SIX ISSUES THAT COMPLICATE INTERRELIGIOUS STUDIES AND ENGAGEMENT
Rachel S. Mikva
At first glance, key objectives of interreligious studies and engagement might seem straightforward: develop literacy in and appreciation for diverse life stances, explore the history of interaction and cultivate fruitful relationship between people who orient around religion differently, and work together for the common good.1 As the field develops within a constantly shifting religious landscape, however, there is growing awareness of issues that complicate the interreligious project. This chapter briefly explores six issues as they play out in a US context, along with strategies to address them. They impact both the academic field of interreligious studies and community-based interreligious engagement—a synergistic distinction I will return to at the end.
“Live and learn.” The idiom suggests that if you pay attention, you will avoid previous mistakes, but I have repeated my share. Having been involved in interreligious teaching and activism for many years now, I cannot think of one endeavor that completely avoided the trouble spots. Instead, we learn to notice them, name them, work at them, and try to turn deficits into assets through the relationship-building capacity of a shared struggle. Although we can often point to missteps, most of the problems emerge from the context of interreligious work itself.
The rabbis of late antiquity often introduced anecdotes to illuminate a matter, beginning with the phrase, “Ma’aseh shehaya—It once happened.” I suspect that the warp and woof of memory reshaped details for pedagogic purposes, but the tales have become part of the fabric of learning—premodern case studies. The story was generally a simple one, plainly told, while its unpacking revealed complex matrices of interrelated questions, none with a simple answer. Since narrative can address both theory and praxis, it is a good vehicle to explore this interdisciplinary field that (like urban studies and gender studies) has a practical application and commitment to social transformation alongside its academic focus.
Thus it once happened that I was invited to participate in a multifaith academic consortium titled “Just Peace,” and my experience sheds light on the issues addressed in this chapter, in ways both pedestrian and profound.
POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
The Just Peace consortium gathered Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars to talk together about the textual and theological roots of just peace practices as well as real-world implications. Upon arriving, I scanned the room to see who was there. What life stances were represented, in what proportions? Was there intrareligious diversity in terms of denominations or movements? What about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? What place did participants occupy within their traditions? There is no perfect recipe.
For a time, interfaith work in the United States was generally populated by white male clergy who explained their religions to each other.2 While the lacunae of this model are clear, the politics of representation have grown more complicated. The common focus on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is not adequate to address the burgeoning religious diversity of the American context—including not only Eastern traditions but also new religious movements, historically marginalized religious and ethnic communities (for example, Dalit, Yazidi, and Romani), and indigenous cultures that are still overlooked. Secular humanism is increasingly recognized as part of the conversation, but the field still linguistically accounts for secular life stances by what they are not (that is, nonreligious), and they must fight for funding and inclusion in campus spiritual life, as well as moral authority in the public square. With a growing number of individuals who identify as spiritual but not religious or as interspiritual (alternatively, of multiple religious belonging), it is misleading to presume that everyone identifies with a defined faith community.
It also matters a great deal who is present from each community. At Chicago Theological Seminary, the historically Protestant but increasingly diverse school where I teach, we encourage students to speak from a particular life stance rather than for it. Nonetheless, the perspective of those we meet from other traditions invariably shapes how we view the life stance in general. Relying too much on a single story distorts our understanding.
Representation raises questions beyond who is invited to the table in interreligious encounter or how one organizes the field in the academy. Who determines the boundaries of a religious community, and who has a voice? Should Roman Catholic Womenpriests be counted as Catholics even though they have been excommunicated by the Vatican? Why don’t Ethiopian Israelite and Black Hebrew movements get explored in discussions of Jewish diversity? Which form(s) of Yoruba tradition are considered authentic? Theology, history, ethnicity, and status all impact the make-up of interreligious space. We might wish to resolve all these queries in inclusive fashion or favor people’s self-definition, but boundaries are designed not merely to exclude—they also help to define and support.
