My
Way into an Interfaith Future
Last week I introduced you, my readers, to an
interfaith “think tank” in which I shared recently
at a conference center known as the Chautauqua
Institution in Western New York. Some fifty
leaders from among all the major religious systems
of the world gathered there to explore the common
ground that might lead to deeper interfaith
cooperation and appreciation. The goal seemed
desirable and all of the participants came with hope
and excitement. The need for interfaith
cooperation is apparent all over the world.
Where divergent religious systems confront each
other, violence almost always ensues. One has
only to look for documentation at the Jewish-Moslem
conflict in the Middle East, the Hindu-Moslem
conflict between Pakistan and India, the
Christian-Islamic violence that cuts across Africa,
the Catholic-Protestant tensions in Ireland or the
Sunni-Shia conflict that keeps Islam divided in the
Middle East. One could also look at Christian
history to see the anti-Semitism of the ages, the
violence of the Crusades directed against Islam, or
the Thirty Years’ War in Europe that followed the
Reformation as both Protestant Europe and Catholic
Europe sought to impose its faith on the
other.
This reality forces us to ask what there is
about religion in most of its forms that makes
violence all but inevitable as it appears to be in
religious history. At the Chautauqua
conference it did not take long for this flaw to be
revealed. Indeed, it became present and
visible in the first presentation.
This presentation was given by Dr. John
Cavadini, a Roman Catholic Professor of Theology
from Notre Dame. The Roman Catholic Church
articulates its claim to supremacy quite overtly.
The current pope has reiterated a position taken by
his predecessor that there is but one true religion
and that is Christianity and that there is only one
true version of Christianity and that is the Roman
Catholic Church! He went on to warn those Catholics
engaged in ecumenical relations that they should
never refer to other Christian traditions as “sister
churches,” since that implies some legitimacy. When
that point of view is publicly articulated there is
a genuine embarrassment in the listening
audience. Such an attitude makes any
significant conversation aimed at unity a rather
worthless activity. Professor Cavalini tried at our
gathering, unsuccessfully I believe, to navigate
these troubled waters by making a distinction
between revealed truth and our understanding of this
truth. The central Christian doctrine of the
Incarnation was not subject to debate, he said, but
the way we understand that doctrine is always
unfolding.
Lest the blame for interfaith failure be placed
too heavily on Roman Catholic shoulders, let me
hasten to say that almost every religious tradition
makes similar claims to be the exclusive possessor
of revealed and “saving” truth. Protestant
fundamentalists assert that the Bible is the literal
“word of God” and those denying that claim are
either to be condemned or subjected to conversion
pressure. Protestant evangelicals believe that
the prerequisite for salvation is that one must be
“born again” or “accept Jesus as their personal
savior.” Muslims make the Islamic claim that
in the Koran the Word of God was dictated directly
to the prophet Muhammad. Within Islam itself both
the Sunnis and the Shia claim that theirs is the
only true expression of that faith tradition. Other
sacred writings from the religions of the East are
similarly invested with claims of being vessels
through which the absolute truth of God has come
into human possession. These claims that ultimate
truth is the possession of a particular religious
system are what make interfaith conversation all but
impossible. The attempt to be open, to understand or
to appreciate another faith perspective is thus
deeply threatening to every religious system.
One of the things that every religious system
seeks to do is to offer religious certainty and for
that to be possible that religion must escape the
quicksand of relativity. Relativity, at the same
time, is almost always impossible to escape without
falling into religious triumphalism. At the
Chautauqua “think tank” these problems were quickly
identified and named. We could not start without
finding a new way into the interfaith issue. As I
thought about this over the next few days I tried to
discover that illusive new path. Let me try to
outline it briefly.
The first step in any interfaith process is to
be conscious of the fact that these exclusive claims
exist and that we must begin where people are, not
with where we wish they were. No one speaks in
a vacuum and no one listens in a vacuum. We need to
listen to each other closely, the same way we want
others to listen to us. Let me then begin this
process autobiographically.
I am a Christian. Any interfaith activity
in which I am engaged must start with that fact. I
am not apologetic about this self-identification,
nor am I willing to jettison this definition of
myself for the sake of interfaith unity. The
deepest commitment of my life is my commitment to
walk the Christ path as my doorway into the mystery
of God. Christianity is of absolute importance
to me. I want to explore its wonders as deeply
as I possibly can. Yet, I do not think that God is a
Christian, certainly not in any creedal way, and
that insight opens me up to all kinds of new
possibilities. Christianity, like every other
religious system in history is clearly a human
creation that has evolved over the centuries. The
virgin birth, for example, did not enter the
Christian tradition until the ninth decade of the
Christian era. It was certainly not a part of
primitive Christianity. Neither Paul nor Mark
appears ever to have heard about such an idea. The
ascension was a tenth decade addition. Surely a
quick reading of Paul would reveal that Paul was not
a Trinitarian. The doctrines of the Incarnation and
the Holy Trinity were not worked out until the third
and fourth centuries. Doctrines are always
attempts to put rational forms onto a transformative
experience. Doctrines, therefore, can never be
ultimate, but the experience that made the
development of the doctrine seem proper might well
be. Can we then separate the God experience
that we Christians believe we have met in Jesus from
the explanations of that experience which form the
content of our faith tradition? That is a crucial
distinction. The Jesus experience might well offer
me a doorway into that which is ultimate, but
Christianity itself cannot be ultimate and it thus
cannot be the final revelation of God. God can
never be contained inside any human form or bound by
any human words. This means that neither my
understanding of God nor my Church’s understanding
of God can ever be ultimate. This realization does
not, however, invalidate the truth of my
experience.
