04/08/2008
IWDM Study Library
Living Faiths
Duke University
Durham NC

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Speaker 1: Imam Mohammed, tell us about the time when you've been with people from other traditions when you've thought, "I think I've got something to offer here."
Mohammed: I have read recently and when I say recently my study started long time ago. Well, maybe 15, 20 years ago could be as much as 20 years ago. I became aware of something said in our Holy book, that I wanted to share with Christians, especially popular black church people, preachers. [clears throat] I would like to share it with all people. In our scripture G-d says, "Take the best thereof, take the best thereof."
If I have a need for scripture or for help from the scripture. I might go in the book for a different reason than you go in the book. We go in our Holy books for different reasons to serve our own personal needs. Many go to a part of the scripture that supports their dislike for black people or the reverse. A black person dislike for white folks. I find that we go to scripture for different reasons. Some of us go to scripture to support our sins. Sometimes we can find plenty of support if we misread or read the wrong thing into the scripture for our sin. I wanted to share that with them and I still do.
[laughter]
Speaker 1: Well, it's getting to the time to open up to you all if there are questions that you'd like to ask me. I know we've got a fantastic range of people here tonight. Of all the different events I've been to since I've been at Duke University. This must be one of the most wonderful crowds of diverse people from across, I imagine, the triangle region.
It's just a real thrill to share this together. I wonder if you could, just to get you to test out that question, that question that's on the forefront of your mind is going to be one of the finest questions ever asked in interfaith discussions this century probably.
Just to give you the confidence that it is such a fine question. Try and see somebody you've just got a moment to introduce yourself to who's within range and don't worry with names and stuff like that. Just tell them that fantastic question that's on the tip of your tongue and just see how amazed they are. When you see how amazed they are, stick your hand up and ask it to me and I'll be amazed too. Okay, we'll just do that for two minutes. Just say something to the person within range. Who looks or sounds or feels a bit different from you and see what they sound like.
Michael: Welcome [foreign language]. I'm Rabbi Michael Goldman. I'm the Rabbi for Jewish life here at the Freeman Center and the campus Jewish Chaplain. Welcome to a conversation that we've entitled Living Faiths: What do religions have to learn from one another? We come not only as members of the Faith Council. I'll tell you about that in a minute. Also, there are 18 co-sponsors whose efforts and goodwill went into making this event. This is truly a community effort. Tonight's conversation is the inaugural public event for the Faith Council at Duke, of which I am the chairman.
I think it's worth telling you what we do and I hope that that account will serve also as an introduction to what's going to happen here tonight. The Faith Council of Duke is a group of religious practitioners representing the historical faith traditions. Most of us but not all of us are clergy and we convene under the auspices of the Duke chapel. Our goal is to foster and model profound conversations across faith traditions, in order to deepen participant's practice of their own faith. Also to help us understand our faith and to forge relationships across religious and cultural divides.
We also seek to facilitate such conversations in the university at large and in the community at large. We come together; a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Catholic, an Evangelical Protestant, three mainline Protestants and our coordinator and a representative of the Interfaith Dialogue Project and soon a Hindu because we believe in the premise that gives cause to this event tonight, which is that our traditions has something to teach one another and something to learn from one another. What I just said is actually a little bit radical. Until very recently maybe just a few decades ago, the only officially sanctioned reason to engage in interfaith dialogue was to win converts or to defend one's own faith against the encroachment of people seeking converts.
More recently, we've come together in a sense to find out who has the best dietary prohibitions or who has the most glamorous idea of the afterlife. That really came to be what it was. Beginning perhaps after world war II and in response to that cataclysmic, our respective houses of worship began to take seriously the need to encounter one another as we are, in order to discover and then periodically reaffirm our common humanity and common dignity. The Faith Council strives to move beyond those two stages of interfaith dialogue.
We'd long ago laid aside any hope of converting one another.
We no longer fear one another. We also have passed the point where we feel the need to merely check in with each other's deep humanity although this is a necessary thing to do. What we do is study religious texts together from our various traditions, and use those texts as a lens for confronting the day's relevant issues. We work under the premise that the world's numerous faith communities coexist as it were as part of a global ecosystem of faith. In this ecosystem, every faith has its niche. Everyone has a role to play and those roles are very specific.
One tradition excels at this, another one at that. This implies, and here's the radical part, that no one of our traditions and no one group of practitioners, is adequate by itself to the task of solving the world's problems. Stated in another way, perhaps more theologically, there is a divine purpose to our differences, including our collective, institutionalized, and even canonized shortcomings and that those differences are the reason and the very sign that we should work together. It doesn't make any sense, for example, to ask the Jew to come up and give a short introduction to tonight's speakers, but I'll do so now anyway.
We are so pleased and honored to have with us the honorable Imam W Deen Mohammed, Reverend Ron Sider, and professor Peter Oaks. The honorable Imam W Deen Mohammed is the director of the nonprofit ministry the Mosque Cares. A little history, in February 1975 upon the passing of his father, the honorable Elijah Mohammed, Imam Mohammed was the unanimous selectee to be the new leader of the Nation of Islam, elected by its leaders and general membership. Over the subsequent 25 years, he emphasized Koran, the traditions of Muhammad the prophet and an inspired strategy of gradual and moderate change designed to correct erroneous religious influences and satisfy the requisites of a truer Islamic identity.
He succeeded in doing this and his followers today number about 2.5 million. Imam Mohammed wrote the following. "My dream is the same as the dreams of the faithful and loving Jewish and Christian, the Buddhist leaders. Our dream is the dream of scripture. We want to see human society be the best it possibly can be." Dr Peter Oaks is the Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. He's the co-director of the Scriptural Reasoning Research Group at the Center for Theological Inquiry In Princeton
The cofounder for the Society for Textual Reasoning, and the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, and the Children of Abraham Institute.
