Working with idolaters, infidels, and the impious: can interfaith discourse work?
I've seen interfaith dialogue work
really well,
kind of ineptly, and
really,
really badly.1 I've noticed some things that make a difference in
where on the spectrum an effort is likely to fall. So, some observations.
To people who are interested in it at all, religion is generally an important ( Read more... )
To people who are interested in it at all, religion is generally an important ( Read more... )
Comments 17
I am sorry all over again for what they put you through. :(
Reply
Reply
Privilege. Look who does it and who would never do it.
Reply
Reply
This will allow you to filter on those who are at least able to own their tradition in speaking about it; whether the privileged will resist the temptation to not do so is another question.
But it is vastly easier to control a group by controling its membership than to police the general public.
Reply
Reply
Reply
And the notion was, effectively, throw off structure and new and beautiful patterns will arise.
And, indeed, as anyone who has put discussion software into groups that were previously disconnected has seen, that does happen. Incredible things happen. The early days of Echo, the early days of usenet, the early days of Lucasfilms Habitat, over and over again, you see all this incredible upwelling of people who suddenly are connected in ways they weren't before.
And then, as time sets in, difficulties emerge. [...]
And the [new users] weren't terribly interested in sophisticated adult conversation. They were interested in fart jokes. [...]
And the adults who had set up Communitree were horrified, and overrun by these students. The place that was founded on open access had too much open access, too much openness. They couldn't defend themselves against their own users. The place that was founded on free speech had too much freedom. They had no way of saying "No, that's ( ... )
Reply
Beside privilege (which I'm taking to mean, "part of the locally dominant group") and not being used to opposition, there's probably also a reason to be found in absolute phrasing being a form of identity assertion. Inversely, relativizing or limiting language would be a form of self-denial. You can do it with effort but judging from its general lack in many areas it's not a natural mode of speaking. Relatedly:
because you lose any claim that you are interested in learning and listening. Preachers participating under false pretenses--yeah, ban those guys. But there are types that're actually interested but will unexpectedly explode later ( ... )
Reply
One Christian on that site has said publicly that to qualify his language in any way is to deny his faith. I had hoped he was unusual in being that extreme, but I'm starting to think he's unusual not in that but in admitting it. There are several users who routinely assert their beliefs as truth -- and get away with it because of majority privilege, including moderators who agree with them. (A new moderator was recently appointed who is more sensitive to these matters. Time will tell if he makes enough of a difference. It's not like any moderator really likes to confront a fellow moderator, after all.)
I'm sure you've heard of the ( ... )
Reply
I suspect that to some extent this breaks down by evangelical/non- as well. Traditions with other foci for spiritual fire seem like they should do better when asked to stop spilling it on everyone;--since they don't define themselves as much around pure charismatics it'd be less of a self-denial.
(At least in the RC Church, I saw a good emphasis on evangelization through virtue of action rather than by haranguing. In this context it would presumably translate as "win followers through welcoming treatment and compelling explanation rather than by force of opinion and/or the moderator's hammer." This is, of course, an ideal--individuals' implementations vary.)
Reply
Yes, and I should have called that out. On the site where this is working very badly, it's coming from the evangelists. One prominent user is Eastern Orthodox and he is not part of the problem; he's serving as a good example, not a bad one. The site hasn't had too many (known) Catholics, but from what I've seen there, and what I've seen from my Catholic friends, they don't tend toward this sort of thing either.
Reply
If you approach a discussion as "we are all parties who are interested in this topic" and allow your beliefs to inform your opinions on how to address the topic you might be able to skirt the problem of dogma, but as long as your opinions are defined by a belief that you are certain is "truth" it is hard to see how compromise could be reached on areas of disagreement. Of course if your purpose is to just find areas of common ground and not persuade anyone to your point of view than you may also be able to have productive discourse.
Reply
I think you're right that the key is whether you're there to share perspectives or to share The Truth. As dvarin notes, if you "know" something is "the truth" then why would you agree to relativize it, to couch it in terms of "we believe" instead of "this ist rue"? But that is exactly what kills the dialogue, because you're asserting your truth over all the other truths in the room, and everybody else has the choice of either arguing with you or disengaging. So, knowing that people have deeply-held beliefs, how do we nonetheless get them to modify how they interact with others, in the interests of having a discussion at all? That's the challenge.
Reply
Leave a comment