This past Friday night Dr. Sally
Holt, who teaches Christian ethics at Central Baptist Theological Seminary
Tennessee, arranged for her class in Murfreesboro to meet for dinner with a
rabbi who teaches at a local university and the imam of the local mosque. Her
purpose was to simply engage everyone in a time of informal dialogue in a
non-threatening setting. She was kind enough
to invite me to participate. The
discussion touched on a number of topics, and I came away with many ideas, but
two things particularly stimulated my thinking.
First, the imam provided a good
insight for our students who will serve local congregations. He pointed out that their situation is very
different from that of ministers just a few years ago. At one point when a pastor stepped into the
pulpit on Sunday morning, there was a
pretty good chance that the congregation was rather homogenous—they probably
were born and raised in the local area, most were of the same ethnicity, and
few had been exposed to people of other faiths.
The Christian minister of today can expect to speak to people who “are
probably not from around here,” who have traveled widely, and may well have
grown up in another Christian tradition, a non-Christian faith, or no faith at
all. Such circumstances require a minister
who is conversant with other cultures, faiths, and perspectives and is willing
to engage the ideas found there.
This is a good insight. As we discussed this in class the next day,
one student pointed out that in order to engage the “other” we must understand
our own faith first and this takes work!
The temptation is to adopt a type of reductionism that distills the
major tenets of our faith or that of others into the lowest common denominator. We seek similarities where there are none and
assume that words have the same meaning in different contexts. This does not facilitate real learning or
understanding. The engagement that the
imam called for requires commitment, something that most of us are not willing
to make.
The second insight came from the
rabbi. He pointed out that in the
Western context, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures have been exposed to
academic study, discourse, and deconstruction for a number of years. They have been examined in light of their original
social and cultural contexts as well as their linguistic characteristics. This has provided us with deeper insights as
we pursue the path of ministry in the Jewish and Christian contexts. He suggested that, as a result of a growing
Islamic presence in Western cultures, the same thing will happen with the
Islamic community in relation to the Koran and will open up new opportunities
for dialogue.
As we consider the future of
theological education, perhaps we should be providing more opportunities for
interfaith dialogue and discussion about the nature of our authoritative
documents. Such interaction might
encourage our Muslim friends to examine and learn more about their book and
share it with us. It might also
stimulate us to be more creative in finding ways to communicate our faith
commitment to others.
If we honor and respect the integrity
of our traditions—Jewish, Christian, and Islamic—we might engage in profitable dialogue
about the nature of community in our respective traditions, what we each see as
authoritative, how our faiths deal with evil and suffering, and so many other
topics. If we are going to effectively
minister in this context where God has placed us, such interaction is
indispensable. If we approach with the
spirit of I John 4:18 (“perfect love drives out fear”), we have nothing to
fear.
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