Dialogue sews seeds of peace

Making friends requires work

When I first floated the idea of an interreligious conversation at my church, the responses were mixed. The skeptics were not to be blamed. For them, interreligious cooperation was about working together to meet needs in the community, like staffing a food pantry or putting on a holiday parade. The benefits of dialogue were not as obvious. My attempt at an answer is that when we take the time to understand another’s traditions, we often find points of connection that sustain relationships of mutuality and eliminate the worst effects of ignorance. But building friendships through dialogue on a local level takes work and a methodical approach.

Former Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm and Dean of Harvard Divinity School, Krister Stendahl, lived by three rules for interreligious dialogue that I have found to yield wonderful fruits. First, when you educate yourself about another religion, strive to ask its adherents, not its enemies. Second, don’t compare your best to their worst. Finally, leave room for holy envy. This last rule deserves some elaboration by way of a personal experience.

My first job teaching history out of graduate school was a one-year stint at the beautiful Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind. After I arrived, the college assigned me an experienced faculty mentor who also happened to be a nun. Sister Eva was an exceptionally kind mentor, and I enjoyed learning about her religious order and her rich life. As the academic year came to an end and my family prepared to leave Indiana for Arkansas, Eva invited us to her small apartment in the convent for a final farewell. Eva served us dessert and gave our children a book of poetry while my wife and I feverishly followed the kids around to keep them from breaking all the finery in the place. As we prepared to leave, Sister Eva offered to bless us. Making the sign of the cross on each of our foreheads, she uttered a blessing of peace and protection. I was deeply moved. Today, in my church, women do not bless other men in physical rituals and to have this woman bless us so produced in me holy envy. I felt a sincere appreciation for how another lives and practices religion as an expression of the fundamental moral of love.

Let’s not be naive and consider all religions to be one. Papering over key differences only reproduces ignorance and harmful overgeneralizations. What I have found is that when we strike the right tone in our dialogue and develop what Pope Francis calls a “culture of encounter” we usually find similarities that allow us to build real community between communities. And given the troubling social and political trends in our country, we desperately need to cultivate mutual understanding and sow the seeds of peace.