Power dynamics integral to such questions are complex. The dominant academic culture privileges historical critical study of sacred texts, for instance, but few Muslim scholars view the Qur’an through this lens. If the perspectives of those who do are favored in interreligious scholarship, some will raise concerns of the “native informant”—marginalized individuals drawn to support marginalizing ideologies because of cultural oppression.3 Others will counter that such a term denigrates those who dare to articulate internally unpopular opinions, imposing a restrictive definition of the subjugated group’s “interest.” How are these voices registered in academic discourse and community encounter?
The field of interreligious studies has itself developed a dominant culture, in which progressive religious outlooks may exclude or silence some voices. Commitment to “active seeking of understanding across lines of difference” does not necessarily require theological pluralism (affirming the religious value and sufficiency of diverse faiths), but many religious conservatives have been reluctant to become involved in interfaith studies and engagement.4 As this gap closes, new issues arise. Questions of gender and sexuality become more fraught, as does the matter of proselytization. The latter has generally been out of bounds for interfaith engagement in Western contexts; if groups join the conversation without being able to bracket that part of their identity, it can become problematic for others to “sit at the table.”5
Nonetheless, this more multivocal perspective on the interreligious project also brings critical balance. Scholars, students, and community participants must learn to advocate their position regarding religious pluralism without the presumption that it upholds an objective standard. Rather, it represents a subjective voice within a coformative public discourse.6
CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE
Hosted by a United Methodist theological school, the two-day meeting drew scholars from around the country. My friend on the planning committee noted that the first draft of the schedule began with a cocktail reception. No, she politely insisted, we cannot do that. Some of the Muslim participants cannot be present if alcohol is served.
It simply seemed normal to the organizers to begin that way and even struck some as gauche to not offer spirits in a social setting. The cultural assumptions that informed the norm were most closely tied to the Christian cohort. While it was simple to excise the alcohol in this case, it flagged other issues of Christian privilege. Like so many interreligious efforts in North America today, the hosting organization was Christian. What symbols and structures does that impose, and, more importantly, what power does that convey? It impacts who controls the agenda, who gets funding from foundations, who is best represented, and whose opinion carries weight. Whether in seminary, college, or community contexts, Christian voices frequently dominate interreligious space, Christian questions shape comparative religious discourse, and Christian experience stands at the center.7
The just peace paradigm and the just war theory to which it poses a contrary vision, for example, were developed by Christian scholars, with Christian theological frameworks. Similarly, the “theology of religions” integral to much interreligious discourse frequently still revolves around a threefold pluralist-inclusivist-exclusivist model flowing from Christian questions about salvation.8 Subsequent revisions do not yet account for life stances that have alternative concerns or that have no need for a theological explanation of religious difference.
When entire interfaith degree programs are housed in historically Christian institutions, there are significant ramifications for theological education—even if the student body ceases to be predominantly Christian. Many master of divinity programs became multifaith without fully reckoning with the extent to which the degree is embedded in Christian history and culture. What do secular humanists or others without a scripture do about the emphasis on sacred texts? Will a classically trained Christian practical theologian appreciate how pastoral care (note the language) changes in a Zen Buddhist context? Schools may adapt requirements and have multifaith faculty, but Christian privilege abides, from the institutional calendar to rhythms of worship to curricular standards and cultural assumptions. Not all Christians experience it in the same way, of course. Evangelicals often feel profoundly marginalized within diverse Christian spaces, yet they still benefit from its “invisible package of unearned assets.”9
The secular academy is not immune. Having moved beyond nineteenth-century history of religions (Religionsgeschichte), in which faiths were seen to have value to the extent that they paralleled the Christian “norm,” there is still a tendency to focus on traditions that are theistic, scriptural, and global, communities that have recognizable hierarchies, clergy, and organizational structures.10 Some knowledge is still subjugated—obscured or discredited by what people expect “religion” to mean.11 Historical Christian bias continues to impact scholarship and pedagogy—old anti-Jewish tropes sneak into discussions of universalism and particularism, law and grace, spirit and letter—and feminist theology’s assault on perceived gender discrimination in Islam revives Orientalist stereotypes.12 Within shifting shapes of privilege, one sees the suppleness of social power.
