down to the "mainstream media" for not immediately reinforcing their persistent phobias and prejudices against Muslims, immigrants and any soft liberals who dare challenge their assumptions.
The subsequent revelation, that both prime suspects were young Chechen brothers, gave rise to still more absolutist hysteria about Muslims and "jihad," with seemingly little consideration for the background of a very specific, ethnically motivated, separatist conflict. Facts are not important when religious sanction can be imputed for responses that reciprocate and amplify the indefensible views of the perpetrators themselves, when opportunists on every side feed off any violence targeted against them or committed in their name.
Cursory denials that our own religions condone terrorism or violence are empty self-indulgence at best, counter-productive hypocrisy at worst. Many devout Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others have proudly invoked religious teachings to support depraved attacks on innocents. Depriving them of sacred license means ostracizing and holding accountable all clergy who fuel or tolerate such distortions. Merely disavowing the zealots after the fact is cold comfort and no disincentive to future recruits.
"Dialogue" between religions, and among the denominations of individual religions, is too often limited to niceties and "search for common ground." And who can object to those goals? But to be truly useful and honest, such dialogue needs to court friction and address the doctrinal disagreements and pent-up grievances on both sides of what divides us, religiously or otherwise.
At the United Nations, which generally avoids and discourages discussion of religion, the Alliance of Civilizations aspires to harness religions for peace and progress. But with a discussion devoid of religious testimony, conducted with retired religious personalities with little current influence, it has very little traction with the two-thirds of earthlings who are deeply religious.
No less than with inter-faith consultations, encounters within denominations also demand candor and accountability.
For Christians, the wounds of Reformation have never healed, and partly by design. Shiite and Sunni Islam remain largely unreconciled, and they may be intrinsically irreconcilable on a large scale. But scholars and sages, from Al-Azhar to Qum and from Mecca to Kerbala, can nevertheless expend some effort to take on what divides them -- not to pretend these schisms are in any way trivial or easily resolved, but at least to demonstrate that differences need not compel violence or negate human dignity. The same holds true for every confession.
Within Judaism, entire organizations have been constructed on the premise and promise of pluralism among the Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox and Renewal movements. Inevitably, however, these panels end up focusing on shared support for Israel, best practices for pastoral counseling and agreement on which rabbi should light the candles at community events. The difficult issues -- acceptance or denial of Divine Revelation, "who is a Jew," religious observance -- are studiously avoided by those seeking to build bridges. Such landmines are left to the skeptics of dialogue on one side or the other of any debate. And in the end, the bridges we build are no more than fair-weather crossings.
For all its strides in promoting collaboration across Jewish denominations, the Wexner Foundation remains unwilling to host graduate retreats over the Sabbath, for fear of exposing basic differences between the streams and counter-acting the seeds of mutual respect. But shallowly sown seeds neither flower nor take root.
When Jews and Catholics sit down to compare and validate each other's approach to faith, there needs to be some comparable level of religious commitment and sacred expression. Any less than this leaves devout Catholics with the sense that they're not meeting "authentic" inheritors of the ancient Pharisees and medieval rabbinic disputants, or that Judaism's divine connection is somehow less profound than their own.
Cardinal Angelo Scola, who founded the Oasis initiative, has enunciated that dialogue between faiths begins with professing of one's own distinct faith -- the more trendy, lowest-common-denominator approach is a fallacy. Most Cardinals who live and breathe the Church have difficulty taking seriously others who do not embrace their own faith even while claiming to represent it. Beyond academic edification, of what value is such a conversation?
Dialogue-minded Muslims and Jews must stop behaving as though our only mutual barrier is the failure to recognize that we are all on the same page. We are not on the same page, nor do we need to be. The Palestinian issue and the rejection of Jewish sovereignty in the heart of Dar Al-Islam are both very real and visible concerns. Avoiding those, for the sake of moving forward with good PR, actually sets back the chances for neutralizing the rejectionists and opportunists in our midst.
If we are learning from each other, and if we can respect each other for who we really are -- and what we genuinely believe -- then together we might forge a convincing front against escalation, demagoguery and radicalization. But if we focus only on responding to immediate challenges with a unified voice, because we're somehow willing to "tolerate" each other without understanding others or revealing ourselves -- without acknowledging the glaring differences between us -- we will reach few of those we need to impact.
True dialogue is possible only if each party is first at peace with its own particular beliefs and received wisdom. Yet, much of what passes for inter-religious dialogue is conducted by proud non-believers. There is definitely call for religious-secular dialogue, but the faithful of each religion tend to have more in common with their counterparts in other faiths than with their own secularized co-religionists. There has to be a "there" there.
If the champions of dialogue and mutual understanding are afraid to take on the difficult and seemingly insoluble divisions between us -- and among us -- they must at least acknowledge that others are already filling that vacuum. And as we keep witnessing, it ain't pretty.