Difference, Fundamentalism, and Dialogue: An Ethics of Hospitality

Pastor Kyle Wiersma Halverson, May 30, 2003

Presented to the Bloomington Muslim Dialog Group

Introduction

It’s a truism to acknowledge that we’re at a new point in history, a time when images and ideas from across the planet, can be sent or summoned with the click of a computer key.  Ideas proliferate, and ideologies, religions, and cultures compete in the global marketplace.  It’s an exciting time. But if it’s exciting, it’s also a difficult time, and occasionally frightening.  There’s a lot of extremism and violence in the world.  I’m not sure we’re very good at being in relationship across, or despite, the lines that separate us.

 Of course, the question of how we understand and demarcate those separating lines is complicated, and begs the question of identity.  Where do we locate identity?  Is it found in skin color? Culture? Religious practices? Class? Education? Nationalism? The music we listen to?  The food we eat? Of course, the answer is that we locate identity in all of the above, and many other sources – identity being a complex fabric with many strands. And this may explain, for example, why I might feel more comfortable talking with a Muslim doctoral student than a fundamentalist Christian preacher from Old Paths Baptist Church in Small world, Indiana; or why I might have more fun talking with a middle aged African American woman with radical politics than a white thirty-something corporate lawyer.  Still, the politics of identity is thorny, problematic, and complicated. 

 Setting the question of identity to the side, tonight I’d like to approach the issue from a different though related angle, through the lens of difference or otherness. It’s not clear to me exactly what makes something or someone different, or “other.” Nor is it clear, similarly, precisely what unity looks like. But the fact of difference is, I think, incontestable. If we don’t deal with difference, I’ll argue, unity or even friendship remains elusive.  There are many kinds of difference. Tonight I’m limiting my exploration to the issue of religious difference. 

 Clearly there are differences among and between the major global religions, though there are also similarities. And though tonight we’re focusing on difference between Islam and Christianity, I want to be clear that difference is the heart and soul of all relationship – from religious relationship (e.g., the differences between, say, Baptists and Lutherans, or Catholics and Greek Orthodox – or similarly the differences between the many different forms of Islam), to friendship, to family relations, to marriage.  Difference is not something to fear.  If there’s no difference there’s no relationship.  So this evening I’ll suggest that difference is something to honor and celebrate, rather than to fear and overcome. And ultimately I’ll suggest that difference is not a threat to unity and friendship, but rather that difference is the source of unity and friendship. 

 So tonight my agenda is fairly simple (though the issue is in fact complicated) – to briefly explore the issue of religious difference or otherness.  I’ll begin by sketching ways that people have often dealt with religious otherness, move on to examine the intense danger of religious fundamentalism (where the “other” becomes a source of contamination and anxiety), and finally using insights from within Christian theology suggest that difference creates unity and doesn’t threaten it. Please keep in mind that I speak directly out of my context as a Christian, and I will use my own theological tradition freely. No doubt there will be many points of contact between what I say as a Christian and Islam, but simply put I’m not knowledgeable enough about Islam to make the connections myself. So I invite you to help me make connections. I hope I’m not too abstract, and I invite you to ask questions and seek clarifications as needed.

Religious Difference, Religious Unity

 How have religious people, Christians specifically, historically dealt with difference or otherness? Typically otherness or difference has been seen as a problem to be overcome. So there has been a rush toward unity, because difference has been seen as negative and unity positive. 

Surely unity is good, and is something to strive for. 

Unity is also, however, a complicated term which we tend to oversimplify.  It is easy to load up the term unity with all sorts of baggage, to rush in where angels fear to tread, with suitcases full of jargon describing what unity is, what Christian or more broadly religious unity should be. Such scurrying often leads to disappointment, and sometimes to pain. So, I’d like to complexify things a little, to pause a moment so we can breath, to explore – very briefly -- some of the theological underpinnings of the word unity.

From within Christianity, the source of the drive for Christian unity, the energy behind the ecumenical movement, comes from Jesus’ prayer in the New Testament, in John 17.  “Father” Jesus prays, “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, just as we are one.”  Of course the “they” in the prayer probably refers to Christians. But many of us would be comfortable with expanding the referent, so that “they” refers to all humans and not just Christians.

How should we understand this prayer for unity?  Historically three primary possibilities have emerged: assimilating the other, yielding to the other, and synthesizing with the other.

