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Religious Dialogue

Dialogue among religious traditions is challenging, since traditions vary enormously, and especially from one societal context to another. Some constitute all the spiritual insights, reflections, observances, and practices that have been part of a community's life over many centuries. Other religions originate as the result of an intense religious experience of a prophet or leader who becomes the founder of a new religious tradition. Still others begin as protest or reform movements within an existing religious tradition and gradually evolve as separate religious entities. Historically, religious traditions have, by and large, been in mutual isolation or at times seen themselves as mutually exclusive or even rival communities. In some periods, religious communities have been at war with each other. In some places, as in India, for instance, many religious traditions have coexisted for centuries in mutual tolerance and peace. Throughout history, there are also numerous instances where individuals and communities have tried to build bridges of understanding across the religious divide.

Religious dialogue, also often referred to as interreligious dialogue, as a conscious activity and a recognized discipline within the religious field, became prominent as more and more communities worldwide began to feel the impact of religious plurality. Vast population movements of refugees, migrants, and displaced peoples in recent centuries, as well as enormous advances in travel, communications, and the economic interdependence of nation-states, have resulted in bringing peoples of numerous religious communities to live together as neighbors. Almost all major cities of the world now have multireligious communities. Most of these communities practice their own religious commitments, build their own places of worship, and look for ways to find their place within the plurality of religions. It is in this context that religious dialogue has emerged as a concept that defines the relationship between religious communities in pluralistic environments.

The Concept of Dialogue

Mutual respect, mutual openness, and willingness to accept the other in their “otherness” are the hallmarks of interreligious dialogue. Religious dialogue begins when religious plurality is accepted as a given and is not see as a threat to life in community. It does not expect any religious community to change or give up its own religious convictions, but it expects all religious communities to be open to building relationships across the religious barriers despite the differences. “Different does not mean wrong but different” is one of the slogans within interreligious dialogue. This means that one should be open to living with what is different even if one does not necessarily accept what the other believes or practices as something one would embrace. Also accepted within this discipline is the conviction that each community should be allowed to define itself so that relationships are not based on the prejudices, misunderstandings, and misconceptions that have marred much of the interreligious relations of the past.

The concept, however, also has elements that go beyond simple mutual respect. It is believed that when religious communities do engage in relationship with genuine openness and respect, they would be able to grow in appreciation of one another's faith, begin to see their own faith in a new light, and understand the ways in which others have perceived their own faith and practices. They would also begin to understand the prejudices and misgivings that had led to some of the tensions and conflicts that had been part of their common history. Therefore, it is held that interreligious dialogue can also lead to mutual enrichment, mutual correction, and mutual self-criticism. Another common saying within interreligious dialogue is that “we not only need to know the other, but we need to know the other to know ourselves.” In other words, it is believed that interfaith dialogue helps a community to see itself as others see it, so that it can have a chastened understanding of its place within the larger social context.

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