FROM THE PASTOR
Interfaith Conversation
For fifteen years I have participated in Abrahamic Conferences between interfaith delegations from the United States and religious, political, academic and business leaders from Iran, convened under the auspices of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
The conferences have brought together religious leaders, scholars and public servants from the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) from the two countries. A shared monotheism, with common roots in the patriarch Abraham, is the spiritual foundation of these proceedings. Building on this foundation, the participants have sought to achieve a better understanding of the issues that unite and separate their respective nations, cultures, and people and to consider ways of improving mutual relations. This is an effort to promote peace between two countries which do not know each other and could go to war. Religious dialogue drives this back channel for hoped-for public engagement in diplomacy leading to peace.
In the beginning we heard mostly the anger, the enduring mutual caricatures our two nations countenance about each other, distrust, and a history of mutual bad behavior. In Lisbon, where the topic was “Statecraft in the Abrahamic Traditions,” the gloves came off. A shouting match erupted over the personal suffering of Iranians in the room and their families due to the sanctions over their nuclear weapons program, particularly the lack of access to critical medicines. Both sides erupted over Israel and Palestine. The “Great Satan” and the “Evil Empire” behaved like that toward each other. The cacophony, anger and incomprehension of a theocracy sitting across the table from a secular society with a religious veneer, with war possible around the corner, finally began to turn to lament.
An Ayatollah, one of the most powerful in Iran turned to me. “You Western religionists are not serious,” he argued. “You are dilettantes because you would allow God to be mocked.”
He referenced Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses, the Copenhagen cartoons depicting Muhammed, and the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. I shot back: “We don’t understand your fatwas condemning people to death for something they said.”
He pushed me further and demanded a better answer: “People who mock God are an infection on the life of the faithful, leading people astray, hurting the faith of the common person.”
“Interfaith conversation begins with faith.” I replied. “If we can see one another through one another’s eyes we will gain deeper understanding. There is so much in our religions we share. We agree that Jesus is a great prophet, a holy religious leader. But you will never understand a Christian unless you understand that for Christians Jesus is the very expression of God among us. Truly human, truly God. And you will never understand a Christian unless you understand that it was the very willingness of Jesus to be mocked, to be hurt, to be put to death on the cross…this is very hard to explain…but Christians believe that at the cross, in God’s willingness to be vulnerable through Jesus, even to giving his life, that this is in some way the beginning of the peace, reconciliation and renewal of all things, including us.”
The next day, during a bus tour of Lisbon, that Ayatollah and some others, including an interpreter, came back to converse with us. He asked, “Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?”
“Do you want the historical reason or the theological reason?” I asked.
“Both,” he said.
And for an hour in the back of a bus we talked about the cross of Jesus Christ. No one was converted, but mutual understanding is the birthplace of peace.
This conversation was only possible because the years of interfaith dialogue had moved us from being wary enemies to partners at the table. For many years, the State Department told us, this was the only game in town, a back channel for peace. Our delegation included members of congress, academics, religious leaders from the Abrahamic traditions, seminary presidents, pastors, business leaders, even a couple Roman Catholic cardinals. Iran’s delegation continued to grow into the leadership now running the country. A core group of us provided continuity as more voices came to the table. Politicians and diplomats negotiated the terms of the nuclear agreement eventually enacted, but religious leaders had played a critical role. Religious dialogue and relationship building had helped set the table for the diplomats. The process we engaged in was an off-the-record, safe space for everyone to speak and listen forthrightly.
Of course we had to turn to those relationships and try to re-establish mutual trust after our country walked away from the nuclear deal. In this time of war I pray that God continues to provide peacemakers with the courage to listen and help avert the violence and tragedy engulfing Ukraine and threatening to spread even wider.
“O God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give peace to your church, peace among nations, peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 76)
