Sinn / Trice Religious Identity and Renewal in the Twenty-first Century

Jewish, Christian and Muslim Explorations
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-374-04596-9
Verlag: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 60, 216 Seiten

Reihe: LWF Documentation

Religions carry strong visions of renewal and thereby have the potential to trigger dynamics of change in all spheres of human life. Religions have contributed to societal transformation and processes of renewal spark intensive theological debates. The renewal of religious identity is informed by how religious communities interpret their traditions and past, present, and future challenges to themselves, society and the world at large. How do religious communities understand their own resources and criteria for renewal in the twenty-first century? In this publication, Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars analyze and reflect on the meaning and dynamics of religious renewal and explore the meaning of religious renewal across religious traditions. [Religiöse Identität und Erneuerung im 21. Jahrhundert. Untertitel: Jüdische, christliche und muslimische Perspektiven] Religionen haben klare Vorstellungen von Erneuerung und damit das Potential, in allen Sphären menschlichen Lebens Veränderungen einzuleiten. Religionen haben schon immer zu gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen beigetragen und Erneuerungsprozesse durch kontroverse theologische Debatten ausgelöst. Die Erneuerung religiösen Identität ist abhängig davon, wie religiöse Gemeinschaften ihre Traditionen und ihre gegenwärtigen und zukünftigen Herausforderungen für sich selbst, die Gesellschaft, in der sie leben, und die Welt als Ganzes interpretieren. Wo sehen religiöse Gemeinschaften ihre eigenen Ressourcen und welches sind die Kriterien für Erneuerungsprozesse im 21. Jahrhundert? In dieser Publikation analysieren reflektieren jüdische, christliche und muslimische Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler die Bedeutung und Dynamiken religiöser Erneuerung und untersuchen die Bedeutung religiöser Erneuerung in den verschiedenen religiösen Traditionen.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sinn, Simone

