Why Is Interfaith Dialogue So Important?

Religions teach the value of human life, and they provide meaning for it. Religious people are an interesting bunch. Some of them like the Red Sox. Some have a Rochester accent. Some are avid gardeners. Some come from secular households. Some are Republicans. Some are Lord of the Rings fans. Some are left-handed. Some have never questioned their sexual orientation. Some are war veterans. Some are divorced. I think you get the idea. There is more to religious people than their beliefs, and when you call upon a religious person, you’re getting all of that person, from her allergies to the allegories she uses to understand the world around her. Because each person understands her world uniquely based on her teachings emphasized by her experiences, there tend to be disagreements.

Disagreements are a little like plastic bags. If we’re acting like infants, we can suffocate in our disagreements when we insist that there is room for just one right view and we all fight over it. If instead we utilize our disagreements to carry forth multiple perspectives, we find that our differences are a source of strength.

Does that sound hokey to you? I admit I had a difficult time fully believing “diversity is strength.” I wanted to believe it, but if you’re a teacher and you catch the end of a fist fight between two of your students, and you get a diversity of viewpoints about what happened, how does that put you in a position of strength if each story contradicts the others?

It took me a long time to understand that I’m engrained or socialized to search for one truth, and by default, anything that contradicts that truth is false. But reality is not that simple. There isn’t an all-encompassing right and wrong, true and false, good and bad. In the case of the fist fight, what if none of the accounts is accurate? Your diverse stories each have some truth in them. Your strength comes from sifting the stories and weighing out a possible reality.

Extrapolating from this example, I find it easier to believe that this country has a lot of potential because it is the home of individuals with extremely diverse experiences and backgrounds. We face so much social inequality, and our values and socio-economic landscape won’t stop shifting! Instead of assuming there’s one right or best way to attack a problem, if we recognize that different methods work better in different regions, we’ll need the diversity of experiences our people have cultivated.

I recently started to understand another reason to appreciate differences and disagreements. Two nights ago, I was delighted to talk with a Chautauquan who explained to me that real interfaith dialogue (where we don’t just agree on everything) helps us to solidify our positions on our beliefs. People who believe the same things as us don’t need to ask us to explain our beliefs, and it’s really when we articulate what we believe and our reasoning or understanding for it that we learn more about ourselves. So we need people with different beliefs who respectfully challenge, listen, and share experiences with us.

The beauty of interfaith dialogue starts when we make a commitment to respect our dialogue partner and listen with an open mind when we would rather ‘gift’ our partner with our own experiences. The importance of interfaith dialogue stems from our rapidly changing world. I have access to a small slice of the reality of the world. By engaging in respectful, open dialogue, my understanding of reality is both solidified and questioned. If I keep in mind that reality is more complex than I can understand, then I can accept apparent contradictions that may one day seem straightforward. That’s useful if I’m interested in understanding the world as it is, possibly so I can engage with it in a smarter way. I try to keep in mind that I’ll always have biases, only a few of which I may be aware.

My new mantra is that if I disagree with you, I’ll try to remember that we both may be wrong and right. If I treat you with dignity, I’d like to think I’m not too wrong. Note to self: make mantra catchier.