Interreligious Communication: How Does it Look, How Should it Look? Dr. Deanna Ferree Womack - Religion ...
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Interreligious Communication:
How Does it Look, How Should it Look?
Models from the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries
Dr. Deanna Ferree Womack
Candler School of Theology
Emory University
Religion Communicators Council
Atlanta, GA - April 6, 2018
What roles might communicators play in promoting religious literacy, fostering understanding of various traditions, and cultivating relations between people of different faiths?
Interreligious Communication:
How Does it Look, How Should it Look?
Introduction: Context & Definitions
1. 19th Century Models
2. 20th Century Models
3. Models for the 21st Century
Terminology • Interfaith Relations: positive or negative ways that members of different faiths have interacted with each other throughout history and/or interact in the contemporary world • Interfaith Dialogue: the practice of positive interfaith relations through face-to-face interaction and formal or informal conversation
Why isn’t deep, meaningful interfaith engagement the norm for more people in the United States? • Lack of opportunity • Fear & distrust of difference • Perceived threat to religious convictions • Conversionary orientations • Confusion about “interfaith” terminology
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050
19th Century Models of Interreligious Communication
Empire established 1453 – end of Ottoman Europe, 1913 – collapse, 1918-1920
Ottoman Syria, 1900 Syria & Lebanon today Lebanon & Syria before World War I American Syria Mission • 1823: established in Beirut by American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions • Population: Muslim, Druze, Jewish, Maronite, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Protestant
19th-Century Missionary Models
in Ottoman Syria
Henry Harris Jessup (1832-1910)
Publications:
The Women of the Arabs, 1873
The Mohammedan Missionary Problem, 1879
The Setting of the Crescent and the Rising of the
Cross, 1898
Fifty-Three Years in Syria, 1910 Courtesy of Yale Divinity School Special Collections19th-Century Models from
the Arab Renaissance in Syria
Arabic Press in Beirut, 1908
Photo Courtesy of Yale Divinity School Special CollectionsAn Arabic Protestant Periodical
al-Nashra al-Usbu‘iyya (Weekly Bulletin)
Women of the Arab
Renaissance in Syria
▪ Defied missionary
characterizations of Arab
women as ignorant and
oppressed
▪ Challenged the Western
view of primordial rivalries
between Muslims,
Christians, & Jews in the
Middle East
Image courtesy of the Near East School of Theology library in Beirut19th Century: Syrian Christian Women
Rujina Shukri
“The Necessity of Libraries”
al-Nashra al-Usbu‘iyya (Weekly Bulletin)1888
“We lift our palms in prayer and supplication to the merciful God to sustain his
great majesty [Sultan] Abdulhamid Khan…”*
*For details on the work of Rujina Shukri and other women in Ottoman Syria, see Deanna Ferree Womack, Protestants, Gender and the
Arab Renaissance in Ottoman Syria (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).19th Century: Syrian Christian Women
Hannah Kurani
Manners & Customs
Beirut: American Mission Press, 1891
“The Creator has blessed us with a
Sultan who is unequaled among
Sultans… May his days of success and
reform last as long as the earth
continues spinning on its axis.”
Photo from Oldham, The Congress of Women, 1894.
(After attending the women’s congress at the Chicago
World’s fair, Kurani travelled the US on a lecture circuit).19th Century: Syrian Christian Women
Farida ‘Atiya
“Caution & Warning”
al-Nashra al-Usbu‘iyya (Weekly Bulletin)1887
“As one of the scholars (ulama) says: Refrain
from lies and falsehoods. Despise liars and
keep away from slanderers. Your affairs will
begin to fail, so far as their effects both in this
world and the other world are concerned, as
soon as you give access to a liar.”
Jeremiah 4:9
“Beware of your neighbors, and put no trust in any of your
kin; for all your kin are supplanters, and every neighbor American School for Girls, Tripoli
goes around like a slanderer” (NRSV). (‘Atiya’s alma mater)Syrian Jewish & Muslim Women
Esther Azhari Moyal (1873-1948)
al-Hasna – A women’s journal in Beirut
that featured Esther’s articles
• Jewish writer in Beirut who later moved to
Palestine
• Protestant mission school graduate
• President of the first Syrian women’s
association
• Attended the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893
• Public speaker on women’s education
Qur’an 13:11 –
God does not change a people’s status until they change their own disposition.Syrian Jewish & Muslim Women
Zaynab Fawwaz (c. 1860-1914)
• Syrian Shia feminist
• Nahda journalist & poet
• Sent Scattered Pearls, a biographical dictionary
of Arab women to be displayed at the Chicago
World’s Fair, 1893
• Advocated for women’s equality in public life,
saying, “The veil does not prevent us from
doing men’s jobs.”
Zaynab’s Diwan, or poetry collection20th Century Models of Interreligious Communication
Why did this shift from the nineteenth-century missionary
model occur among some American Christians?
• Missionary experiences
• Voices of global Christians
• Failure of Western Civilization: WWI
• Post-Colonial Movements
• ImmigrationInterreligious Communication
in the 20th Century
Examples from a growing number of initiatives…
• Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)
o Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, 1964
• World Council of Churches dialogues
o Christian-Muslim and Christian-Jewish consultations (1969, Switzerland)
o Consultation on “Dialogue between Men of Living Faiths” (1970, Lebanon)
• Temple of Understanding (1960)
• Religions for Peace (1961)
• International Council of Christians and Jews (1975, Germany)
• Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (1988)
• The Interfaith Alliance (1994, USA)
• The Elijah Interfaith Institute (1997, Jerusalem)
• Scriptural Reasoning (1990s)Forms of Interfaith Dialogue
• The dialogue of life
• The dialogue of common action
• The dialogue of theological exchange
• The dialogue of religious experience
~Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue,
Dialogue and Proclamation, 1991.Models for the 21st Century
Interfaith Atlanta
Interfaith/Interreligious Studies
“We pretend that these differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. But pretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer.”
“The visceral nature of today’s most heated … can only be understood against the backdrop of white Christians’ anxieties as America’s racial and religious topography shifts around them.”
Developmental Model of Intercultural/
Interreligious Sensitivity
Image courtesy of Rev. Dr. Eric H. F. Law. Adapted by from the work of Milton J. Bennett at the IDR Institute:
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