His publications are numerous including works that he's done here at Duke with our own Stanley Hauerwas. There's a series called Radical Traditions: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Theologies in a Post-critical Key. Our three panelists come together tonight as people who have thought deeply about their own faith and they've thought deeply about the faith of the others. They've come together to model for us a discourse that both requires and cultivates humility. It's a discipline that can be imitated by us people of faith. We hope that today's conversation will show us how with patient study, partners can key in our appreciation for one another and refine our sense of our own purpose. Noticeably absent tonight from our panel are the voices of non-Western traditions principally Hinduism and Buddhism. We begin our conversation under the tent of Abraham with Christian, Muslim, and Jew. We in the Faith Council really hope that this tonight's dialogue is merely a beginning.
The Reverend Canon Sam Wells, dean of the chapel, is going to be our moderator. Dean Wells will lead a discussion lasting about 45 minutes then we'll have some time for questions in a kind of open forum here. Then for about a half an hour, we'll go into breakout rooms with each of our three panelists. More on that later. Thank you and welcome, Reverend Wells.
Reverend Wells: Thank you, Michael, I'm going to talk a while until you can start hearing me which could take a little while. Yes, and keep [unintelligible 00:11:06] your fingers up and eventually, you'll start hearing me. There you are, here I am, I'm all yours. I'm going to start by asking each of the panelists to tell us a little bit about their own traditions and I want to start with Peter. Peter, I wonder if you could tell us a moment when the faith and heritage of Judaism all came together at one particular moment for you? Maybe they've been more than one occasion but I wonder if you can tell us one or two occasions when Judaism, you suddenly thought, "I'm a Jew and this is what being a Jew is."
You don't have to add that if you don't like but the first part.
Peter: [singing] like that?
[laughter]
Reverend Wells: Okay, you can have more than that, that's fine.
Peter: Is this working?
Reverend Wells: It is.
Peter: No, is this working? I can just shout. I don't need this but are you saying yes you like me or you wanted [unintelligible 00:12:10]?
Reverend Wells: No, [unintelligible 00:12:11].
[laughter]
Peter: Is my microphone on now?
Speakers: Yes.
Peter: [singing] Reverend Wells before I respond I just have to say when you say what is the something moment? Right now I'm feeling a moment, I don't know which part of my religion it's in but I'm feeling very good so I just want to say that to start with. It's like it's the next [unintelligible 00:12:38]. You can't just jump into things and not say what your body is feeling, and right now I'm just feeling very good. Let me try to pull myself apart from the moment enough to answer your question. It's two, one weekly moment through my married life particularly to the time when we've had children, when the two daughters were young, and now they are past college.
Thank G-d we've been able to do that. When they come back to visit, I think the one most significant time for me, for my wife and for them so we have four votes, happens every single week and there's nothing greater. Friday night comes, the sun's going down. House is cleaned, washed up, gone to Sabbath prayers, I come back, wife and daughters are-- If you don't see me it's partly the movement or uttering blessings for the Sabbath over the Sabbath candles. We kiss, a lot of kissing then my daughters have wanted me to do this even after they were of the age that I didn't need to, I offer a blessing over them.
Through their encouragement over the years, I add some little statement in their year in addition to, "May G-d bless you and keep you," something about their week, and the Biblical text. My younger daughter always says, "Thank you, dad," and my elder daughter judges it. She says, "That was pretty good."
[laughter]
She goes, "Last week you were better."
[laughter]
I say, "Darling, this is a blessing." "Thank you, dad, but try to be better next week." That's part of the memory, then we sit, we sing, Shalom aleichem, peace be on you ministering angels. I utter a Kiddush, a sanctification of the day over wine. We wash, my wife and daughters, offer a blessing, "Praised are you O Lord who brings forth bread from the earth."
We break the bread, we sit and we eat. Don't tell anyone this, but if we have no company, which we often do we're already in pajamas because the company doesn't know that, that we're not there to talk about anything other than, now and then we go to sleep.
That's the first. Tthe second, which I can say more briefly is when my colleague in Jewish philosophy, Robert Gibbs teaching at Toronto, when he and I used to live a half an hour apart, every two weeks we would meet and take a text of Talmud and study back and forth over the text. In the middle of that, both of us, we wouldn't say anything, we would feel as we do on the Sabbath but in a different way. We would feel the presence of text, G-d and each other and those two symbolize our Judaism.
Reverend Wells: Thank you Peter, Imam Mohammed, would you like to go next?
Mohammed: [unintelligible 00:16:12].
Michael: When have you felt that sense, that this is my tradition, right, this second now it's all here.
Mohammed: It happened so gradually for me. I'll explain. When I was a child I couldn't understand all the complicated language of the preacher but I would always be sitting close to the preacher. I'd sit maybe the first row of seats, not further back in the third row of seats. I usually sit in the middle, the second row. I would be looking at the preacher and very serious-minded.
I'm amazed when I think back on myself that that little child sitting up there, and his feet couldn't touch the floor and he was so serious about listening to what the preacher was saying, listening. What registered for a child was Islam is freedom, justice, and equality. My parents even when I was younger than six, they would tell me about life for a black man in America. They showed me some horrifying pictures of hangings and stuff. All this is in my mind and the preacher, the minister is telling me Islam is freedom, justice, and equality.
That was stuck with me.
As I grew older, started school and everything I learned about freedom and I learned more about the problem for the issue of blacks being denied in this country. I learned more about that so the language, Islam is freedom, justice and equality, stayed with me and grew stronger and stronger. I think the beginning of my growing into the big picture that G-d wanted us to be in started back then. I didn't hear the preacher the way the average member of the community heard the preacher. I know because I saw them commenting on it and what they were saying mostly wouldn't interest me.
All I was interested in Islam is freedom, justice, and equality. That stayed with me and I began to become dissatisfied with the idea of G-d in the Nation of Islam. If you know Minister Farrakhan who heads the Nation of Islam now, he's a little sick but he'll be prayed for. He's seriously sick I think and we pray for his health. The same Nation of Islam was back then, that's the original Nation of Islam started by my father. With Farrakhan, the congregation of Minister Farrakhan has changed some. He had not stayed with the direction in my father's teaching. He stayed with all language but he did not stay with the direction.
