Interfaith relations and the global church

The ecumenical movement’s journey toward dialogue

Early last century, at a time when the colonial missionary movement evangelized indigenous people with little consideration for their religious and cultural heritages, some Christians discovered an unexpected reality in India. According to F. W. Steinthal, it was the realization that there is “among Hindus and Brahmans a deep, genuine and spiritual religious life as is found among most Christians.” ⁵

The World Missionary Conference, the first ecumenical conference in modern times, met in Edinburgh in 1910 to consider, among other topics, the implications of this insight for missionary theology and methods. Of the 1200 delegates at that conference, all but seventeen were white male clergy from Europe or North America. ⁶ This meant that only a small proportion of the attendees considering this critical missiological question had any significant experience of living among people of other faiths. The outcome could have been predictable, for the conference reinforced the missionary mandate: “to evangelize the world in this generation.”

Yet, Steinthal’s discovery propelled a theological reflection that intensified. I will highlight a few theological models that emerged through the century, the earliest of which were Christologically oriented.

Shortly after Edinburgh, in 1913, J. N. Farquhar published an influential book, The Crown of Hinduism. ⁷ He suggested that just as the Gospels claimed that Jesus came to fulfill the Jewish “law and the prophets,” so also Jesus should be understood as the fulfillment of Hinduism. Seen thus, Jesus comes not to destroy but to fulfill other religions. In 1913, the attempt to locate Jesus Christ in any succession of Hindu deities may have seemed very progressive. Indeed, Farquhar’s intent may have been to lift Hinduism, in the eyes of Christians, to the status of Judaism, because supersessionism, or replacement theology in relation to Judaism, was common Christian thinking. Yet, in the same way as subsequent dialogues with Jewish partners convinced us of the fallacy of that theology and showed how it legitimizes anti-Jewish violence, dialogues with Hindu partners have revealed how such a theology justified colonialist aggression. Although the ecumenical and Roman Catholic churches have roundly rejected replacement theology, vestiges of such thinking continue to appear in Christian theological writing.

In 1925, E. Stanley Jones published The Christ of the Indian Road. ⁸ Jones asserted that Christ was already incarnate in India, and drew the inference that the Christian missionary task was to discover the Christ who is indigenous to India, rather than import the Christ of the West. Christians get to the first stage of relating with people of other faiths. Both of these models began with the traditional missionary assertion that Christ, however interpreted, was necessary for Hindus. This incarnational model can still be useful to help Christians get to the first stage of relating with people of other faiths. In my own ministry pastoring a church on the fringes of the inner city in Chicago, I used this model effectively to move middle-class, highly educated, Caucasian church members to engage with people who are low-income, African American, and living in inner-city neighborhoods, by urging them to see the risen Christ incarnate in those communities. It does not take much to move from there to locating the risen Christ in any other group of people, including another religious community.

This model, however, is not without its difficulties. A quote from Charlie F. Andrews, one of India’s beloved missionaries and a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, illustrates both the promise and the pitfall of incarnational theology. Andrews sees incarnation even in the Hindu Scriptures that provides deep meaning to the people of India:

When we turn from the personal lives of the Indian people with whom I have lived all these years, to the literature which is regarded by them all as a part of their own sacred scriptures, I find in this also passages of such deep spiritual beauty and moral insight, that I have found myself constantly saying “This is nothing else than Christian.” ⁹

The problem, of course, is that this Scripture is not Christian, and to call it such is akin to a Hindu saying that Jesus Christ is nothing other than a Hindu deity!

Roman Catholic scholar Raimundo Panikkar discovered the problem when he attempted to locate the Christ incognito in Hinduism, in his The Unknown Christ of Hinduism. ¹⁰ In this book he made an excellent comparative study of the two religions, but the “superior” Christology implied in his book caused him significant difficulties. Hindus who were offended at this attempt asserted that Hinduism did not need a Christ, known or unknown. Even though Panikkar made a vigorous defense in the introduction to the 1981 edition of his work, arguing that despite the book’s title his thesis was not based on a superior Christology, his argumentation has remained unconvincing. The problem, in fact, is not just the title, for despite the excellence of his study, Panikkar’s Christology is superior. It is not superior in the way exclusivistic theologies are superior but in the sense that any incarnational theology is inherently superior. In incarnational theology, we have to look for “our” Christ in “their” Scripture, tradition, and ritual in order to find meaning. The moment we do that we devalue their Scripture, tradition, and ritual.