Assimilating the other means that we overcome otherness or difference by subsuming it, by absorbing it into ourselves. When King Olav spread Christianity through my ancestral land, Norway, he placed the edge of a sword against people’s neck and said confess Christ or die. That’s a stark example of the assimilationist model that insists – not always by such explicit force – that the other come toward me. This of course is also the model by which, until recently at least, Christian missionaries spread their own religion to other cultures and regions. 

A second approach is to entirely yield to the other, losing one’s self into the other, allowing our own position to be subsumed into difference. This might manifest as a cheap and easy conversion – from Judaism to Christianity, say, or could look like the New Age devotee who spends a lot of time and money to become a Native America shaman, and leaves his own tradition behind.  On the other hand this might manifest as healthy conversion -- from unbelief to belief, say, or reversing the direction, from faith to atheism. The point is that one yields their position to the other, and converts by shifting one’s alliances from here to there. 

The third approach is the synthetic – where two positions are combined and joined, cutting here, pasting there. This approach might for example be useful in a dialog between Christians and Muslims, where we try to identify and celebrate areas of overlap and similarity. Of the three, the synthetic seems best – at first glance anyway. But in cutting and pasting – much of great value is lost – and as in genetic splicing, curious monsters emerge. And of course another danger is that we repress our differences – and with repression almost always there is later a return of the repressed, and the return is often aggressive and problematic. Our differences need to be out on the table.

A variation of the synthetic approach is the notion that all religions are essentially one.  This kind of view is only a couple of centuries old, and has its roots in the West in the Enlightenment and later in 19^th century liberalism. You’ll also see this manifestation in 1960’s liberal utopianism.  For a while, this was the paradigm underlying many religious studies departments – not really any more – though you can find contemporary examples in religious scholars such as Paul Knitter and John Hicks. The position is attractive, I guess, but it’s also very sentimental and ultimately untenable.  Religious, historical, and cultural particularities are ignored in the name of the deeper meanings behind the particular. Frankly I find this position rather offensive. Lakota Indians, for example, simply don’t believe the same thing as Buddhists. I don’t know if anyone has ever said to you something like this: We actually believe the same things, you just aren’t enlightened enough to know it yet. But it will come.  Somebody once said that to me. I admit I was annoyed. But this kind of approach is subtly present in many versions of anthropology and religious studies.  It’s also come under pretty severe attack and critique in recent years. 

Fundamentalism and Difference

 How does fundamentalism deal with difference, and how does it relate to the “other”?  Religious fundamentalism has tended toward the assimilationist model, where it insists that the other is subsumed into its own religious system. For some reason -- most likely fear of contamination -- otherness or difference threatens fundamentalism. So when assimilation fails, fundamentalism has sometimes expressed a willingness to eradicate the other through violence and war. This dangerous tendency is worth exploring.  It represents a dark side to religious belief. 

 At the outset, I want to say that I’m not that interested in the content of fundamentalist belief, as that content changes in different religious, historical, and cultural contexts. What I’m interested in is the structure of how fundamentalism relates to otherness.

 First it seems that fundamentalism needs otherness. A circle is drawn, and those inside the circle are insiders, while those on the other side of the line are outsiders.  When Jesus describes the final judgment in Matthew 25 he suggests that the world will be divided into the sheep and the goats – the sheep being those who make the cut and the goats the infidels. Certainly there are offensive implications in this text that perhaps careful reading and interpretation can dismantle.  However that may be, I suggest that religious fundamentalism thrives on and depends on this kind of binary opposition, on this kind of either-or.

Fundamentalism needs a stable opposition to operate, and is willing to damn the other to hell or death to reinforce the difference.

 This construction of insider/outsider or damned/saved is subtle, and depends on the construction and reinforcement of many rules and social mores. If you make the cut, if you obey the rules, you are initiated into the inner circle – where you too can find ways to reject those on the outside.

 What fascinates me is how threatened fundamentalism is by the other.  I’m not entirely sure I understand this anxiety. Could it be that fundamentalism needs the other for its own stability, and that very need causes resentment?  Surely that is part of the phenomena. But there is also fear of contamination, the unclean, and the outsider.  Perhaps the other represents that which cannot be controlled. 

 In the language of Paul Tillich, the great 20^th century protestant theologian, fundamentalism’s anxiety toward the other is the anxiety that heteronomy feels before autonomy and theonomy (sorry about these terms). A concrete example of this in the US is the anxiety white males felt and feel in the wake of the liberative 1960’s – when women and people of color began asserting their autonomy and freedom.  Society seemed stable to those in power, and anxiety erupts when social stability is threatened. 

