Chautauqua Day 6 - boring dialogue

I have to be honest, I did not attend as many lectures this day. Partly I wanted to give more time to my dissertation (almost done with my chapter 2 rewrite!) and partly I was getting tired of what seemed to be the same lecture given in different ways again and again. It was like the week after Thanksgiving - you can only do so much with turkey, and eventually it gets boring. The bulk of the content yesterday was on Muslim, Jewish and Christian relations. This is something I'm all for, but the presentations are just getting pat and boring. Yes, we need to engage in dialogue. Yes we all have somethings that we can all agree upon. Yes, we are all descendants of Abraham. Love is important. Yawn.

Wouldn't it be interesting instead of talking about what makes us all the same to look at what makes us different. Not just the surface things (Jesus vs. Mohamed) but the deeper values we hold to, the expectations that we ascribe to and the assumptions that we may have about life. For example, do Muslims ascribe to the something similar to the Protestant Work Ethic (thanks, Weber!), specifically one's understanding of grace and providence, or is their a different understanding of work? What is the purpose of the church in the community? What is the role of the family? What about sin, or whatever word you might have for that. I think it would be fun to try to really find those places where people really differ and look at the differences closely.

Some may say that such an approach would only widen the gap between Christians, Muslims and Jew, but I would not be so quick to agree. I don't think we are trying to create one super-religion combined of all three (a religious Voltron of sorts), but are trying to increase the level of understanding. I think if we have a greater understanding and respect for the differences then we have much more to work with. So long live the differences.

Just a plug, J.A. DiNoia writes about religious dialogue in his work, The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective. It has been a while since I have read it, but I believe he advocates dialogue starting with salvation, i.e. what does it mean to be saved. He stresses we should consider the differences and then continue the comparison from there. One's life, DiNoia states, is fueled by one's understanding of salvation.