By the time the second international missionary conference convened in Jerusalem in 1928, concern had arisen over emerging secularism and the Christian approach to other religions in that context. What is distinctive, universally valid, sufficient, and authoritative about the Christian message were critical questions for the assembly. Asserting that the Christian gospel does provide answers to a troubled world, yet affirming the values in other religions, the conference called on Christians to join hands with all people of faith to confront the growing impact of secular culture. Some participants, unable to agree with such an affirmation of other religions, expressed concern that “syncretistic thinking” was undermining the importance and urgency of Christian mission. Others maintained that Christian uniqueness precluded partnerships with other religious traditions.

A pivotal event in Christian efforts to deal with other religions was the International Missionary Conference held at Tambaram, South India, in 1938. The discussions of this council revolved around its preparatory volume, Hendrik Kraemer’s The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. ¹¹ Using Barthian categories of Christian uniqueness and decisiveness, Kraemer justified the universal mission of the church in its perceived relation to the world’s major religions. Although he characterized Hinduism as a “primitive apprehension of reality”—a naturalistic, vitalistic, “human attempt,” a “groping after God”—he insisted on a deeply personal, truly humble, and genuinely self-giving attitude toward the Hindu. Kraemer sought thus to reject arrogant attitudes evident in Christians’ approach to other religionists, while maintaining an attitude of exclusivism and superiority with regard to Christianity.

Tambaram resulted in dividing the ecumenical movement. The consultations and assemblies that followed it manifested a sharp polarization of those who reflected Kraemer’s “Tambaram position” and those who held a “dialogical attitude.” What is interesting is that most who advocated the “Tambaram position” were Western Christians who typically had their faith formation in mono-religious contexts. Those who held the “dialogical attitude” were mostly Asian Christians who had been influenced by multi-religious contexts. Clearly, Western Christians were worried about sacrificing fundamentals of the faith, watering down evangelical passions, and engaging in syncretism.

Hendrik Kraemer and other Western theologians whose thinking was largely based on Barth’s views had no means for dealing with the interfaith reality. The story of a conversation between D. T. Niles and Karl Barth betrays the Swiss theologian’s cultural ignorance and sense of spiritual arrogance. Having heard Barth say that there is no divine revelation in Hinduism, Niles asked if Barth had ever met or made friends with a Hindu. Barth replied that he had not met one in his life. If you have never met a Hindu in your life, asked Niles, how can you assert that there is no revelation in Hinduism? “A priori” replied Barth.

The controversies that followed Tambaram were so wrenching, and the world war with its aftermath of granting independence to colonized Asian countries so stunning, that theologians changed their focus from debating Christian uniqueness and dialogue to addressing the responsibilities of nation-building. This shift may account for the lapse of almost thirty years before the WCC Consultation in Kandy, Sri Lanka, which occurred in 1967. The Kandy document was the first to submit “dialogue” as a new basis for Christian relationships with people of other faiths and led to the establishment of the sub-unit on Dialogue in the WCC in 1971. ¹²

Roman Catholics had a very different orientation to the question of relations with other religions. Whereas Protestant missions tended to emphasize Christology and the need to respond to the message of the gospel as a way to salvation, Roman Catholic theology placed a greater emphasis on ecclesiology. Salvation, Catholics felt, was available only by being baptized and becoming part of the Church. Extra ecclesia nulla salus—outside the church there is no salvation—was the official doctrine until Vatican II. Since then, Roman Catholic theology has stretched its understanding of the saving work of Christ to provide for the possibility of salvation to those who have not explicitly become members of the Church.