 Another part of the phenomena of fundamentalism’s anxiety and violence toward the other is related to scapegoating. A Canadian Lutheran Theologian named Douglas John Hall describes the phenomena of scapegoating by suggesting that North Americans are deeply committed to a narrative of success and triumph over weakness and failure.  We are the people, Hall points out, who are committed to the story that we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Anything that contradicts this self-narrative is vehemently rejected; so much so that we will repress our own failings, weaknesses, and brokenness.  And then, in an act of Freudian abracadabra, we split-off and project. We split-off our own repressed brokenness, elect a social group for a scapegoat, and project our repressed sadness and brokenness onto the elected other. And of course the incredibly sad thing that happens then is that we demonize the other, and maybe go so far as to persecute and reject them. They represent our failings, after all, and we simply can’t face that. I think that North Americans engage in this scapegoating consistently but unconsciously: we seem to need “an enemy.” Further, we seem to elect different “others” to demonize at various times and in varying circumstances: inner city blacks, illegal aliens, whomever.  And of course in the wake of September 11, North Americans have demonized “terrorists” – unfortunately typically understood to be Muslims, though almost always Muslim fundamentalists. Incidentally, and as an aside, I believe there are many reasons to be hopeful: good people are doing creative things that counteract this tendency to demonize and scapegoat, and dialogue and friendship initiated by wonderful groups such as the Muslim Dialogue Group here in Bloomington are enormously effective counter influences.

The Cappadocian Contribution

 So far I’ve suggested that religious differences have been dealt with by trying to eradicate difference in the name of unity. I’ve suggested that the three typical models for overcoming difference are assimilationist, yielding, or synthesis.  I’ve also suggested that fundamentalism seeks to assimilate or even eradicate the other because of the anxiety otherness elicits, and that fear of contamination and scapegoating become ways – unhealthy ways – of dealing with the issue of religious difference and otherness. Fortunately, another way exists – one where unity is grounded in and dependent on difference.

 At this point I want to turn toward Christian theology to show that within our own traditions we can find gifts and treasures that allow new and creative re-conceptualizations of difference and unity. What I intend to use to this end comes out of Trinitarian theology – that branch of Christian theology that explores the question of how God can be conceived as both three and one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: three persons, one God – as the tradition puts it.  Of course this debate will be alien to many of you, and I certainly don’t expect you to embrace these ideas, nor would I even want you to.  I’m simply trying to suggest that a Christian theologian has access to notions from our tradition that might allow us to find ways to be better friends – even across the divide of religious difference and otherness. Basically I’m trying to say that I can remain absolutely committed to my own Christianity and still love and celebrate Islam – and particularly some of my new Muslim friends.  Let’s see if this works. 

 Let’s return to Jesus’ prayer in John 17. “Let them be one, just as we are one.” The key phrase is “just as” [kathos]. The unity of the Church, or broaden it and say the unity of humanity, is just as the unity of the father and the son. Just as the father and the son are one, so to are the people of God one.

How then are we to understand the unity of father and son? And here we step into some pretty deep theological water.  The first stepping stone is Nicea, the council that took place around 385 of the Common Era.

Sometimes in Christian churches, we together read a written document called the Nicean Creed, which was penned at the council. When Christians use the creed to confess our belief in one Lord, Jesus Christ we use the following phrase: Jesus is “of one Being with the Father;” or in another translation, of one substance with the Father. When the Nicean council decided to use this “one substance” phrase, or – in the original language the homoousia clause, it opened a can of worms that still wriggles and moves.  The council never really determined what it meant that the father and the son were of one substance.  And the theologians of the Church have been working on the problem ever since.

How is God’s nature united in three distinct persons – father, son, and Holy Spirit? Many answers have been offered – sometimes dazzlingly contradictory, most often helpful but incomplete.  For example, in the 3^rd century Athanasius said that God’s unity is some sort of substantial “stuff” that takes three forms – H₂O takes the forms of water, ice, and steam.  The Neoplatonists said that God’s oneness was God’s essence, and God became three in manifestation. For Tertullian God’s oneness was a unity of rule.  For Origen, God’s oneness was a unity of will.

Clearly we can’t do these distinctions justice here. But my intention is to point to the wide range of possible understandings of unity.