Given the self-critical capacities of the academy and the traditions themselves, much work is being done to address these issues. There are no neutral spaces in which interreligious conversation and study can occur, however, because the broader context still systematically advantages Christians. In 2003, psychologist Lewis Schlosser broached this “sacred taboo” with a list of twenty-eight signs of religious privilege. These include seeing people of your tradition in leadership and show business, not having everything you do ascribed to your religious identity, and avoiding discrimination in employment, social settings, adoption, media, and housing because of your faith.13 Our context inevitably impacts the interreligious project.
ACCOUNTABILITY
For an opening ritual, one member from each tradition was asked to share an object of religious significance. A Christian presenter discussed a jar of soil from a sacred spot. A Jewish presenter explicated the intricate symbolism wrapped in the tzitzit (fringes) of the prayer shawl. A Muslim presenter explained that Muslims cannot equate any object with Allah, because it is shirk—a serious violation of Islamic theological commitments. I remember thinking that it might be a brilliant cover for forgetting his assignment and having no object in hand, but it also implicated the other presenters. Had he just suggested, by accident of course, that their words bordered on idolatry? He could have brought prayer beads, a mihrab that points the way to Mecca, or another Muslim ritual object—since no one had equated their items with God.
In theorizing difference, we may easily avoid the trap of equating it with inequality, but our own religious stories always implicate each other. Sacred texts often portray religious others, not always in the best light, and there is a temptation to discuss our own tradition in its ideal form while in “mixed” company even if other people admit the lived messiness of their own communities. Power intervenes again here; it is easier for privileged religious voices to admit the ugly stuff. Also, every detail we elect to share suggests something about what other religions are or are not. Comparison is a continuous activity, explicit and implicit, conscious and subconscious, shaping the way we think about our own life stance as well as those of others. What does it mean to be accountable in the coformative space of interreligious encounter?14
Leonard Swidler’s early work in interfaith dialogue tried to establish ground rules for accountability. His “Dialogue Decalogue” included the requirement that adherents be allowed to define for themselves what it means to belong to a particular tradition and to indicate whether their partners’ understanding of it is recognizable.15 When studying another religion, I require my students to present their learning to a person who stands inside it. How does it make the adherent feel? Why did the observers emphasize what they did, and how will their choices impact what others think? What happens when the roles are reversed? Students are required to engage these questions together, learning what it means to be accountable.
Interreligious engagement provides transformative capacity to see our own life stance in new ways.16 While experience shows that encounters generally deepen and clarify our commitment rather than attenuate it, we must resist meeting religious difference for the sole purpose of enriching our own spiritual capacities. Problems of erasure were deeply embedded in early exploration of Jesus as a Jew, for example. Although it kindled learning about Judaism and had potential to counter centuries of anti-Jewish teaching, many scholars and lay people were primarily interested in what it could reveal of Christian origins. Judaism was an object, while accountability requires an inter-subjective lens for learning.
Accountability also raises questions about appropriation and ownership. Krister Stendahl spoke of “holy envy,” acknowledging a profound appreciation for rituals of other traditions without attempting to adapt or adopt them.17 While a history of mutual influence is evident in the ongoing formation of traditions, his caution remains fundamentally important. As interspiritual movements challenge our easy assumptions about who owns traditions (and why), navigating the waters between appreciation and appropriation becomes ever more challenging.
Determining a response when we encounter something offensive in interreligious space can be especially perplexing. Diana Eck offers a strategy that recognizes the diverse registers of our voice. Commenting on a prayer guide published by Southern Baptists that described Hindus as lost in total darkness, she wrote:
As a scholar of Hinduism, I must say you have seriously misrepresented the Hindu tradition . . . and I would be happy to speak with you about where I think your portrayal is misleading. As an American and fellow citizen, however, I will defend your right to believe and practice Christianity as you do, to believe the worst about our Hindu neighbors, to believe they are all going to hell, and to say so, both privately and publicly. But as a Christian, let me challenge you here, for I believe that your views of our neighbors are not well grounded in the Gospel of Christ, as I understand it.18
Careful deployment of our multiple voices can help us discern how our stories impact others, negotiating difficult conversations while being accountable to one another.
