Chicago Interfaith Gathering - Shared Values, Diverse Faiths

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Martin E. Marty	John Esposito
Ted Peters	Zeki Saritoprak
Paul F. Knitter	Richard W. Bulliet
Eileen Barker	John McCarthy
	Safei Hamed

John Esposito: Islam and Christianity: Interreligious Dilaogue in a Post 9/11 World

Muslim-Christian relations, yesterday and today, has too often been marked by mutual ignorance and conflict rather than by mutual understanding, the delineation of differences rather than the recognition of shared beliefs, values and interests. 9/11 and the threat of global terrorism as well as Muslim and Christian theologies of exclusivism and of hate have reinforced stereotypes, fears and intolerance. However, both past and present history provide the theological and ethical resources for a co-existence and cooperation based upon a religious pluralism and tolerance grounded in mutual understanding and respect.

There is growing recognition today among many Muslims and Christians that the ethical and moral codes provided by religion need to be restored and used as universal principles upon which to build a more just society. Both condemn greed, economic injustice, materialism, excessive individualism, consumerism, sexual promiscuity, self-aggrandizement at the expense of the public good, violence and terrorism. Recognition of common goals offers a basis for coexistence and cooperation based upon mutual understanding and respect, for greater unity in the midst of diversity. As globalization and immigration draw the world’s religions and societies into more intimate daily contact with each other, the need for mutual understanding and tolerance, as well as self-criticism, is becoming more pressing. While differences must be recognized and tolerated, similarities and common interests, need to be acknowledged and emphasized to build a more cooperative future based upon mutual recognition and tolerance.

Martin E. Marty: Towards Interreligious Dialogue in the New Millennium

To some people the word "dialogue" is a mystery, to others a cliche. Stripped of its mysterious shroud--so many people have not yet experienced it--and rescued from misuse, we contend that true dialogue or conversation (followed by action) is still rare. However, it shows great promise. In a world where religion is posed against anti-religion, or this religion is in conflict with that religion, most of the inter-group energies go into killing, hating, being aloof, or showing mistrust. The word "Towards" in the title suggest that it does not have to be that way, that there are models and "works in progress" toward a better way.

When a religious movement comes into range of another, several approaches are available. Each can avoid the other, shun the other, be suspicous of the other, ignore the other. Or they can enter into conflict, the too-frequent approach in history and today. Far-seeing people then propose dialogue and movements toward tolerance. We cannot praise tolerance-in-history too much. Today, however, it comes to mean: "If I can get you to believe as little as I do, we can get along." Interreligious dialogue works best among people who believe deeply and draw richly on their traditions. So atop "tolerance" we add "hospitality." That is a powerful word among the "peoples of the book" and in other religious communities. This hospitalitiy to the other, the stranger, in religion, is face-to-face, "open," among people who talk and listen, who welcome each other and speak out of the depth of their commitments. Out of such encounters come friendships, but even when relations remain tense, the forum is present, a style of meeting develops, and better futures unfold.

Ted Peters: The Conflict over the Conflict of Ultimate Religious Claims

Our world is pluralistic. And our lives must be lived in concert if not harmony with people of parallel religious commitments and practices. When the term ‘pluralism’ is used to describe today’s global consciousness accompanied by our everyday awareness that we share our planet with people belonging to a diversity of traditions and believing a diversity of things, it confronts us with a picture of reality we recognize. Yet, when the term ‘pluralism’ is used to prescribe a particular worldview or philosophy of religion, it runs into resistance. When the concept of pluralism suggests that one’s own religious commitments—frequently commitments to ultimate reality, to God—should be subordinated to a still higher or yet more ultimate reality posited by a philosophy of religion, we run into a conflict of ultimates. When pluralism becomes a philosophy of religion, it comes into conflict with the positive religions themselves.

The conflict over competing ultimates needs to be understood from an intra-faith perspective—that is, from within each of our positive religious traditions—and, also, it needs to be understood while engaged in multi-faith dialogue. To establish and encourage multi-faith community, we must draw upon the commitments to community indigenous to each of the member religious traditions. These indigenous commitments can be drawn to the fore during face-to-face dialogue. Such indigenous religious commitments will make for a stronger communal bond than the subordination of commitments to an overlay of prescriptive pluralism.

