The Quiet Revolution: The Emergence of Interfaith Consciousness

Dedication

To Dominic, Daniel and Eugene.

Thanks for everything.

Epigraph

I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the Mohammedan; I shall enter the Christian’s Church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhistic temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and his Law. I shall go to the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the heart of everyone. Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future.

Swami Vivekananda, 1863–1902, Hindu holy man

This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a big house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together — black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, cultures and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other.

Martin Luther King, 1929–68, American Baptist pastor and civil rights leader

Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. This is not just a dream, but a necessity. We are dependent on each other in so many ways that we can no longer live in isolated communities and ignore what is happening outside these communities, and we must share the good fortune that we enjoy.

Tenzin Gyatso, 1935–, The 14th Dalai Lama

Contents

Cover

Dedication

Epigraph

FOREWORD

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1. PIONEERING INTERFAITH INDIVIDUALS

Introduction — Prophets, Sages and Mystics for the New Millenium

i. Raimon Panikkar

ii. Paul Knitter

iii. John Hick

iv. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan

v. Stephanie Dowrick

vi. Chung Hyun Kyung

vii. Rabbi David Rosen

2. PIONEERING LOCAL INTERFAITH COMMUNITIES

Introduction — New York City

i. Interfaith Center of New York

ii. The American Society for Muslim Advancement and The Cordoba Initiative

iii. New Seminary and Interfaith Ministers

iv. Temple of Understanding

3. PIONEERING INTERNATIONAL INTERFAITH ORGANISATIONS

Introduction — Global Networks

i. Parliament of the World’s Religions

ii. The Global Ethic Foundation

iii. Peace Council

4. ONE WORLD RELIGION?

5. ONE TRUTH OR MANY TRUTHS?

6. FUNDAMENTALISM

CONCLUSION

Bibliography

Endnotes

Websites

Thanks

Searchable Terms

Copyright

Foreword

Several things seem inescapable from reading about the ‘emerging inter-religious consciousness’ as Peter Kirkwood describes it.

There is the rapidly and drastically changing world in which this ‘spiritual revolution’ is taking place. Peoples of different cultures and traditions once living largely separated from each other at the time, say, of the 1893 World’s Parliament of the Religions, now live side by side in metropolitan cities around the world. In the United States, for instance, the 1950s religious landscape of Will Herbert’s Protestant, Catholic and Jew has been transformed by a wave of immigration beginning in the 1960s to reflect the entire religious spectrum of East and West, a process that has been replicated throughout much of Europe and Australia. Colonialism has given way to globalisation, and whether there is indeed an inevitable ‘clash of civilisations,’ there is a growing and unmistakable ‘connection of civilisations’ in every way imaginable. And there is no going back.

September 11 brought that reality home with devastating consequences, and put religion front and centre on the world stage when it comes to the matter of diversity. While there have been certain periods in history — with the Crusades, for instance — and certain places in the world — such as India, or Northern Ireland — where religion has been literally a matter of life and death, this sense of ultimacy now has a global reach. Therefore, argue the many voices in this book, inter-religious dialogue is no longer merely an academic exercise, or a spiritual luxury. It is a moral imperative, and a global necessity.

While Kirkwood acknowledges that religion ‘… gets bad press, and the negative aspects of religion are probably justifiably emphasised …’ nevertheless his intention is to take the ‘… sanguine view that more positive interaction between faiths and cultures is possible.’ Where and how is that happening? What can be learnt from it? How can it ‘… lead to better times ahead?’ As he looks at the inter-religious movement, which is really in its infancy, he surveys two principal frontiers. One is intellectual, the other practical.

What quickly becomes apparent conceptually is the insight from postmodernism that there is no ‘God’s-eye view’ of reality. Attempts to come to grips with the enduring question of identity and difference — of ‘the one and the many,’ of ‘us and them,’ of ‘the particular and the universal’ — are always done from a certain point of view. What’s curious about both universalism — the stance that all religious and spiritual traditions are basically the same, the impulse to see a natural evolution towards ‘one world religion’ — and fundamentalism — the stance that a particular religious tradition is the ‘one and only’, and the need therefore to impose it on the world — is that both seek to resolve the dilemma by doing away with difference, by eliminating diversity. Most of the thinkers and practitioners interviewed find such approaches ineffective, unsatisfying, and even dangerous. For the most part, those in the field are struggling to hold on to both sides of the equation. Be who you are and embrace diversity. Be religious in a particular tradition, in relation to other traditions. As Paul Knitter puts its, ‘… be religious inter-religiously’.

