Sharing Religious Narratives Fosters Harmony: Professor Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011 Posted: 11:52:47PM HKT The Rev. Dr. Robert Hunt delivering a talk at an event organised last week by Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. (Photo courtesy of Kampong Kapor Methodist Church) Interfaith dialogue holds promise for resolving tensions between religious groups. Unfortunately, such engagement is often viewed as compromising religious identity. Focusing on sharing religious narratives rather than beliefs and rituals solves the problem, says an American scholar. The Reverend Dr. Robert Hunt has seen and been involved in interfaith dialogue that clarified threats to religious identity and strengthened that identity. He is Director of Global Theological Education at Perkins School of Theology. Professor Hunt presented a paper titled The Role of Inter-religious Dialogue in Promoting Peace at times of Cultural Conflict, Case Studies and Proposed Models last week at an event organised by Kampong Kapor Methodist Church (KKMC). The event was held in celebration of Religious Harmony month. During his talk, he highlighted how his own students have benefited from interfaith dialogue. Over a period of five years, several hundred Christian students met with as many counterparts of other religions. These students engaged in dialogue with Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims over 200 times. Individual participants narrated their own religious stories and that of their communities. The dialogue between Christians and people of other faiths deepened mutual understanding. For example, Muslim participants came to a better understanding of the difference between Christianity and popular American political culture. Similarly, Christians came to a better understanding of the difference between Islam and Arab culture and Islamist political movements. This happened when Muslims and Christians discovered in each other's stories what is central to the formation of religious identity and what is not. In the case of Muslims, their stories usually do not have a particularly Arab or political aspect. Instead, these focus on the Koran and how it shapes the life of individuals and communities. In the same way, Muslims deepened their understanding of the focus of the Christian faith. Dialogue helped both groups realise that many of the supposed threats to their religious and cultural identity do not come from the other religion or its followers. Other forces were responsible for disrupting, denying or subverting their religious narrative. A new realisation of shared attitudes and goals made it possible for Muslims and Christians to discuss ways to cooperate in creating a youth culture that affirmed shared positive values. This is particularly the case in the context of local schools. What is key, he said, is a dialogue that begins by exploring how distinct religious narratives are enacted in new social and historical situations. This is as opposed to a focus on unchangeable beliefs and rituals. Such engagement serves to strengthen the religious identities of its participants. This is because in the process of the dialogue, participants disentangle their distinctly religious narrative from other narratives. Professor Hunt suggested that such mutually beneficial understanding could also happen on a regional, national or international level. This happened some years back at a conference in Strumiza, Macedonia. The event saw a dialogue between Orthodox, Methodist and Catholic Christians and mostly ethnic Albanian Muslims. Each group told of its distinctively different religious experience of the birth of the new nation of Macedonia. Once the distinctly religious narratives were identified through dialogue, it became possible for the groups to move on to see shared problems and possibilities for working together. At that meeting, participants pointed to a shared task of confronting poverty, improving education systems, overcoming national isolation and building national identity. Similar interfaith efforts are also being made by the Interfaith Youth Corps and The Centre for Interfaith Inquiry of the Memnosyn Foundation in the United States. The latter organisation brought together youth of different religious traditions to engage in concrete work of helping the poor. And as they did so, they created a shared history and narrative. Attendees of the talk found it beneficial. Ms. Ellen Tan felt that the case of The Centre for Interfaith Inquiry of the Memnosyn Foundation "is something that we in multi-racial, multi-religious Singapore can indeed learn from." Edmond Chua edmond@christianpost.com