The Joy of Multi-Faith

What an exciting week for the Kwantlen Multi-Faith Centre! Last Monday evening we hosted an open house and information evening on campus. We are hoping to expand our Multi-Faith Centre to include chaplains of many different traditions and beliefs, and Monday evening was a chance to extend an invitation to a wide and beautiful array of diversity. Buddhist, Muslim, Baha’i, Humanist, and Christian were all represented. The discussion was rich, fruitful, and reflected a desire of different traditions to celebrate both unity-in-diversity and diversity-in-unity.

It’s given me another opportunity to reflect on Multi-Faith explorations from a Christian perspective, this time with the energy of a specific Multi-Faith experience in my mind. I particularly enjoyed a conversation I had with a Muslim Imam (the Muslim equivalent of a pastor), as we asked each other questions about our different religious traditions. I learned about the theological and moral significance of the Islamic month Ramadan, a time of fasting for the sake of closer communion with God, a deeper investment in Muslim faith, and the invitation to share in the experience of the poor and the hungry. It is a rich and beautiful practice that has stretched through centuries of Islam. The Imam was deeply committed to it, describing the tradition of Ramadan with an inspiring combination of humility and confidence.

Across different religious traditions there are certainly differing systems of belief. On one level, Christians and Muslims simply hold different things to be true. However, it is very important to remember that religious traditions are not merely a set of beliefs. They are always encompassed by different practices that form a community. Again, Christians and Muslims have different practices; Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper and Baptism, Muslims practice rigorous fasting during the season of Ramadan. Some practices, though, are the same: both of these traditions affirm, for example, that caring for the poor is an essential part of the life of faith.

Remembering that religious traditions are far more than just a set of beliefs is already a way past the sort of dilemma that suggests that if you don’t agree on the truth of certain beliefs (such as “Jesus Christ is God’s Word Incarnate”) then the only conversation that can be had is one arguing out who is “right” and who is “wrong”. The things that Christians claim are “true” are only “true” in the context of the practices of Christian community: taking the Lord’s supper, baptizing, reading the scriptures, caring for the poor, etc… Religious truth is not the same thing as scientific truth.

As a Christian, then, even though I may not share the same beliefs or practices of the Muslim tradition, I am not committed to arguing out the truth or falsity of certain religious statements, because I believe that religious truth is something totally different from scientific truth. When Paul writes “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” he is not talking about a mind-independent truth, but about the truth of Jesus that affects him to the core of his being, shaping him into the image of Christ, the suffering-servant King. And that is not something that can be argued for or against using rational argumentation. It is far more existential.

That is why the first reaction of a Christian to a different religious tradition is not one of antagonism, but of hospitality and interest. The practices and beliefs of Islam come from a rich and robust history of Islamic theological reflection and practice. If we can trust that the truth of Christ is deeper and more expansive than a set of beliefs, then we can also trust that God encourages us to learn and celebrate the particularity of other religious traditions. I will likely never practice Ramadan. But the practice of “knowing only Christ and him crucified” means patiently and discerningly emptying myself to receive others with hospitality, compassion, and interest. Affirming and celebrating other traditions with their specificities of belief and practice does not mean saying “all religions are the same, deep down”. It means, rather, trusting that God, as triune, does not only manifest himself as pure unity and sameness, but also as delightful difference, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We are not in a position, as Christians or as human beings in general, to make final, definitive truth statements. What we can do is live as the final and definitive truth, that is, as followers of Christ. But that does not make us the judgers of world religions. Instead, it means that we are constantly judged, judged by the scandal of Christ on the cross.

This is a difficult topic, and I don’t pretend to have gotten to the bottom of it. But for now, I celebrate and am thankful for the presence of God that emerges between Christians and Muslims and between any two people who approach relationship not with fear, antagonism, or control, but with friendship, hospitality, and open-heartedness. Jesus demands nothing less of his followers.