A generation ago one would not expect the prime minister of Canada to gather representatives of nearly a dozen faiths to mourn and stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors of a disaster. A Christian service would have sufficed. Yet a couple of weeks after the Boxing Day tsunami, the federal and Ontario governments were among the groups who sponsored public events with a multifaith focus.
This posture for public mourning is markedly different than that practiced a mere three years ago. That time the government outraged religious people of all persuasions when its memorial service for victims of the 9/11 attacks took a purely secular approach—no prayer; no mention of God.
Both these scenarios pose questions for believers. Both reflect realities we must face.
A short generation ago most Canadians considered themselves Christian and few could count any Hindus or Muslims, Jews or Sikhs among their friends and acquaintances. Religion was much more geographically constrained and people tended to live in proximity to others who shared their spiritual convictions.
No longer. Especially in the western democracies where people of many different faiths now live and work together, practitioners of all the world’s great religions are struggling to come to terms with the multifaith reality of our present day circumstances. Nowadays, any acknowledgement of the divine in public life is apt to involve interfaith activity.
This is happening not only on the large stage of national politics, but in countless neighbourhoods, schools, towns and cities—wherever people of different faiths rub shoulders each day as they celebrate holidays and religious festivals and participate in civic occasions.
There are benefits to this mingling of diversities, advantages for our social and religious cultures as well as for the individuals who bother to get involved.
At the very least, people of faith gain strength when they realize they are not alone in resisting the dispiriting features of the secular landscape. They come to understand that even though no particular religion will be accorded any special status, the religious impulse is still recognized as important and its institutions are granted a respectful hearing.
Once they actually meet and mingle, devotees of many religions are often surprised to discover they do share some common ground—that they can present a united message of communal comfort or celebration; that they can be work together on issues such as ecology, peace, justice, moral suasion or disaster relief; that they can simply join with each other to thank God for anything that gains the gratitude of the community.
Appearing with people of other faiths and cooperating on public projects can be a tangible demonstration of loving one’s God and loving one’s neighbour.
Interfaith activity is good when it helps to reduce needless religious tension. It is good when it teaches us to give thanks. It is good when it helps us appreciate goodness where we may not expect it, good when it sublimates human autonomy and positions the divine as the source and centre of all human activity.
Persistent problems
But there are difficulties as well. One is the niggling feeling that we’re allowing a secular society to set our spiritual agenda. We bristle at a secular summons to “mind our manners” and appear on stage in our religious finery like a noble savage paraded before a curious colonial crowd. We resist being used as props to promote a doctrine of government-sanctioned and defined multiculturalism.
Alan Bulley, a Quebec-based participant in the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association list-serve discussion group, thinks this element of the multifaith reality diminishes the dignity of all religious groups who are “invited to do their party piece and go home.
“The proceedings might add an air of solemnity, but the particular gods invoked don’t really matter—as long as there are enough of them to claim to have represented the cultural mosaic,” he says.
And it gets tougher. From a Christian perspective (and in some other faiths too) the problems run even deeper than the political, geographic, cultural and linguistic barriers that render us strange to each other. They are theological as well.
As an opinion rendered by the Lutheran Church of Australia puts it: “In authentic worship God’s people come into the presence of the true God to be served by him and to respond to him with their sacrifices of prayer, praise and thanksgiving. An encounter between God’s people and a false god is not authentic worship [emphasis added]. According to the first and greatest commandment, such false worship is idolatry.”
So, to participate “in an act of worship in which a God other than the Triune God is acknowledged and addressed as the true God” is not a legitimate Christian option.
Interfaith advocates often try to avoid offending the particular sensitivities of religious groups. A long-favoured but increasingly discredited approach has been to produce “neutral” services, which effectively require practitioners of particular religions to check their distinctive identities at the door to the sanctuary.
While such services may not offend, it’s hard to see what they actually accomplish. There is something deeply unsatisfying about suspending our religious particularity and identity. Why bother?
The Lutheran statement goes on to stipulate that “Christians may not participate in acts of worship where the deity is addressed as ‘God’ but where this term is deliberately and consistently left undefined and vague. Such acts of worship are attempts to mix different faiths; at best they give an ambiguous witness to the true God… who is a jealous God.”
What is “kosher” for Christians?
Problems like these have prompted groups in many countries to issue guidelines to help people of various faiths come together for the right reasons in an appropriate manner.
The Australian Council on Liturgy notes, for example, that “a service which blends items from a variety of Christian and non-Christian sources is not recommended because of the inherent dangers of syncretism (thoughtless confusion of different faith traditions), indifferentism (“we all believe in the one god anyway”); and idolatry (giving worship to that which is not God).
“A multi-faith service in serial form allows those present to share in the worship of other faiths only to the extent they feel able, so that they are praying in one another’s presence but not necessarily praying together.”
Respectful presence
In our country, the Canadian Council of Churches has prepared a very brief set of guidelines to foster an affirming presence among people of different religions at events which give “all participants the freedom to speak from their own traditions faithfully, and the responsibility to respect other traditions fully” (www.ccc-cce.ca/english/faith/guidelines.htm).
They stipulate that “each participating leader should be free to pray from within his or her own tradition, and to read from texts that are considered sacred in his or her own tradition,” and that “leaders may speak positively about their own tradition, not negatively about other faith traditions.”
Virtually everyone insists it is inappropriate to seek converts at interfaith or multifaith events. These are times for respectful presence, humble listening and positive demonstrations of religious devotion.
Setting aside the impulse to witness to the exclusivity of Jesus Christ does not come easy to evangelical Christians, who on the whole tend to resist interfaith activity. But this too is changing. Interfaith “worship” may not be a legitimate Christian option, but showing proper respect for others (regardless of their faith) is part of the Christian calling.
Celebrating together with people from other religious traditions and learning from their habits of gratitude or devotion can serve to strengthen our own particular witness. And there’s really nothing stopping us from praying with each other, even if we are not technically praying together.
Terry Tiessen, professor of Systematic Theology at Providence Seminary and author of Who Can be Saved? Reassessing Salvation in Christ and World Religions (InterVarsity; 2004), has wrestled long and hard with this and similar questions.
“If there is a mutual recognition that we each love God according to the knowledge we now have of him, there may be reason for a Christian and a non-Christian to pray when they are together,” he suggests. “[This must be done] in an attitude of respect for the other’s sincere quest for God, provided both acknowledge that they are each praying about the same concern but they are not praying ‘together.’”
As Tiessen sees it, “In a public gathering, this would be more in the form of a succession of prayers within the context, perhaps, of a community event, in which members of different religions share a common goal and do not want their participation to be completely secular.
“That is quite different than a coordinated act of worship, which is inappropriate for Christians,” he says.
“Living in a religiously plural society, we who are religious should not behave together secularly, as though we were all atheists. We want to reduce inter-religious tension without blurring the significance of the religious differences between us.
“Being faithful to God and his revealed truth will keep us from becoming relativistic pluralists, but it will also prevent us from privatizing faith,” says Tiessen.
