Interfaith Dialogue: An Existential Necessity for the Very
Survival of the Human Species
Jesuit and sociologist Rudolph Heredia’s article neatly
summarises the case for interfaith dialogue. Going beyond the all-too-common
tendency to see interfaith dialogue as a means to enable others to understand
and appreciate one’s own faith better (or even to convert to it), Heredia
stresses that dialogue is—or, rather, should be—a valuable means for each
dialogue partner to be spiritually enriched and to grow through encountering
and learning and benefitting from other religious traditions and their
adherents. Seen in this way, interfaith dialogue becomes a “mutually enriching
encounter”. For us to be able to be truly transformed by this encounter,
Heredia tells us, romanticizing our own religious traditions (and also refusing
to recognize that they might, in part, need to be rethought or revised—a
possibility that the dialogical encounter might provoke) is indefensible.
Heredia also adds that for dialogue to be more than people talking past each
other there must also be a realization that God or the Ultimate Reality is a
mystery that is far beyond human comprehension and that, therefore, no single
religion or other such worldview can contain or represent Him/Her/It in
His/Her/Its totality.
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