Radical dialogic and interfaith hope in a time of poly crisis
Leave a CommentJessica Giles SFHEA is a senior law lecturer at The Open University and a barrister.
To some extent there is nothing new about the conflict between religions, or the conflict between secularist and the publicly religious. With perceived fundamentally different starting, middle and end points in their theoretical, theological and philosophical approaches, public living together, within a democratic context at least, has often seemed to be about an uneasy truce in the face of an unbridgeable divide. There is much talk of tolerance but less talk of interfaith dialogue and engagement. Why then might radical interfaith hope be important in a time of poly crisis and what causes religion to be implicated in the poly crisis now confronting humankind?
This blog explores how religions are entangled in the anticipated poly crisis facing humankind and identifies projects that bring together leaders from the Abrahamic faiths and transcendental and non-transcendental theorists who enter into dialogue around key issues. Acknowledging differences and identifying points of agreement to further understanding and plural living together, these dialogues provide hope that collaboratively it might be possible to work together to address the highly complex issues underpinning the poly crisis. These dialogues go beyond tolerance of different points of view and, involve those taking part in seeking to understand and find commonalities within their own traditions and those of the other dialogue partners.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 describes a poly crisis as a series of events which arise from ‘present and future risks’ which ‘can ..interact with each other to form a ‘polycrisis’ – a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part’.
The report identifies short term and long term risks, including: cost of living crisis, natural disasters and extreme weather, geoeconomic confrontation, failure to mitigate climate change, erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization, large-scale environmental damage incidents, failure of climate-change adaption, widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity, natural resource crises, large-scale involuntary migration, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse.
One might add to this list the global impact of the conflict in Israel/Gaza. This has caused governments to better understand the extent to which loyalties often align with a faith group or a cultural heritage, rather than with the country that might have historically or recently granted an individual asylum or an economic haven to migrate to. Thus, Palestinians and Jews within Israel and Gaza have seen support from across the globe. This support has cut across national allegiance and sent a clear message to governments that what at one time might have been perceived of as an internal national conflict, is felt deeply and implicates those who align themselves with one side or the other wherever they are in the world. Whereas in the first and second world wars allegiance tended to align with ones’ nation state, governments may feel less certain of this in the face of the current poly crisis, in particular after feeling the impact of the Israel/Gaza conflict. An internal state conflict can thus threaten to undermine plural living together and national allegience throughout Western democracies and consequently create even more complexity within the polycrisis facing humankind.
How then to address a polycrisis? Tobi and Kampen (2017) argue that existential crisis can only be addressed through interdisciplinary collaboration*. I would posit that layered over this is the further requirement that they also require interfaith collaboration. This does not involve those from different faiths and those from none setting aside their theological and philosophical differences to address the crisis. It instead identifies that it is in those very theological and philosophical roots that the solution to the problems could be found. It therefore involves interfaith, or rather intertheoretical, philosophical and theological dialogue to take place to inform ways forward.
One such project is underway at the Open University with a series of dialogues. Two dialogue series are running, they involve a group of faith leaders and a group of academics entering into dialogue around specific issues to identify similarities and explore differences: see Scriptural Reasoning and Food for Thought series, within the Project on Interdisciplinary Law and Religion Studies.
The scriptural reasoning series brings together faith leaders from the three Abrahamic faiths in a facilitated discourse to explore scripture in relation to particular topics chosen for discussion. Each faith leader will read scripture relating to the chosen topic from their own tradition in English and, as appropriate, in Hebrew and Arabic. They will then reflect on each others’ scripture and relate their thoughts to their own tradition. Topics covered include faith and refugees, faith and AI, faith and reconciliation.
The Food for Thought series brings together academics to discuss topics from various philosophical standpoints. The first in the series explored transcendental and non-transcendental approaches to human rights and, focussed on sustainability and climate change.
Why is dialogue so important in the face of a crisis so immense that a new phrase was invented to describe it? Arguably we need immediate action on a global scale. The first reason, already identified is because religion is now implicated in the polycrisis and therefore modelling a way forward where those from different religions can interact and together address the issues is vital if the type of collaborations required to create effective solutions is to take place. Second, because religions are already addressing some of the key issues such as social cohesion, cost of living crisis and many of the climate and sustainability related crisis. Individually religions hold considerable power in terms of the leadership they engender across the globe. Working together they could make a huge difference, both in the influence faith leaders can exercise and the action they are able to encourage in those that adhere to a given faith.
The first step in this process is to model the type of dialogue that establishes connections between those of different religious and philosophical persuasions, to establish that it is possible to reach agreement. This demonstrates that a multivalent approach that accepts different routes to an overall consensus on an issue is possible. I posit that such modelling can provide radical dialogic and interfaith hope in time of a religion implicated polycrisis.
*Hilde Tobi and Jarl K. Kampen ‘Research design: the methodology for interdisciplinary research framework’ (2018) Qual Quant 52: 1209-1225, 1209.