Dialogue, Interfaith

By S. Wesley Ariarajah

In The Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, N. Lossky, J. M. Bonino, J. Pobee, T. Stransky,

G. Wainwright and P. Webb, eds., Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,Grand Rapids, MI, 1991.

Available at http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/diction.html

The struggle to comprehend the relationship between Christianity and other religious traditions
has been an important issue from the beginnings of the church.* Christian faith* was born in a
Jewish milieu. Inevitably it soon came into contact with the Graeco-Roman world. When persons
who were not of Jewish origin became Christians, controversy erupted over the basis of their
common life in a religious community made up of Jews and Gentiles (Acts 15; Gal. 2). In his letter
to the Romans, Paul seeks to clarify theologically the relationship between the Jewish religious
tradition and the Christian faith, which by then were beginning to be seen as two distinct religious
groupings. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul gave pastoral advice to people who had become
followers of Christ but had partners in marriage who continued to remain in another religious
tradition (1 Cor. 7:12-16).

The writings of the early church also show that there were divergent schools of thought on how to
understand and relate to religious life that was not based on Christian convictions. The history of
Christianity is also the history of Christian relationships, for the most part conflictual, with other
faith traditions. This survey confines itself to the period of the modern ecumenical movement and
to the development of the concept and practice of interfaith dialogue inspired by and structured
within it.

Historical background
The world missionary conference at Edinburgh in 1910 is commonly accepted as marking the
beginning of the modern ecumenical movement. This conference appealed to the 1200 delegates
sent by missionary societies and so-called younger churches (a total of only 17) to bring about
the evangelization of the world in that generation.

The question of Christian understanding of and relationship to other religious traditions was a
central issue in Edinburgh, and the section that dealt with the missionary message in relation to
non-Christian religions was by common consent the finest of all the reports produced at
Edinburgh. It spoke of the Christian encounter with the religious traditions of Asia, for example, as
being of the same order as the meeting of the New Testament church with Graeco-Roman
culture, demanding fundamental shifts in Christian self-understanding and theology. While the
evangelistic thrust predominated in the overall Edinburgh message, the discussions there
stimulated scholarly interest both in comparative religion and in exploring the Christian relation to
other faith traditions. An influential book of the period was J.N. Farquhar’s The Crown of
Hinduism, which argued that Christ fulfilled the longings and aspirations of Hinduism.

By the time of the next international missionary conference (Jerusalem 1928), considerable
controversy had arisen within the missionary movement over the approach to other religious
traditions. Some European theologians detected in liberal Protestantism, especially in the USA,
troubling arguments, however tentative, in support of a universal religion.* There was also deep
concern that what was considered “syncretistic thinking” with regard to Asian religions was
undermining the importance and urgency of Christian mission.* But the issue that dominated the
Jerusalem meeting was rising secularism in both East and West (see secularization). While
asserting that the Christian gospel provided the answers to a troubled world, the conference
affirmed the “values” in other religions and called on Christians to join hands with all believers to
confront the growing impact of secular culture.

But some participants could not agree with Jerusalem’s positive affirmation of other faiths and
maintained that the Christian gospel is unique among religious traditions. Thus, even though the
message was unanimously accepted (largely due to the drafting skills of William Temple), the
Christian attitude to other faiths became a highly controversial issue shortly after the Jerusalem
meeting. At the heart of the post-Jerusalem dispute was the Report of the Commission of
Appraisal of the Laymen’s Foreign Mission Enquiry, edited by W.E. Hocking, which criticized the
exclusive attitude of Christians towards other faiths and claimed that the challenge to the
Christian faith came not from other faiths but from anti-religious and secular movements. In
response, the leadership of the missionary movement commissioned Hendrik Kraemer, the well-
known Dutch missiologist then working as a missionary in Java, to write a book on the biblical
and theological basis of the Christian attitude to other faiths. Kraemer’s The Christian Message in
a Non-Christian World became the preparatory study book for the next international missionary
conference in Tambaram, India, in 1938.

