Robert Traer

The purpose of interfaith activity is truth. By truth I mean communicating faith, recognizing facts, and asserting freedom. The clearer we are about this purpose, the more able we will be to organize interfaith activities that are successful. For we will know what we are seeking and whether or not we have achieved it. We will know if, after an interfaith activity, we are closer to the truth.

Interfaith activities should enable people of different religious traditions to communicate their faith to each other. Activities should allow them to use their own words, to give examples of what they mean, to clarify their thinking in response to questions, and to exemplify their faith in devotional practices which are integral to it.

This is a subjective kind of truth, for in this case we are not asking that a person communicate the truth of his or her tradition but only his or her faith, which is the way the tradition is true to that person. Moreover, we want to verify that what others understand about a person's faith is consistent with what this person is trying to have them understand. We want to be sure that what others hear about someone's faith is what that person is saying about his or her faith.

The children's game of whispering a word or phrase around a circle, to see if the last person can repeat what the first person said, is an example of this kind of truth. The issue is not whether what the first person said is "true" in some independent sense, but whether or not it can be truthfully communicated among a group of persons.

In the case of interfaith activity, this is not only important but also more difficult, as the terms used to describe faith often have multiple meanings or are ambiguous. Thus, presentations without time for questions, answers and conversation are likely to fall far short of the truth that is desired. This kind of truth requires formulating comments as well as listening, and expressing doubts as well as merely receiving information.

Unlike the expression of faith, which is personal, statements about a religious tradition must be consistent with the facts that we know. Frequently in interfaith activity members of a particular tradition will assert something about the history of their community that is factually untrue. Christians may say that peoples under colonial rule were not coerced into conversion. Certainly not all those who joined the church were coerced, but it is clear that many were converted because of pressure or even threats.

Facts are troublesome to adherents of all faith traditions, because traditions have histories and history contains a record of the excesses as well as the heroics of faith. Other facts are not controversial, but may merely be unknown or misstated. To assure that the facts presented in an interfaith activity are true, persons with factual knowledge need to be involved. In some instances interfaith activities should include scholars who are not participants in any religious tradition, in addition to members of a faith community.

If freedom is fundamental to human life, then freedom must be affirmed through interfaith activity. The truth of human life — that we know the fullness of life in our freedom to discover the truth of human life — must be advanced by what we do in the name of interfaith cooperation. Seeking the truth of faith and facts is certainly part of this freedom, but more is implied. We must seek to support human dignity even as we seek to further understanding and cooperation among persons of different religious traditions.

This means that faith statements and factual conditions that denigrate some persons, because of their sex or race or religious persuasion, must be challenged within interfaith activities. At a recent interfaith forum I attended, a Muslim speaker said very forthrightly that persons who converted from Islam were without rights from the Islamic point of view. This statement may well be truthful, both as a statement of his faith and as a factual statement about Islamic culture. But as a denial of the right to choose one's religious community by leaving another religious community, his statement is not "true" with respect to the fundamental human right of freedom of religion.

Obviously, asserting truth on this level leads to questions about universal and relative values, cultural as well as human rights, and the difficulty of comparing the standards of one tradition to the standards of other traditions. We cannot avoid these hard questions, if interfaith activity is to be other than an exercise of cultural relativism. If we would pursue truth through interfaith cooperation, then we must ask: What teachings are most conducive to human freedom?

To those who may respond by saying that this is a Western point of view, I would counter by arguing that countries from East, West, North and South have supported the freedom of the human person to choose his or her own religion. This right is upheld in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which are widely supported throughout the world. While it may be true that historically such a right of freedom developed in the West, it is certainly true today that this right is being asserted all over the earth.

Clearly, however, there are religious communities that would severely restrict this right. Fundamentalist religious movements would deny this freedom to their members, and to the extent that these movements are able to influence the power of the state, the right of religious freedom for citizens will be severely curtailed. But rather than supporting the argument against raising these issues in interfaith activity, the fact of rising fundamentalism should substantiate our concern that interfaith activities seek truth in freedom and not only in the communication of faith and facts. If freedom is under threat in our time, all the more reason to assert it strongly through interfaith cooperation.

10 May 1994