Trice, Michael Reid

Leseproben

CHALLENGES TO RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
John Borelli REMEMBERING AND THE FUTURE Inevitably for many not so young Catholics like myself when we focus our minds to what might be ahead of us in this twenty-first century regarding religious identity and renewal, we begin by recalling how we got to this point. Is not Confucius credited with giving encouragement to reinvigorate the past in order to know what is new?1 Thus, to consider the challenges to religious identity in an interreligious context, or specifically in an Abrahamic context, we begin by gaining inspiration from the past in order to recognize what may be ahead. I think this tendency is true for older Lutherans and older ecumenists from other churches as well. CONTEXTUALIZING THE DISCUSSION The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) came into being in 1947. It is currently engaged in a project on “Lutheran hermeneutics,” which its leadership hopes to bring to fruition in 2017. It seeks to strengthen the capacities of member churches to understand the Word of God that comes through Scripture as well as the Lutheran theological heritage and to renew both church and society. The LWF engages in ecumenical and interreligious work, and among its five major bilateral ecumenical dialogues is one with Catholics that will be fifty years old in 2017. The LWF also engages in a number of interfaith projects. TAKING OWNERSHIP If we leave any of this work of Christian unity or interfaith relations to the experts, then it never belongs to our communities and has little impact on how we speak of our identity as Christians, Jews or Muslims. This is the first challenge that I wish to put on the table. Reaching back into the past, I realize that I have been struggling with this for thirty-five years of public work in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Some complain, “When do we in the pews benefit from all this formal dialogue?” On the other hand, the leadership and many members of our communities too easily want to leave dialogue to the experts as something that is happening somewhere else and usually on the fringe of the life of their communities. The ELCA could not have effected its agreements on full communion without churchwide effort. We need to emphasize that dialogue is already happening all around us and to encourage discernment and reflection on these everyday efforts with regard to our faith. Since the common heritage of the Church with the synagogue is so great, this Holy Synod intends in every way to foster and commend mutual understanding and esteem, which is the fruit of theological studies and fraternal conversations [colloquia].5 The text was still only a preliminary one. The next public draft, the one up for its great debate in September 1964, was actually a freestanding declaration, separated from the eventual Decree on Ecumenism, entitled “On the Jews and on the Non-Christians,” and mentioning Muslims for the first time: In obedience to the love for our brother and sister, we ought to pay great attention to the opinions and teachings which although they differ from our own in many ways, contain nevertheless many rays of that Truth which enlightens everyone in this world. This applies above all to Muslims who adore the one God, personal and judge, and they stand close to us in a religious sense and they draw near to us with many expressions of human culture set before us. Note that neither conversations nor dialogue are mentioned specifically for relations with Muslims as would later be encouraged in the final draft. But, we can already observe how this draft, though it would pass through further transformations into a final, richer form, was a real beginning for Catholics in relations with Jews and Muslims. Other Christians have also commented most positively on the final document, which goes by its first two Latin words, Nostra aetate. Furthermore, it is worthy of remembrance that the union of the Jewish people with the Church is a part of Christian hope. With unshaken faith and deep longing, the Church awaits, in accordance with the Apostle’s teaching (cf. Rom. 11 : 25), the entry of this people into the fullness of the people of God, which is that fullness Christ has founded. May all, then, take care that whether in catechetical instruction and preaching on the Word of God or in daily conversation, the Jewish people is not represented as a rejected race, and that nothing is said or done that could alienate souls from the Jews. They should also guard against attributing what was done during Christ’s passion to the Jews of our own time. The second paragraph makes it look like Jews are to be tolerated only because Christians live by the hope that one day they will be one with the church. Rabbi Abraham Heschel identified the Christian hope as nothing less than the annihilation of Jews and spiritual fratricide. “I am ready to go to Auschwitz any time, if faced with the alternative of conversation or death,” he wrote.6 THREE ENDURING FALSE STARTS In my experience, there are three mistakes that we can make from the start when we take on questions of identity in a pluralistic context. First, we can emphasize the ideal rather than the lived. Ideals are good, giving us something to strive for, guiding our decision making and helping us to begin to understand someone else who belongs to another religious tradition than our own. None of our religious identities exists in the ideal realm but the lived realm. As Pope Francis responded initially to the question about his own identity, “I am first of all a sinner.”11 We too often compare ourselves ideally with the lived realities of someone else’s religious tradition. The last form of this mistake has caused immeasurable harm, and still does today, in the relations among Jews, Christians and Muslims. CHALLENGES Earlier I gave the first challenge, namely, convincing our co-religionists, our fellow Jews, Muslims and Christians, to join us in this enterprise because challenges to our self-identity arise in a healthy multi-religious context and that in such a context we construct our religious identity in dialogue with others. In the future, our religious identity will increasingly take our relationships with one another into account. Dialogue is not something for the experts. Dialogue is a feature of our identity. In the context of religious plurality, dialogue means “all positive and constructive interreligious relations with individuals and communities of other faiths which are directed at mutual understanding and enrichment,” in obedience to truth and respect for freedom.19 Here is the Baar Statement: “We see the plurality of religious traditions as both the result of the manifold ways in which God has related to peoples and nationals as well a manifestation of the richness and diversity of humankind.”20 Let me cite another passage from “Dialogue and Proclamation” that reveals what I think is the real tension at work in both texts: Interreligious dialogue does not merely aim at mutual understanding and friendly relations. It reaches a much deeper level, that of the spirit, where exchange and sharing consist in a mutual witness to one’s beliefs and a common exploration of one’s respective religious convictions. In dialogue, Christians and others are invited to deepen their religious commitment, to respond with increasing sincerity to God’s personal call and gracious self-gift, as our faith tells us, always passes through the mediation of Jesus Christ and the work of his Spirit.21 These two texts, coming as they do about the same time, reveal on the one hand a reluctance of many Christians at the time to use the more common expression “religious pluralism” and opt instead to employ the somewhat awkward “religious plurality.” This latter term is hardly used today. Twentyfive years ago, theologians and church leaders shied away from “religious pluralism” because they felt it gave too much support to a particular position that all religions are but expressions of a single form of religion and we need only find the common denominator to understand the nature of religion. Such a simplistic view might still be rampant among those who have never studied religion. Those who take the time to reflect on their interreligious encounters come to realize that differences matter. It is also probably true that there were those Protestants who were holding fast to Karl Barth’s distinction between faith and religion. They were influencing the outcome of the Baar text. On the Catholic side, there were those Catholics holding fast to something imposed on the text of the Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis humanae) of Vatican II and against the will of those drafting it, that the one true religion subsists, can be found, in the...