Kraemer, following Karl Barth, insisted that the biblical faith, based on God’s encounter with
humankind, is radically different from all other forms of religious faith. Admitting that God’s will
shines through, albeit in a broken way, in the all-t oo-human attempts to know God in all religious
life, Kraemer maintained that the only true way to know the revealed will of God is by responding
to the divine intervention in history in Christ. Both Barth and Kraemer considered Christianity as a
religion to be as human as any other. But neither could avoid giving, at least by implication, a
unique place to Christianity in so far as it had become the vehicle through which the unique
revelation* of God is lived and proclaimed.

Despite Kraemer’s impact on Tambaram and subsequent missionary thinking, there were many
dissenting voices. A.G. Hogg, H.H. Farmer, T.C. Chao and others challenged Kraemer’s view that
the gospel was in discontinuity with other religious traditions. They witnessed to what they were
convinced was a “two-way traffic” between God and the human soul in the religious life and
experience of others. It was inconceivable to them that God had no witnesses among the nations
of the earth. All participants agreed on the special revelatory character of the Christ event, but
many had difficulty with Kraemer’s view of religions as “totalitarian systems” of human thought
and practice. Thus, although the Tambaram report leaned heavily towards Kraemer’s views, it
acknowledged that “Christians are not agreed” on the revelatory character of other religious
traditions and identified this as “a matter urgently demanding thought and united study” within the
ecumenical movement.

Post-Tambaram developments
Not long after Tambaram, Europe became embroiled in the second world war, and other
concerns demanded the attention of the missionary movement. When the International
Missionary Council* (IMC) turned its attention again to Christian relations to other faith traditions
once the war was over, it was a different world. Nationalism was sweeping through the newly
independent states in Asia and Africa, and with it came a revival of religious traditions. The
churches, awakened to the need to express their unity in a world shattered by war, had come
together in Amsterdam in 1948 to form the WCC. Both the IMC and the WCC’s department on
evangelism were eager to follow up on the unfinished Tambaram debate on other faiths.

One of the strategies adopted was to set up a number of study centres around the world that
would address the question in concrete historical situations. Another was a long-term joint study
on “The Word of God and the Living Faiths of Men”, which sought to take the discussion beyond
Tambaram and the continuity-discontinuity polarity.

A great deal of attention was focused on Asia, where outstanding work on the issue was carried
out by Paul Devanandan, D.T. Niles, Sabapathy Kulendran and others. Devanandan’s address to
the New Delhi assembly of the WCC (1961) – at which the IMC was integrated into the WCC -
challenged the churches to take seriously the experience of the younger churches in the newly
independent countries, where they had to work and struggle together with peoples of different
religious traditions in nation-building.

In this context the concept of dialogue appears in the New Delhi statement as a way of speaking
about Christian relations with people of other faith traditions. This was further considered at the
first world mission gathering under WCC auspices in Mexico City in 1963. A more significant
discussion took place at the East Asia Christian Conference assembly in Bangkok in 1964. Its
statement on “Christian Encounter with Men of Other Beliefs”, incorporating much of the re-
thinking in Asia in relation to other faiths, took the debate at many points beyond the Tambaram
controversy.

A WCC conference in Kandy, Sri Lanka, in 1967, proved to be a landmark both as the beginning
of serious interest in interfaith dialogue as such in the WCC, and as the first involvement in the
ecumenical discussion of the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians. In Kandy Kenneth Cragg
challenged in a fundamental way the Barth-Kraemer attitude to religions that had so dominated
Protestant thinking during the previous decades.

Developments within the Roman Catholic Church

There were in fact significant differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics in their
general theological orientation towards other religions. The Protestant missions tended to place
enormous emphasis on Christology and on the need to respond to the message of the gospel as
a way to salvation.* While the attitude to other faiths had not always been negative, it had tended
to be neutral at best on the question of salvation outside a response to Christ. This gave rise to a
sense of urgency to bring the message of the gospel to the nations of the world.