RESISTING ESSENTIALIZATION
Despite the experience and sophistication of the assembled scholars, we repeatedly resorted to expressions such as “Judaism says,” “Christianity teaches,” and “Islam believes”—as if these multivocal, fertile traditions were singular and static entities for which we could speak unilaterally. Since the objective of the conference was to explore peace within the three faiths, we also knowingly oversimplified complex histories and teachings that have much to say about peace but have also justified war, conquest, and oppression.
One challenge of interreligious literacy is the tendency to essentialize, downplaying intragroup diversity and ignoring the ways in which lived tradition is not fully represented in texts and formal religious teachings. It is difficult to introduce students to unfamiliar life stances without broad generalizations, and every syllabus must exclude more than it can cover. Even the foundational terms “interfaith” and “interreligious” falsely imply that there are agreed-upon definitions of fixed things called religions and that we study the relationship between them. The reality is more porous, polymorphous, and provisional—a growing web of relationships within and among internally diverse spiritualities. What tools are there for more robust encounters with the multiplicity of spiritual living and learning?
Speaking in plurals helps to reinforce internal diversity: Judaisms, Christianities, and so forth. We can also complicate ideas about what constitutes religion. Robert Orsi offers the example of “Lourdes” water that mysteriously began flowing outside a church in the Bronx. His students regularly resist treating the folk veneration as religious praxis, and he presses them to reconsider.19 Remembering that study of religion in the West tends to package spiritual beliefs, practices, and communities in familiar ways, we can problematize its imposition on life stances that do not fit the mold—as when diverse Hindu cultures and traditions are reduced to yield Hinduism. Recognizing that perceptions of difference are themselves constructed, we can examine the impact of media, history, and politics on how we view the varieties of religious experience.20
Diverse pedagogies are important. Textual learning provides focus and what one hopes is reliable information. Experiential learning adds actual encounter, resisting reification. When an individual adherent’s perspective differs from the “official” version, I remind students or participants that while a certain text (academic or sacred) states one thing, some adherents may remember or receive it differently. One is a textual “truth,” and the other is an embodied “truth.”
Religious studies has long acknowledged these complexities. Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s 1962 controversial but now classic book, The Meaning and End of Religion, argued that religion was a modern European invention that did not sufficiently account for diversity. Ninian Smart spoke of doctrinal, mythological, ethical, ritual, experiential, institutional, and later material “dimensions” of religion. He also highlighted “religion on the ground,” and scholars continue to do critical work on lived religion.21
Yet the immediacy of interreligious encounter can press against theoretical complications. What is the minimum one needs to know to engage respectfully? How is what we understand limited by who we meet? Frequently, the normative value of religious tolerance overemphasizes commonalities and idealizes traditions—even though conversations about differences and shortcomings can be invaluable. During the formation of the interfaith just peace paradigm, for example, participants broke through a stubborn roadblock by agreeing to bring each other their “worst” scriptural text. It not only illuminated dimensions of their scriptures that had been neglected in conversation; it also built trust because self-critical capacities facilitate openness in intergroup settings.22 The promise of interreligious studies is its stress on learning in the presence of the other, weaving the supple cloth of sophisticated study in real relationship.23
THE WORLD WEIGHS HEAVY
One of the Jewish participants protested that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominated theoretical and practical discussions at the conference, as it always does in peace-oriented conversations among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Given the number of conflicts around the world that involve or address religion, and the number of people impacted, he felt there should be more balanced attention.
The world impinges upon the work of interreligious studies and engagement in countless ways. Current events such as the continuing scourge of Islamophobia or the rise of ISIS occupy the space of interreligious encounter even if they are not on the agenda or the syllabus. Current movements such as women’s empowerment, LGBTQ equality, and postcolonial critique raise particular kinds of questions. Events need not be ripped from the headlines to have an impact. As Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”24 The near genocide of Native American tribes, echoes of Crusades or La Convivencia, and images of the other in sacred texts are but a few of the historical developments that continue to shape interreligious perspectives and encounter.