For the past couple of years I have used one of the Knitter’s books, Introducing Theologies of Religions, with its innovative categories of replacement, fulfillment, mutuality and acceptance in a graduate level course. I have watched students — in this case, Christian seminarians — grapple with this very question that I believe anyone with a self-consciously held religious or spiritual identity must address: How do I hold on to the integrity of my identity as I encounter ‘the Other’, or more accurately perhaps, ‘the Others’? As students read the scriptures of other traditions, visit diverse places of worship and practice, and reflect on their own experiences and convictions, there are personal, emotional, spiritual and intellectual transformations that take place. Most of the time the process is seen as clarifying, illuminating, deepening, liberating, empowering. But invariably, when the students come to the end of Knitter’s book, they are almost always disappointed. Not with Knitter — who is brilliant and accessible — nor with his categories — which are stimulating and helpful — but with the fact that none of the categories are finally conclusive. Knitter, nor anyone else for that matter, ‘solves the problem’ conceptually. Although the intellectual dimension is essential to the quest, it will always remain intellectually a quest. In other words, as with all of the mysteries of life, death, meaning, purpose, relationships, evil, suffering and so on, we’re not going to solve the mystery of diversity on paper.

But we have to find a way to live with diversity, to live with each other, in this world. This is the practical side of the inter-religious movement. Even for many who are fearful that dialogue might challenge or undermine their religious convictions, or those who believe there are serious limitations to what we can mutually understand or agree on, the need to find ways to co-exist in harmony, and perhaps to work together for a better world, has become compelling. It is not surprising that the stories of many of the pioneers in the movement have this common thread of having to personally deal with diversity, either by growing up in a multi-religious family or community, or migrating to another cultural context, or encountering people from other traditions, or witnessing the impact of religious conflict. Though all the persons interviewed in one way or another are coming from a Western context, there are useful distinctions among the approaches being employed and explored. There is also a focus on what’s working, and what’s not.

Peter Kirkwood has provided us with an appreciative and insightful look into the inter-religious movement. This book will be relevant to a wide spectrum of people and perspectives because he has been even-handed in his treatment without ducking the hard or unanswerable questions. Though he makes no claim to being comprehensive, nevertheless this account gives the reader an understanding of the urgency of the need, the real life and real world reasons for it, the emerging paradigms in all their variety, complexity and incompleteness, the evolving practical strategies for fostering dialogue and cooperation between communities and cultures, and the prevalent values of respect, compassion, and hope that drive the movement. He has chronicled this pivotal moment in the movement’s evolution in such a way, with both depth and detail, that my guess is his account will serve as a marker, a resource, and — in an always understated, seemingly unintended way — a guide, for years to come.

Dirk Ficca

Executive Director,

Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions

Chicago, March 2007

Preface

Given that I have a Christian background (though I would not regard myself now as a practising orthodox Christian), this book emerged from an unusual direction. Its inspiration came from Muslim interfaith activists. In 2003 I produced, and Geraldine Doogue presented, a documentary called ‘Tomorrow’s Islam’ for Compass on ABC TV. It introduced several progressive Muslim thinkers and leaders who were fostering a productive engagement with the West. Based on the research and interviews for that project, I co-authored with Geraldine, a book of the same name which was published by ABC Books in 2005. In the course of that exploration of the world of Islam, we encountered a number of Muslims who had initiated, and were leading figures in, interfaith dialogue: most notably Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in New York, and Mehmet Ozalp in Sydney. I got to know about, and experience, the organisations they had founded: the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative in New York, and the Affinity Intercultural Foundation in Sydney. So it was not my birth faith, Christianity, that introduced me to this vital new development in religion. Ironically, these days, with all the negative headlines and stereotypes of Islam, it was via these Muslims in particular, and the organisations and other people they worked with, that the world of interfaith activity was opened up to me.

It did not take much research to uncover the fact that a multitude of interfaith organisations involving all the major religions has sprung up in the last fifteen years or so, and underlying this is a deep change in the nature of belief. In 2005 I wrote a proposal for a three-part TV documentary series about this, and an accompanying book. Both were accepted by ABC TV and ABC Books respectively. In June and July 2006 I did a research trip to several countries for both, and filming for the documentary series took place in Australia, Canada, USA, Spain and Germany in September 2006.