The Roman Catholic Church (like the WCC and many of its member churches) has had a long history of relating to Jewish people. It was determined at Vatican II that a similar relation should be developed with the followers of other religions. Accordingly, Pope Paul VI established a secretariat (later a pontifical council) for relationships with non-Christians. The papal encyclical Ecclesiam Suam emphasized the importance of positive encounters between Christians and followers of other faiths. The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate) clarified the pastoral dimensions of this association. Other key Vatican II documents, such as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity (Ad Gentes), included important pointers to a dialogical attitude toward people of other religious traditions.

Nostra Aetate acknowledged the possibility of partial truth in other faiths, as is evident from the following quote:

The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions. She looks with sincere respect upon those ways of conduct and of life, those rules and teachings which, though differing in many particulars from what she holds and sets forth, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. ¹³

Indeed, the encyclical calls for respectful relationships with persons of other faiths:

The Church therefore, has this exhortation for her sons: Prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness to Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve, and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among these men, as well as the value of their society and culture. ¹⁴

During the 1950s and 60s, many Asian countries, having just gained independence from the colonial empires and their missionary efforts, began to formulate what might become their indigenous theologies. Choan Seng Song, a Taiwanese theologian, in 1964 proposed a celebration of the end of Western missions that paved the way for an indigenous Asian theology to emerge. ¹⁵ He suggested a shift from the Christological paradigm that caused the Tambaram divergence to a creation paradigm, in which God is understood as the creator of all people in God’s image. The opening verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” means not just Christians and Jews, but the entire world. When it asserts that human beings are created in God’s image, it also means Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists, among others. Within the creation paradigm is also a consistent biblical affirmation reflected in verses such as “The earth is the Lord and all its fullness, the world and all who dwell therein” (Ps 24:1), which make clear that all creation and all people are already under God’s providence. The critical theological question then becomes: if God created human beings in such grand diversity, is it God’s will that all people become Christians? Or, is it God’s will that we find ways to relate to each other and restore human community?

The 1960s also saw the development of Study Centers in many countries for the purpose of fostering dialogue. Lynn de Silva spearheaded such a movement in Sri Lanka, which eventuated in the Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue. De Silva himself made a bold dialogical attempt in 1975 in his The Problem of Self in Buddhism and Christianity. ¹⁶ He examined two seemingly contradictory concepts in these two religions, Anatta and Pneuma, showing how they can complement each other and together enhance the life and spirituality of both Buddhists and Christians.

This model of seeking complementarity has significant advantages. First, foundational to this proposal is a built-in self-criticism. From the outset, De Silva acknowledges that Christian theology is inadequate, incomplete, and has much to learn from other religious traditions. For instance, the common Christian understanding of a disembodied soul is unbiblical, while the desire to seek a permanent dwelling place has serious ethical consequences. Alternatively, the Buddhist concept of anatta (no soul) has much to offer Christian theology. Second, he applies the same critical tools to Buddhism’s individualistic path and offers the Christian concept of pneuma, in all its communal significance. His point is that anatta-pneuma offers each tradition both self-criticism and an opportunity to enrich its own tradition with the gift provided by the other. This self-critical attitude, which is also an attitude of humility and a willingness to learn from the other, an attitude so necessary in interfaith relations, seems to have been missing in Tambaram in 1938.

The first foray into learning from adherents of other religions and thinking about common concerns together was made in Ajaltoun, Lebanon, in March 1970, in a consultation, “Dialogue between Men of Living Faiths.” ¹⁷ Its purpose was to “to experiment with a multilateral meeting, and see what could be learned for future relations between people of living faiths.” Stanley Samartha, who became the WCC’s first executive for dialogue, spoke about this meeting that for the first time brought together Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim participants under the auspices of the WCC, as a new beginning. Also, Roman Catholics joined Orthodox participants for an inaugural engagement with these neighbors of other faiths.

One of the lessons that people of different faiths learned was how much they were dependent on, and involved in, the ongoing history of one another. Samartha said, “[O]ur calling today is less to be the bearers of a particular ‘mission’ and more to be participants in the total life of all multi religious communities, to be a pilgrim people contentedly together in motion responding to the initiatives of God.” ¹⁸ This sense of interdependence and mutual engagement calls for a new understanding of Christian communities in multi-religious societies. Does Christianity have the resources to solve all the problems people face, particularly when there is a crisis of faith in the Church itself? ¹⁹ The Ajaltoun Consultation demonstrated an increasing awareness in the ecumenical movement that Christians must go beyond considering Religious Others as objects of Christian mission and treat them as global partners confronting urgent issues of peace, justice, and human survival.