In community engagement efforts, hot-button issues often become the proverbial elephant in the room. If the group declines to discuss them, some will claim the encounter is inauthentic, and others will stay away; they cannot agree to bracket a matter so urgent or cannot sit down with people who do not stand with them. When groups decide to address an issue they have trouble avoiding, it often consumes all the air in the room. Participants may not have adequate information, perspective, skills, or time to deal with the complexities. If there is no container for the problem, it can derail entire projects and undermine the building of relationship or trust.
Often people walk right into the elephant without meaning to. In a case study compiled by the Pluralism Project, students worked for months planning an interfaith iftar in the synagogue—and then noticed the “We Stand with Israel” sign out front.25 They wanted to cover the sign as a gesture of hospitality, but would the rabbi agree? How would synagogue members respond? Would an incident of violence overseas inflame passions on both sides? The case-study model is useful because its established methodology for analysis includes attention to context, background, and multiple stakeholders. It shows how the world intrudes.
Judith Plaskow notes that the academy, despite its ivory tower reputation, “participates in the same tensions and contradictions, challenges and possibilities as the society in which it is situated, and is often a microcosm of wider cultural conflicts. Moreover—and this is the important point—our scholarship and teaching are broadened and deepened to the extent that they are in touch with and responsive to larger cultural currents.”26 Interreligious studies emphasizes this intersection. While comparative religion seeks an ostensibly “objective historical or phenomenological account of similarities . . . between religious traditions,” according to Paul Hedges, interreligious studies “is more expressly focused on the dynamic encounter between religious traditions and persons.”27
Consequently, the field can be powerfully buffeted by political winds. The enormous scholarly output about religious violence and historical traditions of religious tolerance, for example, is a response to current tensions and governmental focus on “countering violent extremism.” So is the recent proliferation of university chairs in Islamic studies. With appropriate interdisciplinary rigor, the influence of politics, history, media, and science on interreligious studies at least becomes visible.
INTERSECTIONALITY
An African American colleague confided that she always feels her racial identity more powerfully than her religious identity at such gatherings. She is often the only black person in interreligious space and finds that race is generally obliterated as a difference of substance—as if it had no impact in religious circles.
We simultaneously bear notions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and nationality in shifting balances and contexts; we never come to the table as only one thing. Our diverse identities also press upon each other, as evident in religious teachings about gender and sexuality, or particular histories of religious communities regarding race. While the diversity of life stances is the central category of analysis in interreligious studies, the discipline cannot afford to ignore other types of difference.
Efforts to challenge discrimination and resolve conflict can be successful only if we engage the intersectionality of identities and oppressions. Interreligious studies must grapple with the unique ways that aspects of identity combine in our social context. Just as a woman has historically been viewed differently depending on her skin color, so too are religious experiences often different depending on other dimensions of our being.28 While intersectional analysis runs the risk of multiplying the tensions of identity politics exponentially, it enables participants to encounter each other in their full humanity, with a complex story to tell, still being written.
The academy has been crucial in excavating intersectionality—as it continues to be in addressing all the issues raised in this chapter. Its theoretical analyses provide insight for interreligious engagement, cultivating greater self-awareness and sensitivity. Community-based efforts, in turn, comprise “praxis labs” that also generate new understandings, funneled back into the academy. Thus the realms of interreligious studies and interreligious engagement are interdependent, and they also overlap. Both arenas equip people to navigate a complex multifaith world, and some so equipped will become interfaith leaders. Both can generate research into best practices, metrics assessing impact, and standards for literacy. Campus contexts, which often furnish individuals’ most intense encounter with diversity, involve curricular and cocurricular elements.
As evidenced in the above discussion of “six issues that complicate interreligious studies and engagement,” it is difficult to tease apart the academic field and the activist movement. The Just Peace conference itself straddled the imaginary border as it both researched the interfaith paradigms and embodied the challenges of religious diversity. It is important to restate that the conference was not an example of failed engagement. It facilitated learning of substance and deepened relationships around shared commitments. The tales merely elucidate the most consistently useful strategy for addressing the complicating factors in interreligious studies and engagement—honest, careful attention to the trouble spots. We may find that the irritating grains of sand are polished into pearls.