The direction is to bring the congregation where I am. [laughs] He has not stayed with that but he has stayed with the language. Anyway, I think when I made up my mind, not quite where you're asking me to address but when I made up my mind, I was in prison. I refused to go to war or join the army because of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. His position was he did five years in prison because he even wouldn't even carry a draft card. I love him and I thought he was the most important thing in our life for our leadership at that time and still now when I look back, I think he's most important thing in our life at that time for our leadership. I didn't want to disagree with him. The judge knew it before I did. The judge say, "I'm sentencing you three years in prison." He said, "You are dominated by your father." [laughs] They granted me a conscientious objector status and I was willing to go to Elgin State Hospital and do what I was signed to do and refusing that prison time. That was a big burden on me. In prison, I'm thinking about in my family, I'm missing my family. I'm missing my life outside prison. I'm missing all of that and I'm feeling sorry for myself.
I said, "When I get out of here, I ain't going to teach that teaching." [laughs] I made up my mind then that I would either not be a minister or they would have to permit me to change things. That was the first major change for me in my life and when I started to interact with Christian leaders.
Reverend Wells: We'll come onto that later.
Mohammed: All right
Reverend Wells: That's a wonderful introduction. I'm going to move on to Ron [crosstalk] the moment.
Mohammed: Okay.
Reverend Wells: Ron, I don't think we had quite so much chance to hear about you. For a start, you're a Mennonite, which means you're a descendant of the radical reformation, but being an Anabaptist-Anabaptist as I understand, they don't have parents or grandparents in the faith because they have to accept the faith for themselves. Is that right? In a sense, I'd be looking to you to tell us a moment when your radical reformation of faith all came together as the kind of Christianity that many of us are deeply attracted to because we feel that you do it properly. Would you like to say a little bit about a moment when it all came together for you?
Ron: Well, I'm an evangelical Anabaptist, and I think that my one answer has three parts, which I suppose is somehow appropriate for a Christian. The first moment was when I was 10 or so. We used to have what we called revival meetings. At those points, anyone who wasn't certain about their being a Christian would step forward and make a very conscious choice to accept Jesus Christ as personal Lord and savior. I did that at that point and felt deeply moved and deeply embraced by the love of G-d in Christ. I think that was one very early moment.
The second part was in university. I was in University in Canada and I really wrestled hard with whether an honest thinker in the modern world could believe in historic Christianity at all. I came to see how modern science helped us understand more and more of the world and how things that had been given, supernatural explanations in the past were now given perfectly good scientific explanations. I felt the power of the claim that in fact, nothing exists except the natural world. Science, eventually, in principle, can explain everything. Then I began to explore. As an historian, I was a student of history.
I began to explore the historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth for his life and even for his resurrection. I looked at that claim hard wondering what the historical evidence was. I actually came to the conclusion that if one doesn't start with a bias against the possibility that miracles might happen, then the evidence is surprisingly strong. If you want a much longer statement on that look at Tom Wright's 800-page book on the resurrection. One of the best new Testament scholars today. The third moment is really something that's ongoing with me.
I frequently just stand back in awe, in staggered amazement at what is really the central Christian claim, which is that this Jewish carpenter from Nazareth is indeed G-d in the flesh. That the creator of the universe truly became flesh, walked among us, died for the sins of the world because G-d loves us so much and then rose again. Now that's an incredible claim. I grant you. It seems to me that either we Christians made a pretty awful mistake very early because Christians have believed this from the time of St Paul or something pretty awesome is going on.
Whenever I think about what Christians claim about Jesus the carpenter, I simply am astounded and amazed and I believe it's true.
Reverend Wells: Well, I'm going to move onto the next part of our conversation now because the title of the evening is Living Faiths: What do religions have to learn from one another? I'd like to stay with the personal theme that we started with but shift to a slightly different place. I'm going to start with you and Imam Mohammed because you started on this before I rudely interrupted. I'd like each of our panelists, and I'm going to start with Imam Mohammed this time, to tell me a little bit about when you've been with a member of another tradition or maybe member of more than one other tradition, and you've said, "I think this person has something that actually I don't have.
There's something I could really learn from this person." Could you tell us about an occasion like that? I'm sure you've been with many such people, and I wonder if you could tell us about one or two of them.
Mohammed: Yes. In many situations where we were in dialogue.
Reverend Wells: What was that thing they heard?
Mohammed: Well, it didn't happen with one person, it happened with many Christian leaders and Jewish leaders and even some that not of Judaism or Christianity. We were sitting together and we'd be having an exchange. They're commenting on the oneness of humanity and G-d and how we see G-d and similarities, what we share that are very similar or the same. I would be listening to them, and as they would be explaining, I would forget that they were of a different religion. I would start to feel that I'm just listening to a person who was in touch with their religion and informed in their religion.
When I got away from the dialogue and returned home and sometimes sitting and watching television, it would hit me that really, we the same people. We're all members in humanity and these people, these Christians, they have strong faith, and they seem to be following as a person of faith. When they discuss rational issues or issues for the rational mind, their faith is still strongly present. When they speak the rational, they speak to me. I said to myself, I'm not speaking of all Muslims in the world now, I said, "I wish that the members of our community would still be coming firstly from faith, and then addressing what is needed for the rational but coming firstly from faith."
I understood that really our Holy book was more like Christians and Christians were more like our Holy book in that respect. It was our community that had been so hung up in getting over materially and identifying as black and dignifying and lifting up black that they had gotten away from faith. The early members of the Nation of Islam of my father, Elijah Muhammad, they came from the church, and they came as people of faith, but over the many years, 10, 20, 30 years, to the '60s and during the '60s, there was a lot of black upheaval, social upheaval, and trouble for the church because of the direction that civil rights was taking in this country. We start to attract members from that time and that public. They didn't come with faith like the old people had came. Finally, faith took a backseat and it was all about the world. In Arabic is dunya. We're all about the dunya [laughs] and not about the hereafter and the spiritual life.
