Extra Leaves for the Family Table: Resources for Interreligious Conversation

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2006 by Wyatt, Michael

Gleanings: Readings at the Intersection of Culture and Faith

Extra Leaves for the Family Table: Resources for Interreligious Conversation

Books Discussed

Not Without My Neighbor: Issues in lntcrfaith Relations. By Wesley S. Ariarajah. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1999. 130 pp. $9.95 (paper).

Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding. By Mary C. Boys. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. vi 393 pp. $29.95 (paper).

A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation. By Diana L. Eck. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. xx 404 pp. $17.95 (paper).

Living Religions. 5th ed. By Mary Pat Fisher. Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 2003. 512 pp. $73.80 (paper).

Daughters of Abraham: Feminist Thought in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Edited by Yvonne Yazbek Haddad and John Esposito. Gainesville, FIa.: University Press of Florida, 2001. xiii 162 pp. $59.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World. Bv Michael Ingham. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1997. 167 pp. CDN$18.95 (paper).

The Road Ahead: A Christian-Muslim Dialogue: A Record of the Seminar "Building Bridges" Held at Lambeth Palace, 17-18 January 2002. Edited by Michael Ipgrave. London: Church House Publishing, 2002; New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2004. xviii 142 pp. £9.95 / $20.00 (paper).

The Dialogical Imperative: A Christian Reflection on Interfaith Encounter. By David Lochhead. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988. viii 104 pp. o.p.

Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource for Jews and Christians. Edited by David Fox Sandmel, Rosann M. Catalane, and Christopher M. Leighton. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2001. xii 219pp. $25.00 (cloth).

This article is a reflection on interreligious conversation and a review of a selection of books recently recommended as aids for that process. The texts are from a list developed by the Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Episcopal Church. Our guide in the reflection is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who in the years since his installation has given a number of public talks on these matters. Those talks will provide the criteria upon which the texts will be evaluated.

It must be said at the outset that, particularly in the area of interreligious approaches and particularly after the events of September 11, 2001, fools will rush in where angels, djinns, and emanations have feared to tread-or are even forbidden to tread. Little can ever be accomplished in this arena if the goal is solely self-serving reassurance. No doubt one of the fundamental rearrangements of consciousness in the affluent practitioners of American religion that took place that September day was the new notion that what you don't know can indeed hurt you. In the aftermath, Christian curiosity about other religions-particularly Islam-achieved intensities unparalleled since 1893 and the first Parliament of the World's Religions.

However, while fear may have fanned the urgency, it cannot be the foundation for interreligious work. Fear flares up when survival is at stake, and survival is concerned only with those aspects of ourselves which we find undefended and therefore perceive as threatened. Under such conditions, our interest in the conversation will concern only those matters about which we feel insecure in either religion: the presumed meekness of Christianity or the purported militancy of Islam, in both cases caricatures. The desire for reassurance is in fact a desire to be done and go on our way; we want to know enough to satisfy ourselves that the threatening shape was a passing shadow. Entangled in our anxieties, we will fail to examine, appraise, and appreciate those aspects of either faith that bring joy and confidence and hope-aspects which might, in fact, attract our partners in the conversation. In other words, we will miss the comprehensive, the quotidian, the carnal, all those things that make a religion a seasonal and sensory and self-sustaining way of life.

Obviously, displaying with legitimate pride the elements of our religion that evoke our allegiance can swing us towards the other end of the spectrum-equally deadly in genuine interreligious conversation. Here, conversion presents itself as the mandate for the encounter. Of course, as one's conviction of the lightness of ones revelation grows stronger, ones resistance to making interfaith encounters a call to conversion grows weaker. Among mainstream Christians, diffidence is the more likely tone of the conversation. Given our erroneous cultural presupposition that understanding implies consent, we politely make ourselves incomprehensible to those we hope not to embarrass with decision. This also will not do.

So it is important, in assessing any materials on interfaith encounter, to determine first how and why we enter into those conversations. Only then can we discern what will serve and support the efforts that can only hope to be successful to the extent that they are shared. For the purposes of this article, then, I will lay out in an initial and tentative way one answer to those questions by looking at Archbishop Williams s speeches, before commenting on the listed books.