More on Interfaith Spirituality

Michael Morrell published a wonderful response to my Notes on Manifesting a Truly Interfaith Spirituality called Panentheism & Interspirituality — What’s Jesus Got to do With It?

While Michael is a wee bit more traditionalist than I am (but I don’t think by much), it seems that we have far more to agree with than not. I appreciate  his evangelical commitment to the anchoring of his panentheistic spirituality within biblical Christianity. I’ve chosen to drop a similar anchor within catholic tradition, which is ultimately the most difficult-to-overcome barrier separating catholics from protestants.

At one point Michael offers four possible ways for devout Christians (of any stripe) to approach faiths other than their own. Of course, these four  "options" would be just as operative for Pagans dealing non-Pagan spirituality, or indeed any devoted adherent of one faith trying to figure out how to encounter any/all faith(s) other than his/her own. At the risk of misinterpreting Michael, I’ll summarize his four ways of regarding the faith of the other:

Way One: The other faith is simply false (well-intentioned but mistaken);

Way Two: The other faith is demonic (treacherous and dangerous; malevolent);

Way Three: All faiths contain some element of truth tainted by error or falsehood (although conservative Christians would also insist that Christianity is the best/least tainted path);

Way Four: Ultimately, all faiths lead to the same source, so it’s all good.

I think anyone struggling with interfaith dialogue would do well to consider these options. I know that often, liberal Christians see conservative Christians through the lens of Way One, while the conservatives may see the liberals through the lenses of Ways 2 or 3! So it’s not just interfaith, but even intra-faith/inter-denominational relations that could be better understood within these four ways.

The faith that is "other" than my own. Is it mistaken? Is it evil? Does it have a value relative to my own, or is its value equal to my own? One thing I think religious liberals need to be careful of: we will respond to Buddhists or Taoists or liberal Muslims through Ways 3 or 4, but then turn around and dismiss fundamentalists (of any faith) as hopelessly trapped in error. At that point, our commitment to interfaith dialogue is just as shaky as that of those whom we reject.

 Like it or not, interfaith spirituality is not just about playing nice with those other faiths of which I happen to approve. Rather, interfaith dialogue is most powerful and most open to the surprising moves of the Spirit when we dare to sit down face to face with those whose position strikes us as evil, primitive, unenlightened, unevolved, fundamentalistic, bigoted, or whatever.

The reality is, I think all of us have all four of these approaches to faiths other than our own within us. We just pull different ones out at different times. A conservative Pentecostal might be willing to see Methodists as simply in error, while Catholics are demonic. To a feminist Wiccan, secular feminists may be in error, while Southern Baptists are evil (although Wiccans often eschew the language of evil, their response just as often belies a subconscious belief — for example, one high priestess in Atlanta told her coven that I was "going to hell" when I converted from Paganism to Catholicism!), and Gardnerian  witches have a mixture of truth and error. Unitarians may proudly proclaim their universal commitment to Way 4, but even they will get hostile if cornered (by Biblical literalists, for example).

Alan Watts pointed out that "I’m more tolerant than you are" is just another way in which we use our spiritual identity to bolster our egos. Of course, those of us who dance the tolerance dance are doing so because we’ve grown nauseous in response to "I’m more saved than you are," "I’m more magically advanced than you are," "I’m more catholic than you are," "I’m more authentically Celtic than you are," etc. etc. Ultimately, it seems to me that part of the challenging, difficult work of interfaith spirituality is being willing to touch the places that hurt: to explore the ways in which we really do, bottom-line, disagree with one another. And acknowledge that we can’t fix those points of pain, or make them go away. And then each of us, in our own way, will praise that which we regard as Holy, anyway.

When that happens, that’s when interfaith spirituality can happen. And of course, here’s the punchline: every one of us gets to do this on the inside. Because every one of us has a fundamentalist, and a magical thinker, and a mystic, and a voice of reason, and a voice of tolerance, lurking inside us. In most of us, some of these voices are more conscious than others. But make no mistake: the unconscious voices sometimes wield a tremendous amount of power. They must be reckoned with, if we are to heal and grow.