I intentionally had association, introduced ourselves to the Focolare, that's a Catholic organization that's international [unintelligible 00:31:16]. I had a chance to meet the leader and we experienced a rapport, a peace between the two of us. I decided that I was going to stay with them and help them advance the principle of Christ love. To me, the principle of Christ love is what Islam obligates us to advance. You stop me anytime you have to.
[laughter]
Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be upon him, he said, "You will never get into paradise until you have faith. You will never have faith until you practice loving one another." I was aware of that saying of the Prophet. When I saw that that was their call, the call for all people, whether they belong to Catholicism or whatever, even Muslim. I met Muslims who are strong supporters of her and they belong to the Focolare Movement. When I saw that, I thought it would be good for my community if my community could form a relationship with them. We formed an excellent relationship with them.
We meet together, we even plan things together, that we believe will not only help us, but will present a picture of love and brotherhood to the public that would help many people in the public from Christianity and other faith whose faith have been lost or weakened because of trouble in this world. We formed a great, strong bond with each other to support love thee one another.
Reverend Wells: I wonder if that's a good moment to ask if there's anyone here tonight who's been involved with the Focolare movement. You're never going to get a better chance to thank you. You're never going to get a bigger endorsement than that. Thank you very much, Imam Mohammed. I'm going to turn to Ron Sider next and ask you the same question. Could you tell us, we've just heard wonderfully from Imam Mohammed, of a time when you've been in the presence of people from other traditions or one other tradition when you've thought, "I'd like a bit of whatever they're having because they're obviously onto something."
Ron: Well, three different occasions again. I didn't intend it this way, but it just worked out. The first was in 1993. My wife and I were in Israel, Palestine and Jerusalem for Holy Week. On Easter Sunday in the western calendar, we were at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in some ways, the most sacred church for Christians. I saw all kinds of evidence of the division in the church and the brokenness of the church. I'll spare you the details, but I learned that Christians were so in disagreement about who can control what part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that a Muslim family actually held the key to the door of that church.
I was stunned and saddened at the divisions in the Christian church. The second thing I'll mention is that in the late '60s, early '70s, I was living in North Philadelphia. For about six, seven years, I taught Malcolm X autobiography, every year to my white, rural and suburban students. I was regularly moved by the strength and vigor of his intellectual honesty. First of all, as he broke with my brother's father, but then as he turned to Islam and went into the pilgrimage and saw there at Mecca, genuine interracial fellowship that certainly went beyond the racism that he had experienced so often in this society.
The third instant is, as I've developed a deeper understanding of the doctrine of creation, especially as I've worked on the environment more deeply in the last 15 years, and I think have learned from Jewish thinkers more about the fabulous goodness of this material world, and have realized even more poignantly than before how much I think a platonic influence has become a significant part of Christian faith and is caused us, the worst examples are some of the things that St Augustine said about sexuality, but it's much more pervasive than that.
I think the Hebrew Bible and Jewish thinkers today have a very profound sense of the goodness of the material world that I think is right and important. I've been grateful to learn from that.
Reverend Wells: Peter, tell us about a time when you were with somebody from another tradition, maybe more than one time when you felt they had something that you could really learn from.
Peter: Well, this morning, I saw Stanley Hauerwas. That was a time.
[laughter]
About two weeks ago, I saw Stanley Hauerwas and that was another time. What joins both those times together is typical of what I've learned from my Christian teachers throughout college and mentors later, two things. How to witness to G-d with courage in environments of secularism where you may be liked or not liked. I've learned that most from Hauerwas. Don't fear the environment, don't be against the environment. Understand, learn, learn Aristotle, but then bring your faith and witness to it here too. He's given me more courage than anyone to do that. I get one and a half more.
Reverend Wells: You've got one and a half more. Yes, I'm looking forward to the half.
[laughter]
Peter: I'll skip the half and I'll do one more.
[laughter]
Reverend Wells: I'll do the other half if you like.
Peter: It's going to be you but I'm not going to do it. I'll do the Muslim half and the Muslim hole. I didn't know the Quran until 1989 when it was first taught to me by a graduate student, Basset Kaushal who came from Pakistan. A Sunni Muslim who has remained first, my student and now my closest friend. He drew me into a circle of young scholars who study the Pakistani teacher, Muhammad Iqbal. I learned from studying with [unintelligible 00:39:14] Iqbal and with Vassar and his colleagues, many, many things, but two in particular, for this occasion, I'll say.
The first, I learned, after many years of not doing this, to appreciate that the self, that the ego can be loved by G-d, too. It doesn't have to be fully suppressed. Secondly, and tied to that, I learned more than from any other teachers, I learned to re-appreciate G-d's presence in nature in the world, the [foreign language] that are in the world as well as in scripture. I ain't saying anything else.
Reverend Wells: Well, I'm going to ask you all for half more actually because I think Peter's idea of having half the story is a good one. One thing that isn't represented on this panel, as Michael hinted in his introduction, is traditions outside the Abrahamic ones. I'm going to do an old play for a moment here just as a little break and just wonder it looked to all of you really to talk. You've talked about what you've learned from one another's traditions, the three Abrahamic traditions. Some of the other traditions, particularly Hinduism, and Buddhism, are sometimes seen as really being of a completely different order from the Abrahamic traditions and I wonder if any of you would like to say anything about something that you might have learned from any of those traditions.
Joe: [unintelligible 00:40:56].
Reverend Wells: No, I'm asking you. These lot, they'll get a chance later on, don't worry. They'll have their time, but I wonder if anyone on the panel would like to speak to that question. Joe, I'm going to go outside. Do you want to carry on, Peter?