M. M. Thomas, one of Asia’s most respected theologians, was a leading advocate of the dialogical approach. His work Salvation and Humanisation had a significant impact on the 1972 Bangkok Conference of the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism that produced the document, “Salvation Today.” With that book, Thomas became the foremost proponent of yet another paradigm for dialogue—the soteriological model. Christopher Duraisingh writes,

He has insisted that it is the collective struggles of human beings for their humanization that provides an adequate point of departure and ground for our rethinking mission and dialogue. It is not through our a priori doctrinal formulations on God or Christ, but rather through our collective human search for meaning and sacredness that the “universe of faiths” could be adequately understood. ²⁰

In that same article, Duraisingh proposes a shift from the Christocentric and theocentric models to a soteriological one. He thus follows Catholic theologian Paul Knitter, who in No Other Name? reverses his own theocentric position:

If religious believers could agree that the center of their dialogue should not revolve around “Christ” (or Buddha or Krishna), or around “God” (or Brahman or Nirvana) but around “salvation”—that is, a shared concern about and effort to remove the sufferings that rack the human family today—perhaps the religions would have “the right of way” of getting into the circle of dialogue” … Such a salvation-centered starting point would call on different religious believers to share … a common praxis … Shared liberative praxis, it is hoped, would be the basis for mutual doctrinal understanding and clarification. ²¹

The early Christological questions also had ultimately to do with soteriology. The question of the uniqueness of Christ that occupied the theological conversation in the first half of the century, for instance, was primarily an inquiry into the efficacy of Christianity and the non-efficacy of other religions for salvation. Theologians of that period, however, considered salvation in eternal terms. What Thomas, Duraisingh, and Knitter are proposing is an alternative view of salvation—one that is described in Thomas’ Salvation and Humanisation, and Knitter’s phrase, “shared liberative praxis.”

More recently, Amos Yong’s Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions, ²² shifted the paradigm from Christological, theocentric, or soteriological to a pneumatological one. Not only is it valid in itself, but because considerable growth in the Body of Christ—particularly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia—is coming from the Pentecostal family, it has significant currency.

Yong’s proposal makes God’s Spirit primary rather than the Word. The effect of this shift is to open up the whole of creation as the potential locus of the Spirit’s activity. Persons and traditions that are “other” are indeed a part of creation and must be included in the Spirit’s activity. This is not new, as Yong admits. Theologians, including Samartha and Knitter, have acknowledged the value of the pneumatological paradigm. Yet, rather than develop the argument, they have tended to step back to the earlier Christological models. Therefore, this argument remained undeveloped, laments Yong. His intent is to redress the equal and opposite historical error by which the Holy Spirit has been imprisoned within the Church as the consequence of Christology. Refreshing in this approach is the corollary recognition, too often ignored, that any particular theology must be appropriately humble in its definitive claims of “Truth.” Grounding himself in a primary verse of Scripture in pneumatology, “The Spirit moves where it wills” (John 3:8), Yong confidently asserts that no voices or perspectives can therefore be excluded a priori from the conversation.

Dialogue in the twenty-first century: A new theological method?

As the foregoing narrative indicates, the ecumenical energies of the twentieth century were focused on theological conversations among Christians. Nonetheless, the twenty-first century paradigm seeks to engage persons of other religious traditions meaningfully in the conversation. This shift requires our present discussion to move from theological content to a discussion of theological method.