But I especially want to pause here and honor the Cappadocian contribution of the 5^th Century.  Cappadocia, as you undoubtedly know, is in the Anatolia region of southwestern Turkey. I haven’t been there, but I have seen pictures.  It’s a moonscape, with eerie bulging mounds like beehives, set in a high and arid desert region.  Under the hallucinogenic blue of the cappadocian sky emerge some very beautiful and helpful theological insights – for my money the most cogent and compelling for the situation at hand.  The Cappadocians, Basil of Caesuria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianazus, offer a radical solution. For them the names Father Son and Spirit represent ways that God is always being in relationship.  Trinitarian unity, for the Cappadocians, is based on an awareness of origins (being-from-one-another) and mutuality (being-for-another). Unity is relationship, and difference emerges in the midst of relationship through considering origin and goal – in other words, through telling stories about source and destiny.

I know this stuff is complicated.  I am sorry for this.  But the implications are important and helpful and perhaps even liberating. Here’s what it means.  We get to have unity by being in relationship.  Period. We don’t have to fix anything, or change things, or water down our traditions.  All we have to do is be in relationship.  And tell our stories. Our unity comes in relationship.  Our differences emerge through that same relationship.  In telling our stories, in reading each other’s histories, we become more radically different one from another. And that difference is a good thing, a cause for celebration, and a cause for unity and friendship. Religious difference is not to be overcome, or even merely tolerated.  Instead religious difference is something to honor and celebrate. 

Islam has its own rich and gorgeous history, its own traditions and resources, and undoubtedly its areas of difficulty and darkness.  The great gift you can give Christians is to share your religion with us – tell us your stories. And likewise the Christian church has its own rich and gorgeous history, its own traditions and resources, and definitely our own areas of difficulty and darkness.  Perhaps a gift we can give you is to tell you our stories.  We don’t have to give anything up or lose our identities.  We don’t have to cut and paste. Our desire for dialogue and friendship is on one level simply a summons to tell our stories one to another.  To speak and to listen.  And certainly to pray for one another. 

Religious Dialogue and Hospitality

 So how do we engage in religious dialogue?  Of course I am talking about dialogue between Christians and Muslims because that’s what we’re doing here tonight.   But I’m also talking about any religious dialogue where differences emerge. This includes, for me anyway, dialogues between and among different Christian groups.  I mean there’s a world of difference between me as Lutheran and a conservative Baptist. How do we talk to each other? 

 My suggestions here are only suggestions. If they are helpful, good. If not, that’s fine too. But I for my part would like to adhere to them because I think they create a climate of respect and openness.  How are we to talk?

 First I think 1) we need to get our differences out on the table. It’s a risk, but I think it’s worthwhile to speak out of the fullness of our tradition rather than appealing to some false and stripped down religiously neutered language because we are afraid of offending someone.  Hopefully we won’t offend others, but I think we need to be open to that risky possibility.  2)  We should look for areas of similarity, overlap, and obvious unity.  3) We should tell our stories.  4) We should listen closely and with open hearts and minds.  5) We should be absolutely willing to be persuaded by the other’s point of view. This may never be an issue, but I think that only by being open like this can we be free to share our own point of view and expect to be heard. 6) We should show hospitality one to another. The great model for this for me has been the hospitality Muslims showed Christians and Jews in the middle ages. You welcomed us and allowed a peaceful coexistence, exchanging ideas and thought, respecting the particularity of the other religious claims.  These stories have touched me and troubled me – especially given the lack of hospitality many Muslims have experienced over the last couple of years in America.  And of course you yourselves in this room have extended the same kind of hospitality, to perhaps a smaller degree, through this Muslim Dialogue Group.  You have been incredibly gracious and warm and welcoming.  I trust and hope that we Christians can learn from you.

Thank you for the chance to share these thoughts with you. Some of them are undoubtedly odd and maybe too abstract.  Likely the problem lays in the presentation rather than the ideas themselves.  At any rate: thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure being here with you.

Bibliography

Hall, Douglas John, God and Human Suffering (Mpls, MN: Fortress Press).

Hick, John & Paul F. Knitter, eds., The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Thelogy of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989). 

Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, tr. Alphonsos Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univeristy Press, 1969).

Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1984). 

Ogletree, Thomas W., Hospitality to the Stranger: Dimensions of Moral Understanding (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). 

Placher, William C., Unapologetec Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louiville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1989).

Rahner, Karl, The Trinity

Zizioulas, John D., Being and Communion (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press).