Peter: Yes, I'll do one. As I may mention a little more later if there's time, that student, Basset Kaushal, I mentioned, he and another Christian student and I began a project of Muslim- Jewish-Christians' study that has increasingly occupied my life since then. Since many of the Muslim contributors are from India, Pakistan, I learned from them to appreciate the scriptural character of the Upanishads without they're saying, "This is one of the people of the book." They steal from their neighbors and growing up taught me to appreciate and love a very different scriptural tradition.
I sat with the students and learned the Upanishads as well and learned to read a scripture of a different kind in the Abrahamic scriptures, different teachings, but of profound majesty.
Reverend Wells: Anything you'd like to add there?
Mohammed: Yes. Something that I have wanted to offer to a person of another faith.
Reverend Wells: No. We're still on the question of whether there's something from the Hindu or Buddhist traditions or outside the Abrahamic traditions that you've learned from. Is there anything you'd like to add to what Peter said or we can move on to further things?
Mohammed: No.
Reverend Wells: Okay. The next thing I'd like to ask our colleagues is whether there's been an occasion when you have found yourself in the company of somebody of another tradition, or perhaps of a number of other traditions, where you've thought, "There's something that everyone here seems to be struggling with, but I think deep inside my tradition there is something here that really could help or could provide that." Maybe it's something that's unique to my own tradition that in all humility, you think, "Well, I think these people could use a bit of this." I'm going to start by asking Ron that question.
Ron: I want to start with a conversation with a Palestinian friend of mine and I make no claim that what he said is right, but we were talking in '93. I think it was about Israeli-Palestinian relationships and he had worked for a decade or two by then, non-violently as a Palestinian evangelical Christian, to further better relations and seek justice for Palestinians. He said, "I think that the Israelis cannot believe that the Palestinians are able to forgive the Israelis for what they've done to us because they can't forgive the Germans."
I have no idea if that's true or not, but it's prompted me to think more about forgiveness. It seems to me that forgiveness is enormously important in Christian faith. The basic claim is that the G-d of the universe is both awesome holiness and justice and also overflowing love and forgiveness, and that the evil that we do to each other offends G-d's holiness in very, very profound ways and that G-d cannot plainly just say, "Shucks, it doesn't matter." G-d loves us so much that he can't say, "You'll forget about it." or, "Forget you people."
What Christians claim is going on at the cross, is that the one who is true G-d and true man, the G-d of the universe, is literally dying to take upon himself the rightful punishment that evil people would deserve for all the evil we've done to other people.
This perfect combination of holiness and love actually dies in our place. I think that that's an amazing answer to the evil of the world. All we need to do is look around the world, and almost anywhere we look, we see cycles of violence. Evil is done to people, and there's an evil response and the cycle goes on and escalates. I don't know how to cut through that, other than for someone to say, "I will forgive you." At the center of Christian faith, is the claim that the G-d of the universe is so loving, although he takes evil so seriously, that he must in himself, put these two together and provide the opportunity for a radical sweeping forgiveness to people who don't deserve it.
Precisely because he loves us so much. I found that to be profoundly right, whether it's Desmond Tutu and the Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, resolving impossibly awful evil that the black community experienced there, or just in my own marriage, when my wife and I hurt each other and we had to decide either to say, "It didn't matter. That was a big lie. That wasn't true. It hurt a lot, " or, "To hell with you." That would have ended our marriage." The only other way was for us to say, "I'll take your betrayal into my heart and forgive you." That's what the G-d of the universe, Christians believe, was doing on the cross and he invites us to imitate him in our relationships with others.
Reverend Wells: I wonder if I could push you a bit more about that, Ron. Desmond Tutu is somebody who's frequently cited as a leader who's shown a path of Christian forgiveness. I wonder if you could point to communities or examples in this country. You mentioned a personal example but if I could push you to mention maybe a public example that we could think, "Well, there's a community who are embodying that unique quality," as you've described it of Christian forgiveness, in a way that we could say, "Well, that's a community we could study and learn from."
Ron: I think Martin Luther King, and the whole Civil Rights Movement that he led is simply stunning example of that. In what white people did to African-Americans in this nation in our history is simply awful. I find it regularly amazing that African-Americans are really willing to forgive white people for that history, but I think Dr King led in that in a truly amazing way.
Reverend Wells: I'm going to push you a bit more about that.
Ron: Sure.
Reverend Wells: Here we are. We're just having a private little thing over here. It's sometimes said that when it comes to reconciliation and integration, if you see integration, and of course, that's a debatable area of its own, as a sign of reconciliation, that colleges are integrated in the American South and all sorts of institutions are integrating the American South and we're really only waiting for one institution to integrate, and that's the churches. Is that such a great example of Christian reconciliation, forgiveness, if the churches are actually the one institution that are lagging behind?
Ron: Well, I think King's example is a brilliant, wonderful illustration. I think the white Church has been racist in terrible ways and I simply confess that and acknowledge that we haven't been faithful, even close to being faithful to the central affirmations of Christian faith about one body of Christ that is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free et cetera. It certainly includes Black and White. Now, thank G-d there is movement in that direction. I go to an interracial congregation pastored by an African-American senior pastor, with a White woman as the associate pastor, and the congregation's about 20%, 25% African-American, 20%, 25% Latino, and 40% Anglo, and Asians and others makes 10, so we are making progress in more and more places, but it's way to0 slow, it's sinfully slow. I think a White Christian in this country can only repent of that.
Reverend Wells: I'm going to go to Peter next. If I may, the same question for you. If there was a moment for you when you were with people of another tradition where you thought, "Well, actually, can I just tell you for a few moments a little bit about my tradition because I think we might have something to talk about here?"