A key methodological question occupied the WCC-sponsored “Thinking Together” group: Is including persons of other religious traditions a valid theological method for each religious tradition? Alternatively, does theologizing without the participation of colleagues of multiple religious traditions result in inadequate or insular theology? Each of fifteen to twenty scholars and leaders of five religious traditions came to the table acknowledging their biases and a self-critical attitude. All wrote papers from the perspective of their own traditions, and received from their colleagues critiques drawn not only from the center of the critic’s own tradition, but from their informed perspective of the writer’s tradition. It is this expertise to evaluate a religious idea not only from one’s own religious center but from the perspective of others that is critical for theologians of the twenty-first century.

Langdon Gilkey addressed this question in his 1985 address to the American Academy of Religion. His primary concern was the theological struggle to hold an interpretive center while engaging the plurality of religious traditions and experiences. Speaking to the loss of the center, he reminded us of Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s admonition that we not interpret other religions from our own perspective.

The interpretation and assessment of other faiths from the stable viewpoint of one’s own was a mode of interpretation long practiced in the more tolerant (than we) circles of Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh reflection, and liberal Christian theologians assumed it to be legitimate right up to yesterday. Even those great figures who granted the saving work of God outside their own tradition—Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Barth and most of the neo-orthodox, and most open of all, Rahner, Tillich, and Pannenberg—took it for granted that their own Christian perspective represented a universally valid principle capable of interpreting other faiths. ²³ But today, no such fixed, universally valid center exists. Each time we attempt to interpret other religions from our own absolute center, we reduce them to the status of an object understood from an alien standpoint and thus both compromise their truths and appropriate their grace. “How can we proceed humanely in dialogue with one another, without a principle of interpretation, a fixed point of reference?” ²⁴ Gilkey asks.

His point of reference is praxis or, more specifically, praxis in the form of dialogue. It is here that he finds an answer to the dilemma in which the truth and grace of the other’s religious tradition is held in dialectical tension with one’s own absolute center. We can enter the dialogical praxis intellectually, as creative political action or indeed as play, he suggests, and when we do, we will recognize that what was a contradiction to reflection is to praxis a workable dialectic.

Harvey Cox, too, dissatisfied with the theological enterprise, asks fundamental questions about theological method from a different angle. In an article entitled “Theology: What is It? Who does It? How is It Done?” ²⁵ he criticizes the theological establishment for its stubborn elitism. Most of the theologians, Protestant and Catholic, who have had such a heavy influence on American theology have been, almost by definition, members of the upper-middle class. The elitism is understandable, says Cox, given that the minimal conditions for doing theology include the ability to read and write, familiarity with the received tradition of concepts and categories, sufficient leisure time to think, and the power to get one’s ideas published. Are theologians prepared to take the next step, he asks, beyond the self-critical awareness we now have of how the rhetorical conventions and cultural symbols shape even a period’s most original theology, to a recognition of how the pervasive ideology of the dominant class influences the theology it produces? Indeed, because of the class position of those who write it, most theology is freighted with an overload of the dominant class ideology.

Cox’s 1980 article, like some of his other writings, was influenced by the burgeoning liberation theology movement. A formative event of that movement, the 1968 meeting of the Conference of Catholic Bishops (CELAM) in Medellin, Colombia, changed the methodological paradigm. Three items about that shift are worth noting. First, whereas previous ecclesiastical meetings had canonical representation (delegates from each ecclesiastical region), the Medellin table included pastoral representatives, most of whom lived among those who were poor and marginalized. In addition, rather than bringing pronouncements from Rome, this event began with an analysis of the issues that arose from the grassroots. The change represented a shift from a perspective that was dogmatic, deductive, and top-to-bottom to one that was bottom-to-top, inductive, and exploratory. Second, they brought to the discipline of ideologically-based Western theology an alternative critique from Marxist thought. That analysis yielded a theological premise that has had an enormous impact on present theological thinking: “God’s preferential option for the poor.” Third, there is no such thing as the “theology.” All theologies, including the classical theologies that were once considered normative by those in power, are contextual. What we have learned as theology is properly called “North Atlantic theology.” Today, we can only talk about contextual theologies: feminist, black, Asian, Latin American, Dalit, and others.

