I’ve just finished reading The INTRAfaith Conversation: How do Christians Talk Among Ourselves About INTERfaith Matters? By Susan M. Strouse and found it an interesting read. Full disclosure: as fate would have it, my cousin, who was also pastor of a German-speaking Lutheran church in San Francisco happens to know Susan and has a high opinion of her.

A quote from Choan-Seng Song’s book Doing Theology Today might serve well as a touchstone for Strouse’s approach when he defines theology as “’the pursuit of the heart of Being’…. For Song it is the ‘believing heart’ that informs our theology and is central to what he calls the ‘intense conversation’ we have with the stories of our relationship with God.’ (p. 42-43). The stories are at root autobiographical, as I believe all good storytelling is.

This stands both in continuity and contrast with St. Anselm’s famous “faith seeking understanding” statement, and subsequent explanation in his Proslogion. Whereas Anslem would stress that belief necessarily precedes any attempt at understanding, not everyone sees it that way. Anselm would also likely have placed a lot more emphasis on logic and less on “intense conversation” to arrive at the essence of the matter. I suspect he wouldn’t have had much patience with the Jesus Project and its voting procedure.

A passionate promoter of interfaith encounters, Strouse encourages us to venture beyond the boundaries of our Western “Christian bubble” (p.67). Setting the stage, she describes exclusivist, inclusivist and pluralist categories for evaluating Christians’ reactions to the challenges of intrafaith and interfaith discourses. The categories are easy enough to understand, and I suspect everyone will have no trouble identifying candidates for each from their own experience.

As helpful as it is, such characterizations carry with them the danger of simplistic profiling and stereotypical analysis. Everyone isn’t always who they happen to appear to be at any given moment. Likewise, doing theology involves lots more than simply dealing with other people and their opinions. At a minimum, Strouse claims that “mutual respect” accompany interfaith/intrafaith efforts. Mutual respect for people may indeed require unwavering love for them, but it doesn’t necessarily entail mutual respect for their theological (or any other) conclusions, it seems to me.

I was surprised to read in Strouse’s description of Teasdale’s interspirituality that part of the exercise is to appropriate parts of other spiritual traditions that one found “useful” on one’s own journey. Since when has religion become “useful,” a mere tool, so to speak? In what project is such a spirituality being employed? Such behavior resonates with the possibility of all sorts of pathology, ranging from “Cafeteria Christianity” through Western capitalist thought, a variety of “-isms,” and Robert Moore’s infantile narcissistic grandiosity.

Something of a recovery appears to be in play in Strouse’s discussion of kataphatic/apophatic, exoteric/esoteric distinctions, but I disagree with her that simply using the term “spirituality’ preferentially “removes the difficulties of an interfaith theology and reframes the conversation in terms of an interfaith spirituality.’ Astonishingly, this sentence is followed by “However it does not address, nor does it claim to address, the issues of differences within the traditions.”

How then, does one “do” theology? It seems to me that we cannot have our cake and simultaneously eat it. My Muslim friends have no interest in a theology that even remotely resembles the Christian Trinitarian theology, nor do my Jewish friends have any time for Jesus the Messiah. Where might we even begin?

One place, not mentioned in Strouse’s book, is Assisi. In 1986, 160 religious leaders, representing 32 Christian denominations and 11 other non-Christian world religions met at Assisi to pray, not together, but simply in the same place. Theology was not discussed. Love was. Differences were apparent. So was kindness. The exercise has been repeated several times since then, with varying results, ranging from excoriation by the “exclusivists,” as Strouse might characterize them, and plaudits from the pluralists.

“Passing over” to other faiths is discussed at several points in the book. The practice, described in much more detail in Paul Knitter’s Without the Buddha I Could Not be a Christian, involves serious engagement of another faith tradition, with an eventual return to one’s own with an enhanced and enriched sense of what it actually contains. Not for the faint of heart, the lost or merely curious, or for the spiritually insecure, passing over and returning seems to me to be something best done by people confident about their own traditions, and unthreatened by what honest examination other traditions might require of them spiritually and intellectually.

Strouse states that she wishes to face the challenge of transitioning her church from one that “had been designed for Baby Boomers to one that would meet the needs of Generation X.” (p. 116). I wonder if she has identified the target properly, and if Martin Luther or anyone else would agree with her that any church needs to be “designed.” Perhaps it is something else altogether that needs to be “designed.” It was G.K. Chesterton who observed that Christianity hadn’t been tried and found wanting, but rather that it had never been tried. We seem to be in a perennial Holy Saturday holding pattern. Just how surprised do we want to be on Easter?

Rather than the procedure described in Strouse’s book, I would invite anyone serious about the intrafaith/interfaith discussion to study what happened (and how it happened) at Assisi in 1986, reflect on the ELCA’s proposed policy document: A Declaration of Inter-religious Commitment and the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate.

Those who would enjoy reading about one pastor's struggle to encourage his/her congregation to engage in interfaith exercises would enjoy this book. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.