Peter: Yes, I forget the year, 1994 or something like that, '93, a group of Jewish teachers and scholars very varied in denomination, orthodox, reformed, and constructionist, and very varied among the scholars in approach, historians, Bible interpreters, philosophers. We developed a process of meeting together in groups of 30 altogether, and focusing all our attention for hours on a few texts, classical Jewish interpretations of scripture. I think classic Judaism is just very good at reading scripture in environments of difference, understanding how the one word retains its authority and majesty even while speaking in what looks like different ways to different contexts of life at the same time to different hearts, speaking through moments of suffering.
The one time I'm thinking of, we were having a Jewish study session like I've mentioned, and two Christian colleagues of mine from Cambridge came in and sat and watched us. They watched the different people studying together, and feminists and Orthodox Jews studying together. They saw how in the middle of the study, something in one of the texts reminded us of a traditional song, and the whole group spontaneously began to sing. Afterwards, these two colleagues said, "We want to come to that. We want that kind of scripture reading in the Anglican church, for example, when the primates meet, and you come together across difference.
How can we do it?" We said, "Well, unless you want to go the circumcision route, ..."
[laughter]
What we did instead, last sentence, is we said, "You can visit, but we have a better idea. Let's form a new group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, who in different ways because there'll be different texts, different traditions, we'll do that together." That's been increasingly the focus of my own love. Many of us who gathered there, that's where our primary energy has been for the last 10 years.
Reverend Wells: Can you tell us a little bit more about where you've taken that?
Peter: No.
[laughter]
Reverend Wells: You've forgotten the rest?
Peter: We had many names for what we do in that process. We decided eight years ago to call it Scriptural Reasoning because it's a case in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews looking often in translation, it's small bits of text in English, they study beforehand, background, but we found that you can't get very far in this kind of discussion if there's too much text, so, just small bits of text. We go around and around reading the text, interpreting it, commenting on each others' text. Then in the end, we look at ourselves, sometimes after four days of this, and we're reasoning with each other, like he mentions early, forgetting who's who.
We're reasoning with each other, and during that spell, we don't remember who's who and we also don't recognize the reasoning pattern as something we knew before. It wasn't philosophy, it wasn't just Jewish, it wasn't just Muslim, it wasn't just Christian, but it was something that brought us great depth of understanding of our own traditions and love of each others'. I'm not just saying that. That's why we've done this. We still can't explain what happens, but it's become a center of energy outside our own worship communities. When those four days of meeting are over, we can't reproduce it, we can't write it down. It's there when we're with--
[00:55:09] [END OF AUDIO]

Moderator: Peter, the last word to you.
?Peter Oakes: [unintelligible 00:00:03]
[laughter]
Peter: Maybe you speak. I don't want to anymore.
[laughter]
Peter: Psalmist said, "One word have I spoken, said the Lord, and two were heard." Now, you may have different traditions of what that means. Maybe you interpreted negatively that by mistake two were heard. This one, rabbis never agree on these things, but on this one is a pretty consistent series of classic interpretations that hover around the following reading. "One thing have I said, said the Lord, and two things were heard because each word of mine in its unity goes in different ways to different times and different peoples. Peoples suffering hear this. People too rich hear that. People poor hear that. They're supposed to hear that because I who say that, says the Lord, my word knows where it's going. It's going to many places at once. There are all many and they are all one, says the Lord." Says me about the rabbis.
[applause]
Moderator: I want to thank all our speakers. We're only at the half time here. When I was a child, we used to have little oranges that we used to eat at half time in the soccer game. We're at that stage of the evening. I want to just say a word and then Michael's going to explain what we all do now. I want to say thank you to Ron because I think in Ron we've met somebody who has spoken words that possibly haven't been spoken in this building before. Unapologetic convictions of the core historic Christian faith. I don't think we should take that for granted. We should respect the whole hospitality in which those words have been allowed to be spoken and heard and received. Yet when they come out of Ron's mouth, they're accompanied by this extraordinary generosity, this passion for justice that goes way beyond the limits of Christian faith.
I want to thank Ron for his ability to express both the orthodox historic Christian faith but to do so in such a generous manner. What we've heard-
[applause]
Moderator: Thank you. From Imam Mohammed, we've heard-- It's going to take me a long time to forget the way you expressed knowledge and mercy as being the fruits of all of G-d's creation. I think that struck I'm sure, me and many of us tonight very very deeply. Your gentleness, Imam Mohammed, is really quite ennobling for all of us to be in the presence of [unintelligible 00:03:17]
I wouldn't mind saying there must be many people here tonight who have not heard a Muslim spokesman who makes such a compelling case for their faith as you do. It's humbling to sit beside you and share in that wisdom and vision. Peter, I want to say to you that you make us all want to sing the song that you sang in that room with those two English theologians.
[laughter]
Moderator: We may or may not be moved to do the movements that go with it.
[laughter]
Moderator: Peter's, his rigor, and his playfulness are so characteristic of his tradition that we just simply want to say as you've said of the tradition of supersessionism, none of us here can do it without you and the tradition that you represent.
Peter: [unintelligible 00:04:17] Thank G-d.
Moderator: We're humbled to experience that once again. I asked three questions tonight. The first question was, what are you proud of about your own tradition? The second was, what are you grateful for in other people's traditions? The third was, what do you think your tradition might have to offer to other traditions? I'd be very surprised if anyone leaves here tonight without answers for themselves to all those questions. That's exactly what we came here to do. I'm thrilled just to sit alongside these wonderful people. Michael's now going to tell us what to do to learn more from each one of them.
Michael: We'll get a chance to ask questions in a much more maybe convivial slightly less institutional format in three different locations with each of the three speakers. You could feel free to float from room to room. It's a larger crowd than we anticipated. We had reserved the synagogue over that way for Imam Mohammed. I think that we're going to keep that discussion down here but we do ask once the speakers who need to leave have left, that folks move forward to make it a little more family-style.
We're set up with some kosher cookies in that room right up there. Let's have discussion with Peter Oakes remain there. The library is a very lovely room. There are also cookies there for discussion with Professor Sider. Please, give the speakers who are leaving a chance to leave before you get up.
