Interfaith Doesn't Mean Compromise
Bridging religious difference starts with being honest about those differences
One of the things I most appreciate about my friend Eboo Patel and his colleagues at Interfaith America (where I serve as a Senior Fellow) is that they take seriously the religious differences that divide us. I remember interfaith efforts when I was in college in the 1990s. Their general vibe suggested that religious differences didn’t really matter, all roads pointed to the same God, and we could do great things together if we stuck to the lowest common denominator.
That’s not how religion works for most people. It’s not how it works for Eboo or me. A genuine interfaith effort takes seriously our differences and works on relationships across those differences.
In the News
Interfaith America has been in the news recently after rebranding from its earlier incarnation, Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC). Here is Kelsey Dallas interviewing Eboo a couple of weeks ago in the Deseret News:
In announcing the new name, Patel emphasized that the phrase “interfaith America” casts a vision of what the country could be. He and his team are calling for a kind of national rebranding, an embrace of religious diversity.
“The mission of Interfaith America the institution is to help build interfaith America the nation,” he told me in a phone interview last week.
Part of that effort will include ushering out the phrase “Judeo-Christian nation” in order to usher “interfaith America” in. The former served a valuable purpose in the mid-20th century, Patel said, but it’s no longer serving us well today.
I’m more skeptical than Eboo about the “valuable purpose” of the phrase “Judeo-Christian.” It was under-inclusive of America’s religious diversity even in its heyday. And as I noted in my contribution to Eboo’s 2018 book, Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise, the phrase “obscures the particularity of religious traditions in a way that risks promoting a civil religion ultimately beholden to the state.”
I am sympathetic to Eboo’s shift to “interfaith America,” which has far better adjectival accuracy than either “Judeo-Christian America” or “Christian America.” But this new phrase leaves me wondering how Eboo’s message and organization will appeal to the growing demographic of nonbelievers. Part of the challenge of interfaith America is bridging differences with people who disclaim any transcendent views.
In my Head
The reality of an interfaith America provides an opportunity for Christians like me to engage with confidence and compassion in a world of difference. This opportunity is captured in the verse that Tim Keller and I selected as the epigraph for our book, Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference. In Ephesians 4: 1-2, the Apostle Paul exhorts Christians to: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love.”
Paul’s charge to Christians applies to anyone seeking greater empathy and understanding without minimizing significant differences. As I wrote in Uncommon Ground:
Many of our differences matter a great deal, and to suggest otherwise is ultimately a form of relativism. But we can still choose to be gracious across those differences. When we demonize the other side, we miss important insights that can only be learned through charitably understanding a different perspective. We lose the possibility of finding common ground.
Seeking common ground not only advances common interests but also bridges relational distance, a lesson that I have learned through my friendship with Eboo Patel. Eboo and I speak, teach, and write together. We talk about each other’s backgrounds, families, and dreams. We debate theories of change and great books. We laugh at each other’s jokes—at least the first time we hear them. And we mourn together. After my father was diagnosed with cancer, Eboo checked in regularly with phone calls and texts. And when my dad died, Eboo was one of the first people to reach out to me. Eboo’s prayers are quite different from mine, but I am grateful when he prays for me.
My friendship with Eboo shows how we can find common ground even when we disagree about significant matters of faith.
But what about my gratitude for Eboo’s “quite different” Muslim prayers? Does that gesture toward a kind of relativism that values all prayer the same? To the contrary, the depth of our relationship honors the depth of our disagreement. I am confident that Eboo does not share my Trinitarian understanding of prayer (e.g., Matt. 6:6-13; John 16:23-24; Rom. 8:26-27, 34). But I know that he is sincere when he prays for me, and I know that he does so because he cares about me. That itself is an expression of friendship centered around our most important convictions—and differences.
Christians also believe that God promises to bless those who bless his people (Gen. 12:3). Perhaps God in his great mercy and grace in Christ receives the prayers of my friend for my blessing. I won’t know for sure in this lifetime, but my uncertainty does not diminish my gratitude.
In the World
Today is a good day to highlight Eboo’s new book, We Need to Build.
This book has lots of insights about pluralism, difference, and interfaith work, all grounded in engaging stories (including the story of Eboo and me being protested a few years ago as we were talking about the importance of religious diversity in higher education). I think you’ll find Eboo’s writing accessible and his ideas inspiring.
John, I appreciate your clear practice of what you have previously published. Also your pondering of whether God receives the prayers of people who worship other gods. 1 Samuel 5:12 would seem to invite such ponderings. "The cry of the [Philistine] city went up to heaven."