What’s In a Name? The Problem With Tolerance in Interfaith Settings

Part of my recent work has been taking a place as the lone Heathen in the NY Interfaith community. This is not surprising as I was ordained in 2000 as an interfaith minister and such reconciliation work has always been at least a minor part of what I do. It was overshadowed for a few years by the Work that Odin had me doing amongst my co-religionists but now the calling to be an active presence in the interfaith world seems to be stronger than ever. So, that being said, there are a few issues that I’m finding it a necessary to address:

It seems to me that there is an unconscious but deeply ingrained arrogance amongst many monotheists, an automatic assumption that their way is the default, the norm and that every other religious perspective is a deviation to be ‘tolerated.’ Over and over again amongst my well-meaning interfaith colleagues I’ve encountered subtle condescension because I am polytheist, and I’ve also encountered a very unpleasant type of pride, the type that puts up barriers against true communication, the type that proclaims one’s spiritual “goodness” and commitment to diversity even in the midst of the aforementioned yet always unspoken sense of spiritual superiority.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that tolerance has no place in interfaith work. Surprised? Well, allow me to elaborate. Tolerance is not respect. Tolerance presupposes that one holds the power to extend or withdraw it and as such only serves to reinforce established power-status quos. Tolerance is not acceptable. It is not acceptance. It is not respect. If we are doing interfaith work, then to be truly interfaith, there shouldn’t BE a norm. The default setting ought not to be monotheist, polytheist,  pantheist, atheist, or anything else. It ought to be open and fluid. The only default should be respect and a commitment toward working together to further respect without diminishing anyone’s faith.

Nor do I find a need to squelch individual differences. I and several other Pagan colleagues have long noticed a distaste and distrust in interfaith circles toward those who actually follow a specific, devoted religious path. One would think that commitment to one’s spirituality would be a good thing in someone involved in interfaith work but instead, such spiritual fervor (the lifeblood of any true faith) is condemned as being anti-diversity, or something less than true commitment to interfaith sentiments. Working in an interfaith setting doesn’t mean hiding who you are spiritually, or white-washing your connection to your Gods. It means that you acknowledge those places wherein there are differences, and meet on points of common ground, building working bridges around those points of confluence. Then celebrate it all together. The attempts, well meaning or not, to fit every religion into the same pattern, into a nice, happy, comfortable cookie-cutter framework is immensely shallow and does a disservice to all the religions involved. This type of attitude, well meaning though it might be can come out in the smallest places, for instance in how interfaith ministers choose to call Deity.

It took me a couple of years to figure out why I find the terms, so commonly used in interfaith work, “Mother-Father God,” “Spirit,” “Divine Being” so irritating. I chalked it up to the first two being disrespectful to the Gods, which, from a polytheistic perspective, they are since they do nothing to acknowledge the independent nature of the various Gods and Goddesses. I’ve found that a vague sort of pantheism permeates much of the interfaith community, usually manifesting in a blurry dualism. Pantheism is, to the hard polytheist, sloppy at best, disrespectful at worst. This is one of the conflicts that often arises even between hard polytheists and other Pagans, since to the polytheistic approach all Deities are not the same Deity — nor do They need to be. It was only recently, in an interfaith gathering, that I realized why “Divine Being” also annoys: it presupposes a singularity.

I think that those of us engaged in interfaith work need to come up with words for the Holy Ones that are fluid and flexible. As a fellow minister pointed out: we can’t expect everyone to rattle off a list of individual Deities, particularly if those Deities aren’t part of their own religious practice. Fair enough. We can however, find terms that are respectful and somewhat inclusive of both the polytheist and monotheist viewpoint. I use Holy Powers. It’s a literal translation of two terms: the Hebrew Elohim and the Norse Reginn. Deity is ok. At least to my mind, it conjures a feeling of immensity that could be one, two, five, ten thousand, etc. Someone suggested Beloved. I like that. But Mother-Father God? Which Female Deity? Which Male Deity. Can you be a bit more specific? Spirit???? WHICH ONE? That perhaps, is the most offensive term as it doesn’t even clearly, semantically presuppose Divinity. Divine Being? Again, which One and why only One?

Perhaps this is a call to my interfaith colleagues to reevaluate their ingrained assumptions, their ideas of what ought to be the norm and the way in which we interrelate with ourselves, with each other, and with the religions we’re seeking to honor. Let’s get on with it. There’s much needed work to be done.

(For a more nuanced understanding of my approach to “tolerance”, readers might be interested in the book “Love the Sin” by Ann Pellegrini and Janet Jakobson. This book completely transformed how I approach that particular word).

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