Roman Catholic theology placed greater emphasis on ecclesiology. Salvation is a free gift of
God* offered in Christ to one who has faith in Christ. This faith is expressed by being baptized
and becoming part of the church, which was instituted by Christ to carry on his saving work.
Within the overall concept of the church as the sign and sacrament of the saving work of Christ
available to all humankind, Roman Catholic theology could provide for the possibility of salvation
to those who had not explicitly become members of the church. With reference to those who had
lived before the ministry of Jesus and those who had had no opportunity to hear the message,
Roman Catholic theology developed the idea of “implicit faith” or “faith by intention”, so that no
one was “lost” simply because he or she was born at a particular time or place which made it
impossible to become part of the historical expression of the church. Salvation offered in Christ is
mysteriously available to all who seek to fulfill the will of God; it is possible to be incorporated into
the sacrament of the paschal mystery, the church, by intention.

These thoughts were developed in the 1960s by French cardinal Jean Daniélou and German
theologian Karl Rahner. In so doing these two prominent Catholic thinkers spelled out the
theological implications of some of the positive developments at the Second Vatican Council
regarding the question of other faiths.

The Roman Catholic Church (like the WCC and many of its member churches) has had a long
history of relating to the Jewish people. During Vatican II* it was decided that a similar relation
should be developed with the followers of other religions as well. Pope Paul VI thus established a
special secretariat (later a pontifical council) for relationships with non-Christians; and the papal
encyclical Ecclesiam Suam emphasized the importance of positive encounter between Christians
and people of other faith traditions. The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-
Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), promulgated on 28 October 1965, spelled out the pastoral
dimensions of this relationship. Other key Vatican II documents, such as the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity
(Ad Gentes), included important pointers to a dialogical attitude towards people of other religious
traditions.

Although Vatican II did not develop clear theological positions on other religions, it did, by
opening up the issue in the direction of interfaith dialogue, mark a new phase in the relationships
of the Roman Catholic Church, in all parts of the world, with people of other faiths. The
preparatory materials for the Kandy meeting included Nostra Aetate and parts of Lumen Gentium.

The dialogue controversy

The Kandy meeting affirmed dialogue as the most appropriate approach in interfaith relation; and
after the Uppsala assembly (1968) the WCC commission on World Mission and Evangelism
engaged Stanley J. Samartha of India to pursue with greater intensity a study begun some years
earlier on “The Word of God and the Living Faiths of Men”. A turning point in this study was the
first multifaith dialogue convened under WCC auspices: Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian
participants came to Ajaltoun, Lebanon, in 1970, not only to consult about inter-religious dialogue,
but also actually to engage in it. Two months later, a WCC consultation in Zurich evaluated
theologically the experience of dialogue in Ajaltoun and produced a report that became the
fundamental document on the basis of which the WCC central committee, meeting in Addis
Ababa in 1971, created a new Sub-unit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies,
with Samartha as its director.

The establishment of the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Christians and the WCC Sub-unit on
Dialogue heightened the visibility of interfaith dialogue in the life of the churches. The secretariat
published materials promoting interfaith dialogue and encouraged closer collaboration between
Christians and others in local situations. The WCC Dialogue Sub-unit organized bilateral dialogue
meetings with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists and sought to clarify the meaning and
significance of interfaith dialogue.

Basically, interfaith dialogue was understood as an encounter between people who live by
different faith traditions, in an atmosphere of mutual trust and acceptance. Dialogue did not
require giving up, hiding or seeking to validate one’s own religious conviction; in fact, the need for
being rooted in one’s own tradition to be engaged in a meaningful dialogue was emphasized, as
were common humanity and the need to search in a divided world for life in community. Dialogue
was seen as a way not only to become informed about the faiths of others but also to rediscover
essential dimensions of one’s own faith tradition. The benefits of removing historical prejudices
and enmities as well as the new possibilities for working together for common good were
recognized and affirmed.

