Faithful in Multifaith

There can be no doubt regarding the plurality of religious and secular worldviews and practices in Canada. The situation at Kwantlen Polytechnic University is no different. This university serves as something of a microcosm, if not for all of Canada then certainly for south-western British Columbia; there are many significant and visible cultural, ethnic, and religious groups on campus. In fact, I don’t think identifying a majority is even possible. We are all “visible minorities,” as far as I can tell.

It is in response to such a cultural milieu that a Multifaith Centre such as the one here at Kwantlen is established and becomes a locus of important dialogue, conversation, and practice. What, though, precisely is a “Multifaith Centre”? And how might a Christian community participate in such an initiative?

In a country like Canada, in a city like Surrey, in a university like Kwantlen, globalization is a palpable reality. However, what evidently does not take place in this process of cultural and ethnic diffusion is the reduction of all differences into the same.  There is no neutral archetype of a human person or human community which everyone in the world slowly slips towards thanks to globalization. This is not to say that there are not attempts to erase difference (consider the travesty and tragedy of residential schools or the more benign and bland attempts of certain spiritual traditions to make everyone is the same by suggesting that "deep down" there are no differences). However, religious commitment and cultural tradition are not easily or simply eliminated.

A Multifaith Centre affirms and celebrates these differences. Different traditions, cultures, and religions can come to this centre and find a place to explicitly explore their own tradition, delve deeply into it, but always in the context of others who are doing the same with their own traditions. The aim is not to find the basic commonality of all these varied traditions and abandon the supposedly superfluous aspects of distinctive doctrine, practice, or lifestyle.

How, then, might a Christian community engage this sort of centre? I would suggest that it is by being thoroughly attentive to our own tradition. And what does the Christian tradition consist of? Of course, within Christianity we have to acknowledge a vast array of differences. However, speaking about Christianity within a Multifaith context, I would appeal to four central aspects of Christian practice identified by Rowan Williams: baptism, bible, Eucharist, and prayer. These are not things we check at the door of the Multifaith Centre, but we bring them in with us, exploring and imagining what they mean when they are put alongside the practices and traditions of other faiths and religions.

Of course some commonalities will arise. Celebrating difference does not mean ignoring or neglecting what can truly be shared. But such commonality is not authentic if it is imposed from the outset, if certain faith communities are told to abandon their practices and come with only their doctrine or intellectual tradition to a falsely ‘neutral’ and ‘rational’ interfaith dialogue on the intellectual aspect of a tradition alone. No tradition is devoid of practices, and so to be authentically Multifaith must include all the various practices of a tradition.

Christian witness is not about converting non-Christians to our pattern of belief and practice. Of course we are not entirely devoid of reasons for holding onto our Christian tradition, but Christian witness is not convincing everyone that they are “wrong” compared to to our “right” beliefs. Rather, it means faithfully attending to Christian practices of baptism, scripture reading, the Lord’s Supper, and prayer, practices that Christians for centuries have affirmed open us to the presence of the Trinity at work in all creation, in all people, regardless of their cultural, religious, or intellectual background. And if we are able to be attentive to the work of the triune God in all things then I suspect we will soon be echoing Jesus’ words in Matthew 8.10: “Truly I tell you, not even in Israel (read: Church, Christianity) have I found such faith”.