As a Christian, I walk the Christ path.
My deepest hope is that if I walk the Christ path
long enough and faithfully enough, I will discover
that I inevitably will transcend the boundaries of
my own religion. That reality thus becomes a
religious inevitability. When I articulate the
fact that this is true for me I discover that it
also seems to be true for people in all other
religious systems. The Muslim must walk the
Islamic path; the Jews must walk the Jewish path;
the Hindus and Buddhists must walk the Hindu or
Buddhist path. All walk with the realization,
however, that God is not a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu or
a Buddhist. All religious systems are designed
by human beings to help its adherents walk into the
mystery of an unbounded God. If any of us
walks our own faith path long enough and faithfully
enough, we will discover that our walk carries us
beyond the boundaries of our own religious systems,
since God can never be limited by or exhausted in
any thing that is a human creation, whether it be
scripture, creeds, doctrines or dogmas. To say
it boldly the God experience may well be ultimate,
but the religious system through which we walk into
the God experience can never be.
The next realization comes when we discover
that while we are walking our separate paths, we are
also taking into ourselves the values and the
treasures found in our own tradition. We
hold these treasures close to our hearts; we do not
want to lose them. I grasp joyfully the pearl of
great price that Christianity gives me. Then I
realize that my brothers and sisters in Islam,
Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are doing exactly the
same. They must embrace the treasures of their
religion and cling to the pearl of great price that
they have received from their religious system. So
perhaps the deepest and the common religious call to
each of us is not to affirm our unique creeds so
much as it is to explore our faith so deeply that we
each transcend its boundaries and escape fear-laden
limits. Then beyond the boundaries and the limits of
the faith system that has nurtured each of us, but
without sacrificing the pearl of great price that
our own tradition has given us, we can turn and face
in a new way our brothers and sisters who have
walked a path different from our own. In that
setting I can speak to them and say: “This is the
essence of my faith. This is the treasure that
I have received as I walked the Christ path and now
I want to share this treasure with you.” Each
of my interfaith pilgrims will in turn do the
same. They will say to me: “This is the
essence of Judaism, of Islam, of Hinduism, of
Buddhism. This is the treasure, the pearl of
great price that I have received by walking
faithfully and deeply the path of my religion and I
want to share it with you.” We each receive
the treasure of the other. No one has to
sacrifice the treasure of the system which has
nurtured him or her. We all become
enriched. We no longer have to protect our
truth or play the familiar religious games of
supremacy that we have so often played in the
past. No one loses, everyone gains.
The alternative to genuine interfaith
cooperation may well be genocide. While we can
assert that there is no relativity in the God
experience, there can also be no triumphalism in the
various explanations of that experience. No religion
is therefore ultimate, but God is and God is met on
many paths and our call is to walk our path
faithfully. In that realization, the beauty of
an interfaith future is born.
~John Shelby
Spong
Read the essay online
here.
Bishop
Spong's Summer Session
at
the
Pacific
School of Religion!
Instructor:
John
Shelby SpongDates and Times: One week:
July 16-20, 9am - 1pm
Description: Can the
Bible, written 2000-3000 years ago, speak in any
meaningful way to the 21st century? If it cannot,
then is Christianity at an end? If it can, will
Christianity look anything like what we have known
in the past? Since creeds and doctrines are all
constructed on the basis of what was believed to be
"Biblical Truth," can any of the current formularies
stand? Since liturgy is based on biblical
definitions of sin, salvation and God, none of which
make much sense to 21st century people, can
Christianity tolerate the revolution that it faces?
This class will be taught by one who has been a
priest and bishop for 56 years with one foot in the
institutional church and the other in the academic
world of new insights. It is specifically designed
for clergy and questing lay people.
Course
Credits & Cost: 1.5 credits - $990; audit -
$495; 2.0 CEUs - $350
Course Number: BS-2117
(credit); BS-0003 (CEUs)
Required Text: John
Shelby Spong, Re-Claiming the Bible for a
Non-Religious World, 2011 HarperCollins, San
Francisco. Purchase
here.
Syllabus:
Re-Claiming
the Bible in a Post-Christian WorldRegister 
Re-Claiming the Bible
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