Within this general framework individual theological explorations have yielded a variety of points
of view. Some see dialogue primarily as a new and creative relationship within which one can
learn about and respect others but also can give authentic witness* to one’s own faith. Others see
it as an important historical moment in the development of religious traditions, in which each of
the faith traditions in dialogue is challenged and transformed by the encounter with others. Still
others view dialogue as a common pilgrimage towards the truth, within which each tradition
shares with the others the way it has come to perceive and respond to that truth.

Within the Christian tradition, the practice of dialogue has raised questions regarding the
theological assumptions about other faiths at the heart of Christian mission. Suspicion of interfaith
dialogue among some Christians surfaced in the open controversy at the WCC’s fifth assembly
(Nairobi 1975). For the first time, five persons of other faiths were invited to a WCC assembly as
special guests and took part in the discussions of the section on “Seeking Community”, where the
dialogue issue was debated. Plenary discussion of the report of this section highlighted the deep
disagreement within the church on the issue of dialogue. Fears were expressed that dialogue
would lead to the kind of syncretism* against which the 1928 Jerusalem meeting warned, or that it
would compromise faith in the uniqueness and finality of the revelation in Christ, or that it would
threaten mission seen as fundamental to the being of the church itself. As in Tambaram, Asian
voices in particular defended dialogue as the most appropriate way for the church to live in a
pluralistic world. The assembly referred the report back to the drafting group, which added a
preamble to meet the hesitations expressed at the plenary.

But Nairobi made clear the urgent need to clarify further the nature, purpose and limits of
interfaith dialogue and to give more detailed attention to issues of syncretism, indigenization,
culture,* mission, etc. Evaluating the debate, the WCC central committee authorized a major
theological consultation to pursue further the questions raised at the assembly. That meeting, on
the theme “Dialogue in Community”, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 1977, aimed to clarify the
Christian basis for seeking community with others and to draw up guidelines for Christian
communities in pluralistic situations, in order that they might become communities of service and
witness, without compromising their commitment to Christ.

The Chiang Mai consultation affirmed that dialogue is neither a betrayal of mission nor a “secret
weapon” of proselytism but a way “in which Jesus Christ can be confessed in the world today”.
The Chiang Mai meeting led to the formulation of “Guidelines on Dialogue”, adopted by the WCC
central committee in 1979 and commended to the churches for study and action.

Within the Roman Catholic Church, there were similar problems. All agreed on the need to
develop positive and friendly relations with people of other faiths and on the value of interfaith
dialogue for mutual understanding and collaboration. But the plenary commission of the
secretariat also had to draw up guidelines that dealt with the purpose and goals of dialogue so
that it was seen within the overall convictions of the church; the relationship of dialogue to
mission remained a persistent problem also in Roman Catholic discussions. In general, dialogue
and mission have been affirmed as legitimate activities of the church. The initial guidelines sought
to avoid placing dialogue at the service of mission, a view advocated by some within both the
Roman Catholic Church and the member churches of the WCC.

After many revisions, arising from disagreements among Catholics on the theological basis of
dialogue, a version was officially accepted and issued by Pope John Paul II in 1984 under the title
“The Attitude of the Church towards the Followers of Other Religions: Reflections and
Orientations on Dialogue and Mission”. Like the preamble to the WCC’s Nairobi report, it stressed
the missionary vocation of the church, even as it sought to exhort Christians to be in a
relationship of dialogue with others. But the pressure to clarify further the dialogue-mission
relation was so great that, not long after the proclamation of this statement, the secretariat had to
begin work on a document that specifically dealt with “Dialogue and Proclamation”.