Participant 1: Could you say again that those who are going to sit with Imam will be here?
Michael: Yes.
Participant 1: Very clear.
Michael: This is a chance to ask those questions. It could be the question of a co-religionist. It could be the question that you didn't get to ask even though you're not of that tradition. This is a less formal setting with a little bit less technology and a little more of a possibility for individual dialogue. Again, Professor Oakes will be up there. Professor Sider in the library. Imam Mohammed will be down here. Please, give at least the three gentlemen who'll be leaving the podium chance to do that before you move around. Thank you.
[applause]
Imam Mohammed: Can you repeat the question for me because I'm not sure that--
Moderator: The question is really why get into discussion across religious faiths? Is it because it enriches your own tradition and you're driven from your own awesome tradition or is it to show somehow you can be a good citizen and you're not going to do anybody any harm? I guess in some ways this is a particularly sharp question for Muslims. [crosstalk]
Imam Mohammed: I got it. My understanding of my religion firstly from our holy book and then from how our Prophet lived the religion on earth among us, my understanding about my religion is that your understanding of your religion or where you see your religion, where you perceive your religion it needs help from experience in the natural world. Experience with people across the water.
Our Prophet said, "Go as far as China seeking knowledge." That was the farthest place from which he was standing or situated at the time. China was the furthest place. "Go even to China in search of knowledge."
Our religion grows in our own perception as we experience life in the broad world more and more. Especially our interacting with nature itself with the material reality with an interest to gain knowledge as a scientist would approach the material existence. Our knowledge increases as we grow. Our holy books are much farther ahead than we are. Always light-years in front of us and we have to catch up. The only way to catch up is to get familiar with this creation.
G-d say he created everything that exists in the world. Sun, moon, stars, outer galaxies, everything, to feed the human mind and heart. G-d said, lastly, this is my last one, He says He broadcasted knowledge and mercy with everything He created.
Moderator: What else do you want to hear?
[laughter]
Moderator: That's it.
[laughter]
Moderator: That's it. Go home. Enjoy life.
[laughter]
Moderator: It's been nice to see you. That was great.
[applause]
[laughter]
Professor Ron Sider: I would say that I think that the biblical understanding of persons not just allows but invites and summons us to a genuine dialogue and understanding every person is made in the image of G-d, every person is my brother or sister. If I truly respect another person then I will want to truly understand who they are. That means understanding their deepest commitments and that certainly their religious commitments are at the center of that.
Also, the fact that I believe that G-d gives human beings freedom to respond to G-d or to not respond positively to G-d and that G-d wants persons to be free in society to choose religious belief according to their own will. That means I must promote a society with religious freedom. That means genuinely respecting the views of others and getting to know them.
Now, I think there is a false kind of tolerance that's dominant in this society which thinks that tolerance equals relativism and that you're not really tolerant if you say, "I think you're wrong." I think that's really a silly idea. It seems to me that obviously some things are true and some things are not. If the only kind of tolerance is relativism where I give up my claims to believe that something is true, then you've got a cheap relativism going on.
I think a high relativism says, "I think you're wrong." You think I'm wrong but we respect each other, we love each other, we insist on each other's right to believe and practice what we do believe. I think that flows out of a biblical understanding of persons.
Moderator: Thank you. I'm going to take the next two together because there is quite a few. We'll take the two at the back together if we may and we'll pick the bones out of those.
Participant 2: In your introduction Mr. Moderator, Reverend Wells said about the divine purposes, a divine purpose to our differences. I heard the panel members speaking about we're all alike. We're all same, we're all human beings. I wonder if anybody could speak about the divine purpose in our differences.
Moderator: Thank you. Stephen.
Stephen: This is perhaps mostly for Professor Oakes but maybe others would want to chime in. I'm curious if I think about the biblical category of the nations, is there biblical evidence for a relationship between the nations with Israel's G-d independent of Israel in your Bible?
Moderator: [unintelligible 00:13:24] need it.
Stephen: Yes, thinking of the Jewish Bible, particularly.
Moderator: Well, I'm going to ask Peter to speak to the question about the role of the nations in the Hebrew Bible, and then I'm going to give the other two a little bit a bit more chance to reflect on the question of whether there is a divine purpose to our differences. Peter, first of all.
Peter: Since it's such a profound question of a profound theological and political significance to me make sure I get it because I'm not-- Is the question according to the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh? Is there a way in which the nations can come together you're saying through- Tell me in relation to the G-d-- Where are you? Say it again. Our G-d- where are you? [unintelligible 00:14:16]
[applause]
Stephen: Not the nations come together, but can the individual nations relate, have a direct relationship with Israel's G-d that is independent of the people of Israel?
Peter: Well, son, they've been trying. It's called supersessionism. It means we've heard rumors through your life, oh people Israel, of a one G-d. But the [unintelligible 00:14:54] tell us that since you don't missionize among us, but practice your faith, the rumors tell us that if we too establish an intimate relation to that G-d, then our relation replaces yours. We've had several thousand years of history consequent upon that exclusion, not by the Jews but all the Jews.
To me, a third reason when I get one more in, why before I said as a Jew there's [unintelligible 00:15:34]. I don't want to say there is no life. Life isn't completed without the dialogue with Muslims and Christians, there's a third reason. It's historical because you bear our hope, and faith, and worship to the world. It's not our job. Maybe it ought to be but it wasn't given to us. It was given to you. We can't reach the world without you but humbly said we don't believe you can live without us.
Moderator: Thank you. I'm going to ask my two colleagues here to reflect on whether there is a divine purpose to our differences. If G-d could- [crosstalk] time again. We've ended up so different from one another.
Imam Mohammed: Yes. Divine purpose is stated very clearly for us in our Quran and our Holy Book. He had created all creation really, but especially man and expressively for his mercy. His mercy is two, comes in two phases. The first mercy we receive from G-d is the gift of life. Natural life and the natural world. If we are pure at heart we come to the conclusion that the seers and prophets come too in the Bible. I'm saying that because the audience is more familiar with the Bible than with the Quran.