This book is a much expanded version of the documentary series. It gives much more background, and more extended excerpts from interviews. The focus of the documentaries and the book is introducing some of the key leaders from a range of faiths who are involved in interfaith dialogue. It should be emphasised that it does not provide a systematic thorough theology or history of the interfaith movement. Along the way it touches on theological issues, and of necessity some of the history is laid out in the course of giving background to the people we meet. But primarily it presents the personal stories of some fascinating characters. Via their stories, their views, their personal religious transformations, I look at the spiritual revolution we are now witnessing, and tease out some of the issues this raises. Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the seminal political science and sociology work Democracy in America which was published in 1835, believed in the profound impact of an individual’s origins, what he called in French the point de depart. I would add to this moments of critical transformation in a person’s life, what in Christian theology is called, using a Greek word, metanoia, change of heart, or conversion. In examining each person’s story, I try to look closely at their origins, where they come from in terms of their religion, beliefs and spirituality, and how they have been deeply transformed or converted by interfaith and cross-cultural encounter.

There are vast debates about whether religion has been a force for good or ill in society. Certainly, at the moment, it gets bad press, and the negative aspects of religion are probably justifiably emphasised. In the ebb and flow of history, in different times and places, religion has been more of a force for peace and harmony. Imam Feisal named his Cordoba Initiative after the city of Cordoba, the capital of the great Islamic Andalusian civilisation in medieval Spain. At that time, in that place, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together harmoniously in what was regarded as the most highly productive and civilised society of that era. Imam Feisal says that his interfaith work, in the midst of a tense and troubled present, is an ‘attempt to create a future based upon that past’. Without denying the role of religion in the strife-torn times in which we live, this book takes the sanguine view that more positive interaction between faiths and cultures is possible, and that perhaps the present turmoil is a sign that we are in a period of transition and deep change that may lead to better times ahead. The characters introduced in these pages point to some hope in the validity of this view. Certainly they indicate that the fundamentalist extremism that dominates media headlines is just one side of the story.

Introduction

Over the last twenty years or so, a variety of spires, minarets, onion domes, temples, prayer halls and meditation centres have mushroomed in the suburbs of major cities around the world. The robes, head dress, veils and multicoloured faces of all races and faiths have become obvious on the streets. And in the comfort of one’s home, the rest of the world is just the click of the mouse or the flick of the TV remote away. The rapid transition to a religiously pluralistic world is exciting, inspiring, perplexing, troubling and threatening all at once. These pages will introduce some pioneering leaders who are charting a course through this new religious landscape: a Roman Catholic priest who says he is simultaneously Christian, Buddhist and Hindu; a Jewish rabbi who spearheads interfaith relations in Israel, and recently became a papal knight; a Muslim imam and his wife in New York trying to heal the wounds of 9/11; an Anglican dean who opened up his cathedral to services of all religions, and now wears a black bear’s tooth around his neck given to him by a close friend, a native American medicine man; interfaith ministers working across all the major faiths; and a Christian theologian who says she has been called a postmodern urban feminist shaman. They may sound like a motley and eccentric collection of people, but throughout history, prophets, sages and mystics have often appeared so. These thinkers and activists have led the way in facing new questions of religion, spirituality and meaning now confronting the broader population, and they have come to a level of wisdom and profound inter-religious understanding.

Most commentators recognise the beginnings of all this to have taken place on a particular day: ironically it was on September 11, but it was more than a century before the tragic terrorist attacks in New York. On 11 September 1893 an iconic event began: more than four thousand people gathered at the Art Institute of Chicago for the opening of the World’s Parliament of Religions. As Marcus Braybrooke observes in his monumental history of inter-religious dialogue, the Parliament marked ‘the start of what has become known as the interfaith movement’.¹ It was part of the massive Columbian Exposition, a World’s Fair to celebrate the 400-year anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. For the first time, religious leaders from all the major faiths, and from all over the globe, attended a major international congress of religion. It had some major shortcomings: it was organised and dominated by Christians, and there was only one Muslim attending, an American convert, as it was vetoed by the leader of Islam at the time, the Ottoman Caliph in Istanbul, Sultan Abdul Hamid II. But despite these limitations, it is regarded as a watershed event in the emergence of the new religiously pluralistic world in which we now live.

At ten o’clock that morning, to open the Parliament, the American New Liberty Bell was rung solemnly ten times, each chime representing one of the ten major religions of the world. One of the foreign visitors who was to become a star of the Parliament, Indian Hindu Swami Vivekananda, spoke in reply to the welcome that morning, and he referred to the chiming of the bell:

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.²

Swami Vivekananda himself became an iconic pioneer of interfaith dialogue and understanding. After the Parliament concluded, he stayed in the United States for three years, travelling the country giving lectures, and he founded several branches of the Vedanta Society. He was the first Hindu to live in the West for an extended period to teach about his faith, and he could be regarded as the foundation figure in the significant reverse missionary activity of our time: that of Eastern religions making huge inroads in the West. And he was pioneering as well in his attitude towards other faiths. He was one of the first to voice a very progressive stance that advocated going beyond tolerance to an acceptance of all major faiths as equally valid paths to the divine:

I believe in acceptance. Why should I tolerate? Toleration means that I think you are wrong and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing others to live? I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the Mohammedan; I shall enter the Christian’s Church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhistic temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and his Law. I shall go to the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the heart of everyone.

Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future. Is God’s book finished? Or is it still a continuous revelation going on? It is a marvellous book — these spiritual revelations of the world. The Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and all other sacred books are but so many pages, and an infinite number of pages remain yet to be unfolded. I would leave it open for all of them. We stand in the present, but open ourselves to the infinite future.³

But both Swami Vivekananda and the Parliament were ahead of their time. And fanaticism, persecution and uncharitable feelings definitely were not at an end. The twentieth century was to unleash two world wars, other major regional conflicts, and several episodes of genocide that were to be the worst and most extensive ever seen. There had been talk at the Parliament of convening another, but these cataclysmic events got in the way: the next Parliament of the World’s Religions was only held one hundred years later in 1993 to mark the centenary of the first Parliament, and again it took place in Chicago. But this time, in the midst of rapidly unfolding globalisation, it was in tune with the general mood of the times, and it was a raging success. Registrations had to be closed when they reached its capacity of 8,000. It was decided at that Parliament that it would be held every five years, and subsequently it has been held in 1999 in Cape Town, in 2004 in Barcelona, and in 2009 it will be held in Melbourne (the Parliament will be looked at in more detail in Chapter 3).

Now we are seeing a general realisation of the attitudes towards other faiths and cultures espoused by Swami Vivekananda a century ago. We are in the midst of an emerging interfaith consciousness. This is reflected in the views of two modern heroes, one a Christian and the other a Buddhist, who are both Nobel Peace Prize winners: Martin Luther King who won the prize in 1964, and the Dalai Lama who won it in 1989. In his Nobel Prize lecture delivered on 11 December 1964, one of Martin Luther King’s themes was the new globalised reality:

A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together. This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a big house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together — black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, cultures and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other.⁴

And the Dalai Lama expressed similar sentiments in his Nobel Prize lecture on 11 December 1989:

Because we all share this small planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. This is not just a dream, but a necessity. We are dependent on each other in so many ways that we can no longer live in isolated communities and ignore what is happening outside these communities, and we must share the good fortune that we enjoy … As interdependents, therefore, we have no other choice than to develop what I call a sense of universal responsibility. Today, we are truly a global family. What happens in one part of the world may affect us all.⁵

These are the views of pioneering and highly articulate spiritual giants. But in our times we are seeing these views becoming more generalised, and religious institutions and organisations are emerging that are the concrete expressions of these views. This book is an attempt to both grasp and explain this vast shift in spiritual consciousness. This global revolution in religion is provoking a drastically new way of looking at the world, at our lives and experience as human beings, and at the transcendent, the divine. On the surface, the new religiousness seems to be about responses to militant religion, trying to overcome conflict and tension between different beliefs and cultures. Now there is a general view that more and better interaction between adherents of different faiths is vital. Interfaith dialogue is seen as an imperative for all believers, as one of the key strategies in countering the threat of violence, and achieving peace. But the forces at play here are deeper, more long term and more pervasive, they pre-date the recent rise of militant religion. The new religiousness is far more than simply a response to militant fundamentalist religion. Indeed it could be argued that fundamentalism is a reaction to this deep shift in religion and culture, rather than the other way round.

I have agonised over whether the title of this book should have contained the word ‘Evolution’, rather than ‘Revolution’. The word ‘evolution’ denotes a development, or adaptation, that builds firmly on what already exists without totally changing what was there, and perhaps this is a more accurate description of this moment in the history of religion. But ‘evolution’ also carries the meaning of developing to a higher level, to a state superior to what was there before. What we are seeing emerging is definitely different, but it is not necessarily superior to what preceded it. The word ‘revolution’ implies an overturning, or a drastic change from what was there before, and I have opted to use this term. I fully realise this may be controversial, particularly for those who hold notions of religion and truth being eternal, constant, unchanging. But, in using this term, I am relying on the analysis of major commentators and theologians working in this area.