Dialogue in the churches

While the theological issues continue to be discussed, dialogue activities have been more and
more accepted at the local level. A number of churches have expanded their desks on
ecumenical affairs to include an interfaith component. Some churches and councils have created
staff positions to promote interfaith dialogue. There has been an increase in the number of local
and international interfaith councils. Interest in interfaith prayer was further kindled by the call
issued by Pope John Paul II to leaders of all religious communities to come together in Assisi in
1986 to pray for peace, an event that attracted media attention.

Interfaith dialogue today takes place at many levels. There is the continuing dialogue of life in all
pluralistic situations. There is intentional dialogue, or discourse, where persons come together to
share and converse on specific issues. There are academic dialogues among scholars, as well as
spiritual dialogues, emphasizing prayer and meditation. Zen and Benedictine monasteries, for
example, exchange monks each year to learn from each other’s meditative practices. In India
there are weekend live-in sessions where people of diverse traditions come together for exposure
to each other’s prayer life and to participate in common devotions. There is a proliferation of
books and articles on interfaith dialogue and the challenge of pluralism.*
Dialogue as a continuing ecumenical concern
Evidence of the overall impact of the programme on dialogue was clear at the WCC’s sixth
assembly (Vancouver 1983). The number of guests of other faiths rose to 15, and four made
presentations to plenary sessions. Interfaith dialogue was an integral part of the assembly’s
extensive visitors’ programme. In the section on “Witness in a Divided World”, there was no
serious disagreement on the need for interfaith dialogue. There was, however, much controversy
over the theology of religions, with a number of participants challenging a statement in the report
that spoke of God’s hand active in the religious life of our neighbours. Whether other religious
traditions are vehicles of God’s redeeming activity became a hotly debated issue.

Evaluating the experience of Vancouver, the Dialogue sub-unit identified theology of religions as
an important issue for sustained study. A four-year study project - “My Neighbour’s Faith - and
Mine: Theological Discoveries through Interfaith Dialogue” – was launched with the distribution of
a study booklet that was eventually translated into 18 languages, in order to raise the awareness
of plurality in the churches and to explore how Christians today may look theologically at other
traditions of faith. For the first time in the history of its mission conferences, the WCC invited
consultants from other faith traditions to its tenth such conference, in San Antonio, Texas (1989),
where the relationship of Christianity to other faiths and the challenge of dialogue to Christian
understandings of mission and evangelism were among the major issues discussed. The
preparation for the WCC’s seventh assembly (Canberra 1991) was preceded by a major
consultation on the theology of religions (Baar 1990). Representatives of other religious and
indigenous traditions, including the Australian Aboriginal and Islander peoples, played a
significant role in the Canberra programme, creating controversy and new interest both in gospel
and culture and in the theological understanding of other religious traditions. A four-year study on
gospel and culture* in the churches led to a report to the next world mission conference in Bahia,
Brazil (1996). Issues in the theology of religions were followed up in Baar II (1993).

The WCC’s eighth assembly (Harare 1998) provided additional opportunities for wider
participation of persons of other faiths in an assembly. The padare (meeting place) programme
enabled a succession of interfaith encounters between Christians and peoples of other faiths to
be organized within the context of the assembly itself. Within the WCC, the post-Harare period
has been marked by increased cooperation between the Office on Inter-religious Relations
(successor to the Sub-unit on Dialogue in the WCC’s new structure) and those programmes of
the Council that deal with issues such as education, health, indigenous peoples, international
relations and youth. Collaboration between the office and the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious
Dialogue has also further developed. Joint studies have led to joint publications on interfaith
prayer, interfaith marriages and the spiritual significance of Jerusalem.* A study project on the
contribution of Africa to world religiosity is under way, involving various aspects of African-
inspired religion.

Within the ecumenical family interfaith dialogue will continue to remain a profoundly important, if
controversial, issue. The challenge it brings to the ecumenical movement is far-reaching. It
summons the church to seek a new self-understanding in its relation to other religions. It requires
it to look for deeper resources to deal with the reality of plurality, and it calls the church to new
approaches to mission and witness.