Challenges in interreligious dialogs

Challenges in interreligious dialogs

By B.S. Mardiatmadja

The following is an excerpt of a paper to be delivered next
week at a seminar in Oegstgeest, the Netherlands. The seminar,
Religious Plurality and Nationalism in Indonesia, is organized by
the Netherlands chapter of the Association of Indonesian Moslem
Intellectuals. This is the first of two articles.

JAKARTA (JP): The essence of dialog among people of different
beliefs is identical to the essence of dialog on the core element
of development of a national vision.

Why? Because a national vision is the way a nation looks at
its future and how to reach that future.

And this is exactly the main essence of democracy. In
principle, democracy supports the freedom, equality and
fraternity of citizens.

One person is equal to another simply because of their basic
humanity. One's religious, racial or caste identity becomes
secondary in relation to one's fundamental rights and freedoms.

A community may have an ideology it claims to be independent
of any religious affiliation but the reality may not be so.

This tension between reality and ideology provides an
incentive to reform or transform the facts in order to conform to
the ideology.

There are at least four obstacles to a dialog: prejudice,
secularism, fundamentalism and communalism.

Prejudice often has its roots in ignorance. Many of us are
accustomed to living in a community that is highly
compartmentalized.

This means that as a member of a religion's community, many of
us are living in a world of more or less our own.

We are often ignorant of the beliefs and practices of other
people. The void left by ignorance is filled by prejudice. This
may be transmitted from generation to generation.

Another person's faith is simply regarded as nonexistent and
there is no reason to have a relationship with that person. One
is ready to believe every rumor, and in Indonesia, there are a
lot of rumors.

Religious diversity is recognized, but it is not always
perceived in the same way by various adherents of religion.

Secularism may be manifested among some well-educated
Indonesians. Religion is often privatized, or else exploited as a
political tool.

Provided one is faithful to the law of the land, one is left
along to hold whatever belief one wishes.

The danger here is that deprived of its religious base, moral
principles in public life fall prey to self-interest, efficiency,
success, economic growth, profit motive and others.

Fundamentalism is a narrow affirmation of the truth of one's
beliefs. The others may not be considered insincere, but deluded.
No distinction is made between religion and morality, nor between
what is moral and what is legal.

A mild form of fundamentalism sees in religion the cementing
force between people and tries to promote a state religion. Many
religions have smaller groups of active fundamentalists.

They confuse religion and society and faith and polities too
quickly. A milder form of fundamentalism may show itself in a
self-sufficient attitude that has eyes only for what is lacking
in others.

God is perfect, but however perfect the object of our faith
may be, our own understanding, expression and practice of it is
culturally and historically conditioned and limited.

An awareness of such limitations would keep us more open to
receive as much as to give in the process of encounter.

A similar difficulty arises when religions do realize that
there are symbolic elements (analogical element) in all languages
about God (Wirtgenstein).

Ongoing reinterpretation to make the original memory relevant
to contemporary reality is necessary to make religion
historically pertinent.

Communalism believes that people who share the same religious
beliefs also share the same economic and political interests.
Hence, it seeks to turn the religious community into a political
power block.

While communalism may be also based on other factors like
race, language and others, religious communalism seems to be the
most dangerous, because it uses all the emotional power of faith,
which has an absolute character, to support its struggle for
political power.

It would be difficult to speak of a national community.
Communalism degrades religion, by making it a political tool.
Dialog is becoming more difficult.

If dialog is to be more than merely the casual, superficial
acknowledgement of others' views about God and the world, if it
is to be a real conversation (which is what dialog means), then
it cannot be among "the religions" but among the people of
various religious traditions. Dialog is essentially a personal as
well as a structural event. It is very complex.

But despite its complexity, antireligious dialog is the real
signature of our time.

Authenticity, truth and truthfulness have become the essential
elements for contemporary antireligious dialog.

Dialog is a human process to be honestly social. In many
official meetings in politics and economics, as well as in a lot
of religious communities, tactics and hidden agendas very often
determine the allegedly unbiased dialog atmosphere.

But it is authenticity that qualifies interreligious dialog as
personal encounters. Authenticity is understood here as "truth,
that is, honesty with oneself and others" and the interactive
depending of one's relationship to oneself, the world and God.

The writer is a Catholic priest and lecturer on philosophy at
the STF Driyarkara, Jakarta.