College of Preachers Abrahamic Fellows Confront Religious Violence
September 10th, 2004 by sfuqua
The College of Preachers at Washington National Cathedral organized and
hosted an unprecedented Abrahamic residency for three scholar-theologians
June 14-25. The task assigned to Bishop Krister Stendahl, Rabbi Marc
Gopin, and Abdulaziz Sachedina was to plumb the doctrinal, historical,
and psychological depths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to discover
sources used to justify religious violence and develop approaches to
counteract them.
By Joe Montville,
CSID Board Member
July 7, 2004 — The
College of Preachers at Washington National Cathedral organized and
hosted an unprecedented Abrahamic residency for three scholar-theologians
June 14-25.
The task assigned to Bishop Krister Stendahl, former Dean of the Harvard
Divinity School, Rabbi Marc Gopin, Laue Professor of World Religions,
Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and
Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ball Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of Virginia, was to plumb the doctrinal, historical, and
psychological depths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to discover
sources used to justify religious violence and develop approaches to
counteract them.
In an intellectual, moral, and personal relationship that became
increasingly close as their days in residence together progressed,
Stendahl, Gopin, and Sachedina concentrated on finding ways to appeal to
practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims by reaffirming traditional
religious identities and interpreting the holy writings of each tradition
in ways that encourage caring relationships with all human beings. The
fellows purposely avoided the interfaith dialogue tradition of appealing
to universal values. Instead, they focused on the religious authenticity
of their respective work as a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim through
statements directed to their own communities.
In the following joint statement, each fellow offers the beginning of a
work in progress aimed at removing any religious legitimacy for political
murder. As the Joint Statement makes clear, the commitment of Stendahl,
Gopin, and Sachedina to serve an urgent mission is firm, and they intend
to continue their collaboration with each other and with the College of
Preachers.
Joint Statement:
Violence in the name of God and religion calls for passionate and
reasoned refutations.
Our three Abrahamic traditions have their share in that sacrilege, both
in history and in the present. In our respective languages, speaking from
within our communities, we recognize that we are different as Jew,
Christian, Muslim, and we treasure our differences as a richness. We
recognize even more strongly our common call to honor and preserve the
dignity and sanctity of human life.
From Krister Stendahl:
There is a crisis in the Abrahamic family. Religious zeal is increasingly
spinning out in hatred and acts of violence. Decades of interfaith
dialogues and statements seem ineffective. People die.
For me as a Christian, it is now important to recognize that urgent
action is called for. As a Biblical scholar, I know well the texts of
Scripture that work for peace, as well as all those words that have aided
and abetted Christian teachings of contempt for Jews and Muslims.
But the present urgency brings to mind my great teacher St. Paul. In
Corinth, he found conflicts among the faithful and faith-filled. Their
different theologies and practices seemed to ruin the community, and so
he wrote - or recited - an ode to love. It ends with the words, “so
faith, hope, love abide, but the greatest of them is love.” Imagine,
Paul, the apostle of faith, lets faith be trumped by love!
To privilege ethics over theology - that takes a good theologian and a
keen awareness of urgency. That is where we are now in our diversity, in
our common humanity, in our Abrahamic family, where we share so much in
various ways, ways that should enrich us rather than separate us.
In my Bible it says: “Anyone who says I love God and hates his brother is
a liar.”
From Marc Gopin:
Ancient Jewish history is replete with moments of emergency, times when
prophets and rabbis had to make fateful decisions in order to preserve
the possibility of a better future. In so doing, these courageous leaders
had to calculate the complex priorities of sacred traditions of Torah,
they had to decide on halakhic, Jewish legal/spiritual, priorities to be
considered in facing emergencies. Always those priorities favored pikuah
nefesh, saving lives, preventing the unnecessary loss of life, and
working with tradition in a way that maximized kiddush ha-shem, the
sanctification of God's name on this earth by the Jewish people whose
primary task is to live up to, as best as they can, the idea of being an
or la-goyim, a light unto the nations.
There are many challenges facing the global community of nations today in
terms of its survival, in terms of discovering a way to live in balance
with the earth's resources, for example. But all of those challenges
cannot be successfully confronted by other halakhic priorities such as
ba'al tashchit, minimizing waste and destruction of God-given resources
and sentient life, if we end up in a war of civilizations within the
family of Abraham, as it is represented by Judaism, Christianity and
Islam.
We know the challenges. We know that these three children must come to a
place of absolute respect, equality, and a recognition of friendly
boundaries between loving neighbors. We know that there are
halakhic and spiritual resources within Jewish tradition, such as
the mitzvah of redifat shalom, pursuit of peace, pesharah, the art
of compromise, hakem takim imo, helping others in distress–even
enemies, teshuvah, acknowledgement of harm done and commitments to
a better future. Above all, however, there is the mitsvah to save human
life. Even at a level of pure self-concern, the Jewish people must face
the reality of needing coexistence in peace and justice, rather than in
terminal violence with billions of Christians and Muslims.
This requires halakhically and ethically unprecedented efforts to reach
out to others, to learn from everyone's wisdom and to share our own on
how to coexist with other religions without war, and even with deep
respect. Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Ishmael, would want no less
from us. They all wanted children to survive and thrive on this God-given
earth, and we owe them our best efforts theologically, halakhically, and
ethically, at this critical hour of human history.
From Abdulaziz Sachedina:
The world community is looking at the Muslim community and its
religious leaders to provide Koranic guidelines that speak to the urgent
need to stop meaningless violence in the name of Islam. Both Muslim and
non-Muslim lives have been threatened and destroyed in the crossfire of
sectarian and religiously justified nationalist movements.
There is no shortage of Koranic passages that teach tolerance and respect
of other religions. As I read the Koran, it becomes obvious to me that
Muslims are required to engage in instituting the good and advancing
justice for all humans, as humans. God has honored all the children of
Adam and Eve with nobility and has endowed them with the ability to make
this earth a stage for just relationships (K: 17:70). This honor, as the
Koran teaches, has been extended with special blessing to Abraham, who
has been promised leadership among his children who will commit to uphold
justice. Hence, Jews, Christians and Muslims are called upon to bear
witness to God's mercy and establish justice and peace among all nations
of the world as part of their moral-spiritual commitment.
Today this message is in danger because political ambitions of some
militant groups have led them to abandon the message of just
relationships taught by the Prophet's tradition (Sunna) and the
Koran. The endless violence committed against any human being, whether
Muslim or non-Muslim, makes it urgent for the Children of Abraham - that
is, Jews, Christians, and Muslims - to engage in creating partnerships in
“competing to do the good” (K. 5:48) and spreading the ethics of just
relationships.
Joseph Montville directed the Abrahamic Fellows project for the College
of Preachers at Washington National Cathedral, which was made possible by
a generous grant from the William and Mary Greve Foundation. He is Senior
Fellow, Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution,
George Mason University, Diplomat in Residence at American University and
Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Press release information:
http://www.religionnews.com/press02/PR070804B.html
