Answer: As a religion
that honours all true Prophets and holy books, that has the oneness of
the world’s great religions as one of its fundamental teachings, and
whose scriptures enjoin Bahá’ís to “Consort with the followers of all
religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship” (Bahá’u’lláh,
Gleanings, p. 94), the Bahá’í Faith has high regard for the
interfaith movement. Since the early 20th century, Bahá’ís have been
participating in interfaith dialogue.
To offer a more practical answer to today’s question, I consulted
Nathalie Thirlwall, the appointed representative of the Bahá’í
Community of Ottawa Interfaith Office. Nathalie responded that “The
next step in interfaith dialogue is to become more outward
looking...and to move beyond just words.” She explains further: “There
are many, very real and hard-pressed social justice problems that exist
in the general community and the world, issues like poverty, lack of
access to health-care and education, inequalities, human rights
violation (freedom to believe). Even the environment impacts social
justice…Faiths have to learn to address these issues, both in word and
in action...With joint learning and slowly built confidence, the tiny
incremental steps can gradually and organically increase in size and
complexity.”
She gives the concrete demonstration of this aspiration in the recent
Call for Leadership and Action on Climate Change, a joint declaration
signed on October 26th by 26 Canadian faith representatives. The
document is intended to prompt governments to take collective action
to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the upcoming 2011 United
Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban, South Africa (Nov. 29-Dec.
9).
But theologically, I feel that something vital cannot be ignored. John
Hick (1922-), today’s most respected philosopher of religion,
Vice-President of The World Congress of Faiths, said in a 1993 address
“Interfaith and the Future” that the important question of
“truth-claims” cannot be indefinitely postponed as we pursue polite,
non-controversial conversation: “…genuine questions of belief
cannot be avoided and that we must prepare ourselves to face them—not
instead of matters of practical cooperation but, for some of us at
least, as well as these.” I submit that we must be willing to
learn to dialogue, even on potentially thorny belief-questions, but in
a non-confrontational, humble posture of learning. -
Jack
McLean