The prophets observe the universe how orderly it is. It suggested to them that such a world could not exist, had come into existence accidentally. They call a natural beauty and order the creation, the handiwork of G-d. That's the language in the scripture Bible. The handiwork of G-d. This is the first mercy. The second mercy is the mercy that we get when we purify our hearts and become innocent like a newborn baby, and we use all of our faculties to try to please G-d and arrive at the right conclusion.
When we arrive at the conclusion that He created all the world for us as Adam was in the garden, He put him, He's created, G-d told him, "All of these things I give to you." This is for you. G-d didn't need it, He made it for us. When we come to that conclusion, that G-d made everything that exists for us and He needs nothing. He doesn't need to breathe air to live, he doesn't need to eat corn like I love corn on the cob.
But he don't need to eat anything to live. When we come to that conclusion that all of this is made for our intelligence, for us to get benefit from it, and don't forget mercy shared with humanity, shared with the world. That's G-d's purpose in our religion to give us his two portions of mercy. It's in the Bible. Double portion. [laughs]
Professor Sider: As we look around the world we see substantial common affirmations of world truths and some other things in many if not all religions. I'm eager to find all that common ground. We also see substantial difference, in fact, explicit disagreement and contradiction. It's obvious that they can't all be true, they might all be wrong, but since they contradict, not everyone can be equally right. Now, the question I think, this is one way of phrasing it is to say, did G-d will that set of contradictory religious and perhaps moral affirmations? I don't think so. I think the one creator who is the source of all truth wants everyone to believe the truth and to embrace the truth but he takes human freedoms so seriously, that same G-d wills to allow everyone to have the freedom to believe and act out what they have come to believe as true.
John Courtney Murray, the great Catholic theologians in this nation used to say that he doesn't like pluralism. He wishes everybody believed the truth but since there are a lot of different views around, he affirms the importance of pluralism and defends vigorously the right of everyone to believe what they will. I would certainly say that.
Moderator: Great. I think we've got time for a couple of more. I'm going to take one from here and one from here for now, and we'll see how we get on.
Participant 3: Hello. My question is if people disagree or if people have different beliefs, how can you as a Christian say that everybody has the right to believe what they believe if the Bible says that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? Then isn't it your moral duty almost to try to bring everybody to the truth? Because if they believe something that you don't think is true, then they might be, as the Bible say, be damned. If you love them as you say you do, wouldn't you be obligated to bring them to your truth?
Moderator: Thank you. Sound is good [unintelligible 00:22:13] Get one more. Take one.
Participant 4: How can we help each other on these major traditions, these three major traditions, understand that changes in our traditions over history-
Moderator: Thank you.
Participant 4: -so that we aren't each stuck with, in my case, 40-year-old knowledge about Islam in America? How can we do that with this same spirit of love and respect? I would say, how can we lovingly inform each other?
Moderator: Thank you. Two quite different questions there. I'm going to take a similar approach last time. I'm going to keep the first question for Ron here. You can take on that question about Jesus being the way, the truth and the life and how that affects specifically Christians thinking about other traditions. I'm going to ask my other two colleagues too, to talk a little bit about how we can help each other bring our traditions into the present tense and not simply be rituals and practices rooted in what may seem to a secularly another era. I'm going to come back to you two and I'm going to ask Ron to address the question of the unique claim to Christianity.
Professor Sider: I think that the center of the Christian tradition through the ages, from the beginning, was that Jesus of Nazareth, true G-d, and true man, is the way, the truth and the life. If you believe that, then, of course, you have a deep desire to share that with others, but you must do that in a way that is in keeping with everything else the scriptures say about the dignity of persons and the freedom of persons. One must do that in a way that respects the right of the other person to accept or not accept. You must do that in a way that isn't psychologically coercive, on and on. It must be a gentle kind of loving sharing. Not so often Christians have used the sword along with "preaching the gospel" and it has absolutely no credibility that way.
The other comment is, is just to say again that it's quite clear I think in Jesus' teaching specifically with his parable of the wheat and the tares. The story basically is that someone sows wheat and then later an enemy sows weeds in the field and they both grow up together. The question is to the masters, "Should we tear out the weeds?" The answer is, "No. Let them grow together until the harvest." Then Jesus explains it and says the field where they both grow together is the world. It's a powerful statement about religious freedom, where we insist that everyone has the freedom to be a part of society and to be respected members of it, even if we think they're very wrong. You have to put those two things together. Yes, given what I believe about Jesus, I would like to tell everyone about it.
Moderator: Thank you, Ron. Either of you would you like to speak to how we help each other grow, develop in faith?
Imam Mohammed: Yes. In our religion, according to the teachings of the prophet of our religion, the last Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, heaven is a place in the end of time where we're going to find the followers of Moses, the followers of Christ Jesus, peace be on them, and the followers of Muhammad, peace be on him. We're going to find if Muslims know their religion, most of them know that throughout the world. If we are going to have to live with each other and if we use our good senses and respect the true sentiments of a human heart, we can't think that the Muslim baby is going to hell.
Our babies die sometime right on the delivery table. Is the Muslim baby going to hell? If a Muslim has lived a good life, good life, lived the best of his human nature, he doesn't want to hurt anybody, is he going to hell? A person with a religion that says he's going to hell and the Muslim baby is going to hell, to me, they just as worse off as my father's teaching was in 1930, not '75. He hadn't made a lot of improvements.
[laughter]
Imam Mohammed: If we all going to have to share heaven, why don't we start working together right now?
Imam Mohammed: One more thing. When I feared my faith, I didn't fully believe in it. You don't have to fear your faith to another person or a person of a different faith. You have to know your faith and not fear your own weaknesses that, "Oh, I can't handle this." If it comes from the purity of a human heart, you can handle any situation.
[00:28:32] [END OF AUDIO]

