An Anglican theology of inter faith relations
A Review by David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
5/20/2009
The new mantra of pan-Anglican ecumenism is inter-faith dialogue.
It is not a concept that invites martyrdom.
Inter-faith dialogue denies exceptionalism or, to put it in more ordinary terms, uniqueness.
Here the Christian Faith is portrayed as one religion among many. Christianity, a religion to be honored and recognized for its inherent goodness, must, however, be seen and put alongside all the other religions of the world on an equal footing in a now religiously pluralistic world.
A new booklet "Generous Love", which has the imprimatur and endorsement of the Archbishop of Canterbury, invites us to sup at the table of other religions in a non-confrontational, "listening" mode that does not invite conversion but compliance.
We are to be a "presence" and a "sign" but proclamation is not on the table.
"We will channel our energies into connection, communication and reconciliation with other faith groups as we open ourselves to the energy of the Spirit," reads the booklet.
At no time in the 18-page booklet are we invited to evangelize our neighbor who is now known as the "other." The word is nowhere to be found in the document.
We are told that our pressing need (as Anglicans) is to renew our relationships with people of different faiths. "This is expressed in sending and being sent by the Father of the Son and the Spirit....In our meeting with people of different faiths, we are called to mirror, however imperfectly, this dynamic of sending and abiding. So our encounters lead us deeper into the very heart of God and strengthen our resolve for inter faith engagement."
This is hardly in the spirit of Jesus or St. Paul.
New Testament proclamation calls us to go out into the world and preach the gospel making disciples of all nations and that includes Hindus, Buddhists, Animists and followers of Islam. It may even involve the laying down of one's life for the sake of the gospel, if called upon.
When Jesus told his disciples they might encounter resistance to His message, he invited them to wipe the dust off of their feet and go into the next town.
Under inter-faith dialogue rules that would be unacceptable. One is called to sit at the feet of those who know not the Lord and dialogue with their religion in order that we come to a better understanding of whatever it is out there in the cosmos that deserves our attention.
Interfaith dialogue would take St. Paul off Mars Hill and have him heading to a Greek bar for ouzo and "dialogue" on the god of the day. No pressure, no sweat and definitely no conversion to "the one true and living God", putting the "unknown God" in the category of known.
But then we must dismiss Jesus as Lord, Savior, Redeemer, Prophet, Priest, King, the Mighty One, Prince of Peace, et al.
Interfaith demands that we be an example to other religions even in our flawed (Christian) state. Because of our flawed state, we cannot and should not be telling others the Good News of God's salvation because we may live it so badly.
One is tempted to remind interfaith dialoguers that God has called the weak and foolish things of this world to confound the wisdom of the wise. Furthermore, God hasn't anything to work with other than with sinners who constantly are in need of his grace.
Our imperfections do not negate the truth of the gospel. They only heighten the necessity for grace to intervene.
In one section, we are invited to sit down with Hindus and regard their polytheistic religion as profoundly humbling, "Recognizing the spiritual profundity of parts of the Hindu Scriptures, we can ponder how often we collude with a distorted views of the other if we dismiss Hinduism as merely polytheistic idolatry." If that is the case, why did scores of Christian (mostly British Anglican) missionaries go to India to present the gospel to Hindus worshiping thousands of Hindu gods and invite them to be liberated from their spiritual darkness and to move into the light of the one true living God revealed in Jesus in whom all the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily.
It is interesting to note that the final section (8) of the booklet ends with "Sending and Abiding", not with proclamation and Good News for Modern Men and Women. This booklet nullifies the need for the cosmic Christ who stands over all history and the universe itself. St Paul writes, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities---all things were created through him and for hi, And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together...and through him to reconcile to himself all things...by the blood of his cross."
That is not the message of inter-faith. It is the message of the one truth faith.
That we are called to be witnesses of the gospel also means we are to be witnesses to the gospel and its salvific message. To do less than that is to sacrifice the message we are called to proclaim "to the Jew first..." and then to Gentiles, a message without which we are all lost.
END
Relating to other religions - Rowan Williams
By Frederick Quinn,
May 20, 2009
[Episcopal News Service]
Episcopalians increasingly back into the question of how Christianity should relate to other religions. An African-American woman priest claims dual membership in Islam and Christianity. A bishop-elect draws on the richness of Buddhist spirituality in his prayer life.
This is not new. The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, introduced the spirituality of Eastern religions to mainstream America in the 1960s and his books have been bestsellers ever since.
It will come as a surprise to some that in 1990, a British academic theologian named Rowan Williams, now the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote comprehensively on the "Trinity and Pluralism" in a 1990 volume called "Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered," edited by Gavin D'Costa, a Roman Catholic theologian of world religions.
The Williams article was in part a book review of Raimon Panikkar's "The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man." Panikkar, who spent many years in India as a Roman Catholic priest, is best known for his observation on his faith journey: "I 'left' as a Christian, 'found' myself a Hindu and 'return' a Buddhist, without having ceased to be a Christian."
A lively, expansive, intellectually inviting quality pervades the Williams essay, characteristic of his writings before he was elevated to his present post. His trinitarian vision is not frozen in time, but represents a steady unfolding of the fullness of Christ, always being discovered, and not locked into any conceptual pattern that reduces the full worth of other religions. Final knowledge of the Trinity's mystery "can never be seized as a single object to a single mind" and interfaith encounter should lead to concrete working together in ways "which does not involve the triumph of one theory or one institution or one culture."
Christians can invite people of other faiths to find in the life story and witness of Jesus and his community a way of unifying the diverse range of human struggles for integrity, without denying the uniqueness of other historical religions, he wrote.
Williams added, "we do not, as Christians, set the goal of including the entire human race in a single religious institution, nor do we claim that we possess all authentic religious insight." A constantly unfolding understanding of the Trinity is anchored in Christian tradition (the logos, or the word made flesh through Jesus) yet accepts constant change (through the spirit).
The living Trinity's action is neither exhaustive nor exclusive, but is grounded in "a hopeful and creative pluralism, its affirmation of the irreducible importance of history, of human difference and human converse." Most striking of all, for those who have watched the unfolding of central Anglican pronouncements of the last several years, is the Welsh cleric's conclusion.
If the object of dialogue is the discovery of how the Christian can intelligibly and constructively unite with the Buddhist or Muslim in the construction of the community of God's children, rather than arriving at an agreed statement, a religious meta-theory, or (worst of all) a single institution with a single administrative hierarchy, there is no contradiction in a "Trinitarian pluralism."
Williams writes glowingly of "the existence of a new people of the covenant (a people existing because of God's promise to be their ally), a new unit in which the process of the shared creation of free persons, adult children of God, could go forward." Williams specifically cites "the covenant sacrifice of the cross and resurrection," not the leaden document now bumping its way about the shallows between the so-called "Instruments of Unity" of recent origin.
The Williams essay is amazingly fresh, though written nearly a decade ago, and in a different setting from current controversies rippling through the Anglican Communion. Grounded in classical Christian thought, it reflects a generous orthodoxy, and sensitivity to some of the most combustible issues raised in present interfaith debates. It serves as a timely reference for those exploring the present, swiftly evolving interfaith encounter.
---The Rev. Frederick Quinn is an Episcopal priest, former chaplain at Washington National Cathedral, and author of "The Sum of All Heresies: the Image of Islam in Western Thought."
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