Interfaith Leadership Conference
Can we cooperate with other faiths without losing our identity?
Oct 26th, 2009 | By Skye Jethani | Category: Culture, LeadershipToday I’m at Northwestern University to speak at the “Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World” conference hosted by the Interfaith Youth Core. I’ll be sitting on a panel with representatives from a number of other faiths to discuss why we believe cooperation between religions in worth the effort.
I was connected with the conference and IFYC through Eboo Patel, the president of IFYC. Eboo and I actually grew up together in Glen Ellyn, IL, and attended elementary through high school together. We lost contact after high school, but our lives took interesting parallel paths. Eboo’s parents and my father both immigrated to the US from India. And after years of exploration, Eboo came to embrace Islam and pursue issues of interfaith cooperation. I, on the other hand, committed to the Christian faith after studying comparative religion at Miami.
I reconnected with Eboo after I heard him speak at the Q Conference last year. The fact that a Muslim was speaking to a room of 500 Christian leaders was interesting enough, but what he shared really caught my attention. He called for more interfaith cooperation between Christians and Muslims rather than perpetuating the “clash of civilizations” narrative that is being spun by the media. But rather than calling for Muslims and Christians to abandon what is distinctive about each faith in order to “get along,” Patel said just the opposite. He called both Christians and Muslims to draw from what is unique in each tradition, stand firmly in one’s own beliefs, and find the desire to cooperate with others.
That’s a message I had not heard much in my training. For example, while serving as a hospital chaplain I had been told to either abandon or at least diminish what is uniquely Christian about my theology in order to find “common ground” with others. Don’t pray in Jesus’ name. Don’t mention the Trinity, the incarnation, or the exclusive claims of the Bible. Those, I was told, would make people of other faiths uncomfortable and cause tension. The message was that in order for Muslims, Jews, and Christians to cooperate, they’d have to abandon each faith’s uniqueness in favor of a liberal, nebulous “spirituality.”
Eboo Patel, and a host of other young interfaith leaders, have a different message: There is a way to get along, cooperate, and even respect one another while still holding firmly to one’s own religious identity. For example, the common rhetoric in some Christian communities is that Muslims are the “enemy” (at worst) or the “competition” (at best). This perspective is largely unhelpful and will continue to foster strife between the groups. The other extreme, however, calls Christians to give up their own theology in order to accept all faiths as equally valid. This also isn’t helpful. But the third way, the one IFYC advances, is that I can be a Christian, hold to my beliefs, and draw from my faith to cooperate with Muslims on matters of shared concern. In this case it means viewing Muslims as my neighbors whom I am called to love, rather than an enemy I am inclined to combat.
As we move into an increasingly post-Christian age in North America, Christian leaders will be called upon to model for our people a helpful and peaceful way to coexist with other faiths. The ability of the church to thrive in this new reality will depend upon our ability to live with and cooperate with those from other faiths without abandoning our own identity as the people of Christ. And I believe more pastors and church leaders need help, training, and the theological moorings to make interfaith cooperation a reality.
Learn more about the Interfaith Leadership Conference.
I read Patel’s ‘Acts of Faith’ a few months back and was struck by his refreshing approach to interfaith issues that goes beyond “lowest common denominator” altruism.
Interfaith dialogue is certainly risky for all parties involved and presents very real challenges for anyone who is not a universalist. However, if it’s done well (as seems to be the case with IFYC for example), I see at least 2 potential benefits:
1) Much of the pettiness and misplaced hostility between religions can be exposed as counterproductive to the common good and uncharitable toward our fellow humans beings created in God’s image. From there, maybe it won’t be such a big deal for Protestants and Catholics to volunteer at the same soup kitchen.
2) The difficult work of cultivating intentional and respectful relationships with living, breathing human beings who ascribe to other faiths can serve to strengthen and refine one’s own beliefs. (Try explaining your faith in Christ to someone without the use of Christianese.)
In today’s increasingly pluralistic and globalized context, Christians must develop the ability to hold their ground theologically when necessary while also collaborating for the common good with those outside the Body of Christ. It’s a delicate dance, but I’d say it’s worth the attempt because the cost of escalating inter-religious tension is too great.
The panel that you were on today was outstanding. Everybody up there was spot-on and gave a really beautifully round picture of American religious life. You dropped some pretty theologically heavy stuff, too. Much appreciated. Keep up the good work.
[…] I shared about my participation with the Interfaith Youth Core’s conference on interfaith leadership. I sat on a panel with some wonderful people representing different faiths: Maha ElGenaidi from the […]
thank you for your comments and i’m intrigued by the conference you were part of - would have loved to be there (used to work in Glendale Heights, IL). i live in malawi, africa now and have found that although there are 15-20% of the population are muslim there are very few interfaith connections. the christians in general here don’t seem to target muslims in any outreach or even just befriend them. i’m not sure that the typical style of major evangelistic crusades would reach a muslim person and that seems to be the favored method here. there are probably cultural issues as well between the Malawians and the Indians who make up the majority of muslims. but i appreciate the comments about maintaining what is crucial to our faith and not discarding it to the “lowest common denominator”. i see this in other arenas too but i really think that people are looking for something to BELIEVE in and if we just ignore the things we hold as valuable then what are others drawn to? thank you for this encouragement as i continue to learn about these connections.
For Elisa - there is some really great interfaith work happening in Malawi - check out the Centre for Social Concern at http://www.cfscmalawi.org/ird.html. Also, the Public Affairs Committee in Lilongwe has been a tremendous political force for transforming interreligious relations and preventing more violence/hate crimes around the latest election. I’m surprised by the comment that the majority of Muslims in Malawi are Indian - I thought most were Malawian, they are just concentrated in particular areas of the country.
[…] working against this cause, including atheists who discriminate against religious people. Just as pluralistic Christians do of the fundamentalist members of their community, pluralistic Muslims of the fundamentalists of […]
[…] working against this cause, including atheists who discriminate against religious people. Just as pluralistic Christians do of the fundamentalist members of their community, pluralistic Muslims of the fundamentalists of […]