Zeki Saritoprak: Pluralism and Hospitality - An Islamic Approach

We live in a rapidly changing world. Tremendous developments in the areas of transportation and communication have created new challenges for a pluralistic society. Our world has become a global village. While society has become quite diverse, it has also become increasingly isolated. Today, people can attain almost all their needs through a laptop or a home computer, without being involved in communal life. A high-rise building may house four hundred families who have no acquaintance with one another at all. This ongoing trend brings up some demanding questions: Are we losing the sense of community? If so, then what might remedy this loss? How should we understand the relationships among members of society? This paper attempts to lay the foundation for discussion of these questions through exploring an Islamic understanding of hospitality and neighborliness based on early sources. The primary focus will be on the Qur’an, particularly the verse “Show kindness to parents, and to relatives, and orphans, and the needy, and to the neighbor [al-Jar] who is of kin to you and the neighbor who is not of kin to you” (Q 4:36). While discussing the connotations of the word al-Jar, special emphasis will be given to the representation of hospitality in the body of hadith. Occasionally, there will be references to some contemporary and medieval Muslim theologians’ understandings of Islamic texts.

Paul F. Knitter: “Must My God Be Bigger than Your God?”
Moving beyond Interreligious Competition to Interreligious Collaboration

I. The saying of Hans Küng is broadly known: “There will be no peace among nations without peace among religions. And there will be no peace among religions without genuine dialogue among them.” But genuine dialogue may be more demanding than many people think.
II. The nature and requirements of dialogue as laid out by Pope John Paul II and the Vatican Council for Interreligious Dialogue: Dialogue requires real listening to the other, the readiness to learn from the other, and the readiness to change one’s own views in the light of what one learns.
III. One of the greatest impediments to authentic dialogue is the claim or conviction that one’s own religion is superior to all others and thus destined to be the fulfillment of all others. Also, as many argue today, such claims of superiority are one of the main reasons why “religions become evil” and are used to justify violence.
IV. The challenge today, for all religions, is therefore to affirm their own identity and universal message without claiming superiority over all others.

Richard W. Bulliet: The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization

Concepts of religious and cultural pluralism rest on tacit acceptance of the boundaries between cultural or faith communities. Though these boundaries are framed within supposedly unquestionable master narratives of world history, they are often produced by episodes of discord, rivalry, bigotry. Through the idea of "Islamo-Christian Civilization" I hope to demonstrate that the power to reframe difference and thereby enhance the possibility of bridging seemingly vast gulfs lies with us today if we exercise the will to look upon pluralist toleration as a noble goal rather than a demographic or political necessity.

John McCarthy: Religious Pluralism and Tolerance - Creating Structures of Toleration

The modern understanding of ‘pluralism’ and the modern understanding of ‘tolerance’ seem to go hand-in-hand. This paper will probe this close configuration, the conditions in the modern context which seem to make the configuration possible, and the contemporary structures of violence, fundamentalisms and nationalism which seem to fracture correlations of pluralism and tolerance.

The paper begins with a discussion of the distinction between modern and post-modern ‘toleration’ offered by Michael Walzer in his 1996 Castle Lectures at Yale University. The paper then goes on to locate the discussion of tolerance in the more recent work of Seyla Benhabib (The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens) and the interdisciplinary conversations transcribed in Adam Seligman’s work, Modest Claims: Dialogues and Essays on Tolerance and Tradition. By focusing on the contemporary issues surrounding the difficult task of creating structures for toleration, this paper will address the issue of whether and how we might go about identifying ways to speak about the limits of social and political toleration while preserving the possibilities of religious pluralism.

Eileen Barker: Religious Diversity and Pluralism in a Global Community

There has always been more or less cultural and religious diversity both within and between societies. Sometimes the diversity has been experienced as pluralism or relatively peaceful co-existence; at other times it has given rise to bloody confrontation. This paper explores some of the tensions and challenges of living in a world where globalization is in tension with local identities and loyalties and where differences can be defined as heresies or even treason.

Safei Hamed : Islam, Ecology, and the Quest for a Just Peace

A comprehensive system of environmental ethics should encompass two things: a) Envisioning a particular ideal, and b) Suggesting a path to the achievement of that ideal.

In order to be effective, this system must be internally consistent, yet externally workable in the real world. The contemporary environmental movements have failed in providing these two essential components of an ethical system. Most of the prevailing philosophies suffer from being too abstract or too utopian.

This presentation argues that Islam, as a religion and as a way of life, is capable of providing its followers with a comprehensive system of environmental ethics. The basic principles and guidelines of the faith represent the conceptual ideals while the Islamic Institutions and laws provide the operational components of a distinct paradigm. The speaker will address specifically three key questions. They are:

1. What are the Shariah (Islamic Law) values pertaining to natural resource planning and management?

2. Is it practically possible to derive from the Islamic jurisprudence and injunctions, a set of planning and management criteria to apply in the 21st century?

3. What influences does the cultural heritage of Islam exert on the perception and management of the natural environment?

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