When I co-founded the Selah Center of the Poncey-Highlands with Dr. Graham Walker, in partnership with Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, we had high hopes for its successful interaction among religious faiths. As the Director of Interfaith Dialogue and Spiritual Practices I was eager to bring a variety of faith expressions into contact with each other. In many ways, we did begin that process with a Hindu community in the area. We were also able to partner with several artists and art galleries in the community, and we hosted various theatre presentations. We also began a health and wellness program offering yoga and more rigorous "boot camp" classes.
It was interesting how open, for the most part, everyone was to exploring different creative expressions of faith (or no faith). What surprised me the most was how difficult it was to get those within Christianity itself to discourse with one another. We were even asked to leave the SBC because of 1) our female pastor and 2) the Selah Center and some of its "pagan" practices. Now, at Druid Hills I will say that we did have a huge variety of Christians from conservative to liberal who worshiped together each week. It was a truly fascinating phenomenon. There were often conflicts, but we were always able to stay together. No splits, at least while I was there, like Baptists love to do so much.
As I began thinking more about inter-faith dialogue, I began to realize how difficult it would be to bring fundamentalists into conversation with each other. Based on my experience, within the community and within my own family, it seemed impossible. I recently had a discussion with Father Chris DeGiovine at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY, and he seemed so much more optimistic about this possibility than I did. So, I have been thinking more seriously about the possibility for fundamentally different worldviews to come together in discourse. It is one thing when two or more groups are willing to participate in hospitality with the "other" and retain a certain vulnerability within the dialogue (which is essential), but it is another thing entirely when two groups often clash in the most violent ways ideologically, and often physically.
How does one reconcile this issue? How do you persuade a radical fundamentalist to come into conversation with one of another faith (or no faith)? Will they always proselytize? Can they truly listen to the "other?" Equally problematic, liberals also often want nothing to do with that conversation. They can actually be just as resistant to fundamentalist views as fundamentalists are to liberal views. That is, they are often highly intolerant of intolerance.
Theologically and philosophically, how does one proceed? Levinas and Buber are nice, perhaps idealistic, approaches. Habermas's approach is completely idealistic in my mind, though it does hold definite possibilities. Is a more Derridean approach acceptable? Can we enter into a more complex hospitality or hyperbolic responsibility? What of the madness of undecidability?
As we peer into the face of Tillich's God beyond God, Eckhart's Godhead, Nietzsche's death of the God of certainty, M.C. Taylor's absent absence of the holy, the radical alterity of God, or Otto's wholly other, what do we come out with on the other side? How does this help our ongoing inter-faith conversations?
Perhaps most importantly, then, is this question: do different models of God actually help the conversation? Clearly demarcated perceptions of God I think are a necessity, but are different models of God?
