Have you ever wondered about folks whose religious faith is different from your own? Even if you don’t find yourself within a community of faith, it’s really important to think about this question.
Our world shrinks daily and part of that shrinkage brings every one of us into direct contact with people whose religious faith is every bit as strong as our own yet quite different in origin, expression and tradition. One of the creeds of my Christian faith proclaims, “We live in God’s world,” and, “We are not alone.” What a marvelous invitation to honor those with whom and from whom we may differ. Indeed, ours is a world of many faith communities, and hospitality toward the “religious other” is not a one-way alley but a broad and inviting community commons! We are NOT alone!
We are surrounded here at SMU by very engaging “religious others” from whom we can learn and with whom we can share depths of meaning. Have you ever attended a religious service in a tradition other than your own? Shared a seder with Jewish friends? Broken a Ramadan fast with Muslim friends in an evening “iftar”? Ever walked in a Rathayatra parade or delighted in the celebration of Diwalli with Hindu students? Shared prayers at the Jumah on Friday in the Student Center with the Muslim Student Association? Could you direct someone to a “wudu” on campus? SMU regularly offers each of these opportunities.
Have you discovered the almost-medieval ambiance of Episcopal Vespers in Perkins Chapel on Sunday evenings? Or with a friend stopped in at CRU or Wesley’s praise service on any Wednesday during term? These are each weekly events in the SMU religious life community, and everyone is welcome.
Have you stepped outside your comfort zone and shared a kirtan at the Vaishnava Temple and stayed for supper at Kalachandji’s or returned on Sunday evening for one of their weekly free “feasts”? Did you know there a world-class Zen Buddhist Center in East Dallas where many SMU community members meditate and retreat? Or just up Greenville Avenue, the other direction from the way folks typically trek, you’ll find the Central Dallas Mosque where many SMU Muslim students’ families worship. Do you know where Bahais gather in Dallas? Could you make your way to the exotic spires of the Morman Temple off Churchill Way? Perhaps you mixed and mingled with the SMU International community at the VCM/Chi Alpha/ISA Thanksgiving banquet and got a taste of no-strings hospitality extended to students from around the planet. The religious terrain of our university is anything but flat and uninteresting; it’s just as varied as Dallas!
Venturing beyond the familiar territory of one’s grounding faith can be a challenge best met when issues of religious life are front burner, right here in the university setting. You don’t need your religious studies professor to assign the journey. Just take it upon yourself to explore. Dallas is no longer the religious monolith that produced the moniker “buckle on the Bible Belt.” The last quarter century has brought to Dallas and to campus a rich diversity of cultures and religious traditions, each contributing a world of new religious understanding. Interfaith does not threaten grounded faith but adds to the vitality of owned faith. Our progenitors seemed to understand this centuries ago.
The first and second centuries of the Common Era tell of a wealth of experience in inter-faith interaction, dialogue and disputation. Those early years marked rejection of counter-cultural faith, in this case Christians, by already established religious traditions. The early Church wrestled with issues of inclusiveness and exclusivity at its core.
Seven years now into the 21st century, any sense of an organic unity in Christendom has long since disintegrated. Literally thousands of divisions mark Christianity today. Cacophonous voices shout their theologies across seemingly bridgeless chasms and spiritual gulfs. This diversity calls for careful listening and discernment.
It’s possible, however, even in an often dominantly triumphalist but changing religious culture such as our own, to locate oneself outside of an “exclusivist” frame of faith reference. Many SMU students and faculty have found faithful insight in religious experience more accurately described as “inclusive.” A few even locate themselves, after considerable reflection and soul-searching, within a “pluralist” view that affirms both respect and mindful tolerance for quests represented in theologies and faith perspectives outside their own.
My own experience of what I would name as God’s love, made real daily right on this campus and set squarely in my own Christian tradition, has been broadened by rich and varied textures of Divine Reality, God if you will, as reflected in the heritages and practices of different religious traditions. A decision at this point to remain open to the “religious other” offers us insight into the values, faith-validity and the integrity of religious perspectives other than our own. That openness is a conscious choice that does not negate or compromise the validity of our own theological heritages.
Such insights can be unsettling as well as liberating for when I understand deep down that God has created both me and my brother and sister who connects with God from an entirely different tradition, I am liberated from the need to change him or to convert her to my faith perspective. Moreover, I am liberated to claim my own faith and to seek to understand my friend’s faith without fear of having to convert to his or her perspective. Fear no longer dominates and the mutuality of respect liberates us to claim our own experiences while honoring – even celebrating – real differences. On the other hand, such new insight may find little acceptance in the circles of faith commonly shared by friends who have not gained such awareness or whose experience of “the religious other” remains dictated by more restrictive social and theological norms. Yes, there is risk.
Might both our faith experiences and the theological perspectives arising from them be validated in the risk of openness to others? Is it not a sign of God’s grace to be open and respectful of all God’s creation? That’s something to think about, isn’t it? I hold to that very possibility. It’s a thought – reflective, inquisitive, curious, sustained, critical and expansive – that merits consideration.
About the writer:
William M. Finnin, Jr., Th. D. is the Chaplain and Minister to the university. He can be reached at [email protected].
