Foundation for Religious Diplomacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
What I really like about FRD is its commitment not to ecumenism, and not even merely to interfaith dialogue, but to what its founder, my friend Randy Paul, calls \u201crespectful contestation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been involved, over the years, in numerous interfaith dialogues. \u00a0Two that stand out in my memory, not altogether positively, took place Graz, Austria, in 1993, and in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1994.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
They were billed as \u201ctrialogues\u201d between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was very impressed with the Jewish and Muslim participants, but rather less so with some of the Christians, who seemed to me to believe little or nothing and certainly little or nothing that was distinctively Christian.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was very easy for such Christians to reach agreement with their Jewish and Muslim interlocutors, but also, or so it seemed from my perspective, essentially pointless. \u00a0They didn\u2019t represent anybody but themselves, and their concessions and understandings would carry no weight whatever with the communities they purportedly represented. \u00a0(One or two of the Jewish and Muslim participants grew visibly frustrated with the talks as they went on, for precisely those reasons.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I recall one evening presentation given in Graz to the general community by one of the participants in our small daytime discussions, a very prominent theologian from Harvard.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had, it seemed, once been a believer, but it was difficult by this point to discern what kind of faith, if any, he still had. \u00a0And during his evening lecture, which was intended to serve as a peace offering or olive branch to the Austrian-resident Muslims in his audience, whom he obviously presumed to be offended by Christian belief, he essentially abandoned and apologized for every distinctive tenet of Christianity.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
He plainly thought that they would be won over by his preemptive surrender, but they weren\u2019t at all. \u00a0In fact, they were very upset with him. \u00a0During the question-and-answer session that followed his remarks, he received several stern tongue-lashings from leaders of the Muslim community in that part of Austria \u2014 businesspeople mostly, not trained theologians or imams \u2014 admonishing him on what they saw as his disrespect for revelation, for God, and for Jesus.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was, actually, a very painful evening, but not even slightly surprising to me. \u00a0I knew that they wouldn\u2019t warm up to his essentially agnostic take on the three Abrahamic religions.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also recall having to defend the Pope on several occasions during the meetings in Jerusalem, against attacks from two of the Catholic representatives in the \u201ctrialogue.\u201d \u00a0And, at the conclusion of those meetings, when I suggested that it would be very good, in the future, to include one or two academically-sophisticated Protestant conservatives among our number \u2014 I wanted to say \u201c<\/em>actual Christian believers\u201d<\/i> \u2014 one of those Catholics guffawed at the idea: \u00a0\u201cIntelligent Evangelicals?\u201d he snorted. \u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s like a square circle.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, FRD proceeds on the assumption that what\u2019s really needed is to get the most committed members of various religious communities \u2014 including secularists and atheists \u2014 to converse respectfully with each other. \u00a0Not as if their respective faith claims don\u2019t matter, but precisely because they do<\/i>. \u00a0This is obviously more difficult than getting the most liberal members of the various communities to talk among themselves, but the results, if such discussions are successful in creating better mutual understanding and good will, are almost certain to be far, far more significant.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Aswan, Egypt<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 In that context, I want to mention an extraordinary organization with which\u00a0I\u2019m somewhat involved, called the\u00a0Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. \u00a0 What I really like about FRD is its commitment not to ecumenism, and not even merely to interfaith dialogue, but to what its founder, my friend Randy Paul, calls \u201crespectful contestation.\u201d \u00a0 I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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