The Need for More Intrafaith Dialogue

Moderate and liberal Christians have increasingly emphasized the importance of interfaith dialogue. Locally, the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council was formed in 1989 by Vern Barnet (who, I am happy to say, is a Thinking Friend and regular reader of this blog).

“To develop deeper understanding within the community of each other’s faiths and traditions, and to foster appropriate bilateral and multilateral interfaith dialogue and interaction” is the first goal the GKCIC presents on their website.

Here is the second of their five goals: “To model spiritual and religious values, especially mutual respect and cooperation, in a society often intolerant of cultural and religious diversity.”

These are good goals, ones that would be shared by most groups and individuals who work for interfaith dialogue anywhere.

EthicsDaily.com is a division of the Baptist Center for Ethics, an organization founded in 1991 by Robert Parham. BCE launched EthicsDaily.com in 2002 and posts news, columns, editorials and other content each weekday.

(I am also happy to say that from time to time EthicsDaily.com posts my slightly revised blog articles, the last one being on March 29 as you can see here.)

On January 5, BCE Executive Director Parham posted “Prioritize Interfaith Engagement in 2016—The Baptist Way” on EthicsDaily.com. It is a good article, and anyone interested in interfaith dialogue would find it helpful, whether Baptist or not.

I am completely in favor of interfaith dialogue, especially in ways articulated by Parham in the article just cited. But I have come to think that there also needs to be m ore emphasis upon and concerted attempts at having intrafaith dialogue.

Conservative/fundamentalist Christians are not inclined toward having much dialogue of either type, for reasons I won’t go into here. Neither do moderate/liberal Christians seem to have much interest in having dialogue with the former. Some on both camps, sadly, often make denigrating and condescending remarks about those in the other camp.

Some liberal Christians, it seems, would much rather have dialogue with Buddhists and Muslims than with conservative/fundamentalist Christians. That is partly because dialogue with the former is mostly with well-educated, mild-mannered, tolerant people.

On the other hand, there is a stereotype that most conservatives/fundamentalists are ignorant, boisterous, and intolerant. Make no mistake about it: some of them are just that. But there are people exactly like that in other religions also.

All Buddhists and Muslims are not like the fine people in those religious camps who participate in the interfaith councils. But neither are all conservative Christians and evangelicals as ignorant and as intolerant as some we see in the public media.

There are, unquestionably, some conservative/evangelical Christians who are well-educated and good thinkers. Why shouldn’t moderate/liberal Christians be as willing to engage with them in dialogue as they are with those in non-Christian religions?

There are, of course, some examples of good intrafaith dialogue. I think, for example, of Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (1989) by David L. Edwards and John Stott as well as Clark Pinnock’s Crossfire: An Evangelical-Liberal Dialogue (1991).

Pinnock begins his book by writing, “The major division in modern theology is not between Catholics and Protestants anymore but between liberals and evangelicals.” And he goes on to say that “the polarization is often so extreme that it is rare for evangelicals and liberals to talk with each other, much less try to understand one another in a sympathetic way.”

That was 25 years ago, and the situation is probably worse now. So, isn’t there a crying need for more intrafaith dialogue? I, for one, certainly think so.