What the Latin American theologians did is utterly commendable. Yet, it is inadequate. As long as the theological table has only professional Christian theologians, largely middle class and Western-trained, the question remains inadequately addressed. Expanding the table to include pastoral representatives did enable significant breakthroughs in theological methodology. Yet, people at the grassroots were themselves not present. The life experience of those who are poor had to be sifted through the mental sieves of priests and theologians, whose thinking was captive to Western academic categories and Marxist analysis—disciplines not indigenous to people at the margins.

It may also seem reasonable that only Christian theologians sit at a Christian theological table. The CELAM Department of Ecumenism, located in Buenos Aires, which had strong relationships with the Jewish community in Argentina, invited Jews to be observers. Yet, being observers meant they could not significantly impact the outcomes of the conference. For not adequately engaging participants from other religious traditions, liberation theology has come under severe criticism from two important sources.

The first came from Asia, whose main proponent, Sri Lankan Jesuit theologian Aloysius Pieris, faults the Medellin paradigm for its captivity to ideology and inattention to Asian, particularly Buddhist, spirituality. ²⁶ The Church uses two models for alleviating poverty in Asia: the Western development model, a “continuation of the missiology of conquest and power that dominated the church yesterday;” and the Latin American praxis model that lacks a perceptive understanding of the religious ethos of the East. Regrettably, both models are inadequate. Poverty, Pieris reminds us, has a positive role in Eastern religions and in the Western monastic traditions. Indeed, “voluntary poverty has acted as a ‘spiritual antidote’ against the forces of mammon. In the lives of leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, ‘opted poverty’ served also as a ‘political strategy’ against mammonic powers that subjugated the masses through oppressive systems.” ²⁷ Where these Western models foster the enslaving pursuit of “freedom from poverty,” an Asian model tempers it with its value of “freedom that comes from poverty.”

Asian theology must undergo a double baptism, in the Jordan of Asian religion, and in the cross of Asian poverty, Pieris asserts. At that point, Asian Christianity will find itself open in new ways to participate with other religious communities. Participatory theology, which according to Pieris is a particularly Asian virtue, must include at the theological table both scholars of different religious traditions and those who are poor.

The second criticism comes from Jewish scholars. They critique liberation theology for appropriating the foundational Jewish narrative of the Exodus into a theological structure that leads to a conclusion diametrically opposed to where the Jewish narrative leads. In her The Misunderstood Jew, Amy-Jill Levine sharpens this critique. ²⁸ She points out how liberation theologians routinely use anti-Jewish rhetoric. In addition to needing Jesus the liberator, liberation theology needs an oppressor, she writes, which ends up not being Roman imperialism or colonialism, but Pharisaism, the Jewish priesthood, or, more often, just “Judaism” itself—its laws, beliefs, traditions, and practices. This, she claims, results from Western academic scholarship and comes to Latin America and other parts of the world as a colonial product, where other liberation theologies pick up the same strand. Although I disagree with much of Levine’s criticisms of prominent liberation theologians, publishing houses, and ecumenical organizations, the critique above is both valid and necessary.

My point is simply this: when liberation theologians began their work, they missed recognizing their anti-Jewish bias, just as they missed the anti-mammonic (i.e., anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist) perspective that might have been offered by Buddhists. There were no Buddhists or Jews present at that theological table who could have alerted them to these deficiencies. Notwithstanding, there is no reason to assume that liberation theology would have lost any of its prophetic edge by engaging these religious leaders and scholars.

For many decades now, Christians have engaged colleagues of other religious traditions in interreligious dialogue. We have built relationships, learned from each other, and engaged in many valuable initiatives. We have learned to be critical of the other and critical of ourselves in the presence of the other. At our best, interreligious dialogue has tested, sharpened, and refined our theologies and ourselves. This, however, is not enough. We have now come to a stage when we must engage each other in the most serious conversation in which our religious communities engage: the theological table. It is not a discussion in which participants tinker at the edges of their theological structures, trying to protect elements they deem non-negotiable. Rather, it is a table fully open to self-critical evaluation of our own theological traditions, deep listening, learning from others’ theological insights, and working together to address the contextual needs of our communities.

These benefits are what Ariarajah calls for in his Jerusalem II. This time they should not be announced by a Church council but propelled by collaborative theological exchange.