For instance, eminent theologian and philosopher Raimon Panikkar (who will be profiled in Chapter 1) argues we are seeing, and indeed in the present world circumstances we need to pursue, ‘a radical mutation of the concept of religion’.⁶ He uses the word ‘mutation’ in the sense that there needs to be a radical change from past ways of thinking and being. He argues that what is occurring is ‘not merely evolution, reform or improvement, but a real mutation, a new step, another sphere, more akin to revolution than to evolution. It is almost a platitude to say that if Jesus were to come to earth now, the Church would put him to death. I interpret this not to mean that the Church has betrayed the message of Jesus (this is not my point now) but that Christ would introduce another revolution, another step, a ‘new wine that he would not allow to be poured into old skins’.⁷ Raimon says that there needs to be changes in the basic way we think about religion, and this will bring about a radical transformation of institutional religion as we know it: ‘I think that most people would agree with me, and the popular wisdom is with me, that all the traditional religions have run their time. When I speak to Christians, I say, Well you like to convert people, perhaps it’s high time that now you begin to apply that conversion to yourselves! All religions today need conversion. With our old paradigms, we cannot face the challenge of the time. And that implies authentic religious experience. We cannot go on with business as usual.’⁸

Historian of religion, Karen Armstrong, sees the era we live in as another Axial period for religion. It is on par with the first Axial Age when the great prophets and sages appeared who ushered in the major world faiths.

‘There was a great period of transformation that’s sometimes called the Axial Age because it was the pivot, or the axis, of the spiritual history of humanity, the point around which spirituality has continued to evolve. It ranged from about 800 to 200 BCE. At this time, in four distinct corners of the globe, the traditions that have continued to nourish humanity either came into being, or had their roots. So you have Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel and philosophical rationalism in Greece. It was a major transformation of religion, and people were discovering their inner world.

‘Now this is an Axial period today. It started in the sixteenth century, with the beginnings of our scientific revolution in the West, and the scientific revolution is still continuing now. We have the whole electronic revolution which is transforming us yet again, and it’s spreading to other parts of the world. This is another Axial period, and the world can’t be the same again. But our Axial Age has been technological, scientific and rational, rather than spiritual. We’ve not had great spiritual geniuses on par with say the Buddha, or Confucius, or the Prophets of Israel, or later, with Jesus or Mohammed. We haven’t had anybody of that spiritual calibre. Because of the rational bias of our modernity, we’re beginning to lose touch with a lot of the way religion works, and sometimes I think we’re becoming a little bit infantile in our spirituality. We think of religion as though it was any other fact, instead of an art form, something that we have to work at imaginatively in order to find its truth.’⁹

This view that we are in a time of deep transformation of religion is supported by prominent contemporary theologians. For instance, Paul Knitter has written extensively on interfaith dialogue, and has just been appointed Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at the prestigious Union Theological Seminary in New York. He also argues that we are in a new Axial Age of religion (he is also profiled in Chapter 1).

‘This is something new, not only for Christianity, but for other religions as well, particularly Islam. It really represents what I think Carl Jaspers, the German philosopher, called an Axial shift. He determined a real Axial shift in the history of religions between 800 and 200 before the common era. I believe right now we religious people are facing the need for another Axial shift in which we will move away from claiming, My God is better than your God, my enlightenment is more authentic than your enlightenment, into a relationship in which we will genuinely listen to each other, genuinely challenge each other, genuinely learn from each other, and more effectively work together for the wellbeing of humanity and the planet.’¹⁰

Karen Armstrong says that the revolution in religion that is beginning to emerge is pluralism (which is emerging along with fundamentalism): ‘A hugely important development in our time, just as important as fundamentalism, is religious pluralism, the fact that for the first time in human history, we have the opportunity to look in depth at the devotion that lies at the heart of every single world faith in a way that wasn’t possible before. We didn’t have the linguistic skills, communication wasn’t so good, travel wasn’t so easy. We sometimes heard stories of strange and weird and wonderful goings on in distant parts of the world from travellers, and couldn’t understand them, they seemed nonsensical to us. But now, we are beginning to understand how similar that devotion is, expressed in many significantly different ways, but at heart there is a core value. That is beginning to change our religious world in a considerable way, so that we’ll never be able to see either our own or other people’s religion in the same way again …

‘People are becoming acquainted with other people’s traditions, seeing similarities with their own, and yet also experiencing their challenging differences. This can give you some very good hints about how to bring your own tradition forward. I think this is part of our modern world which is now pluralistic. We don’t just live in a region as it was, say, in Christian Europe, where you either had to be Christian or Jewish, there really wasn’t any other option. Now we have a larger compass, and it’s a great benefit for us, say in the Christian world,