Asia Eur J (2009) 7:449462

DOI 10.1007/s10308-009-0240-4
O R I G I N A L PA P E R

Interfaith dialogue in global perspective

and the necessity of youth involvement
Pavlos E. Michaelides

Published online: 10 November 2009

# Springer-Verlag 2009

Abstract In todays global landscape, the success of interfaith initiatives is

ascertained when their intended aim is envisioned and clarified. This article claims
that the truest aim of interfaith dialogue in global perspective is the mutual
transformation of cultural and religious realities, maintaining that when this vision
becomes the underpinning informing the context of dialogue then interfaith
engagement is elevated to an authentic spiritual practice effective across religious
borders, assuring its destination in the advancement of intercultural relations and
culture in general. Today, interfaith dialogue ought to focus more on common
responses to global issues rather than differences among traditions; unimpeded, it
can then engage mutual transformation for the benefit of all, achieving also
significant steps toward transforming stultifying paradigms of present interreligious
discourse. Positive change forwarding harmonious coexistence is an ongoing process
involving the work of many generations. Steadfast youth involvement in interfaith
dialogue is deemed imperative for sustainable harmony and peace.
Interfaith dialogue in global perspective and youth involvement
An emerging global society profoundly impacts the way we live our lives,
challenging our basic premises, predicting a future radically different from the
social/political landscape reminiscent of the way we were. We are in the midst
of a paradigm shift that is reshaping us at every level as a new and far more
integrated world, slowly, but ever so surely and more than a little chaotically,
struggles to come to birth. At the same time terror, misrepresentation, and
prejudicial misunderstanding have infiltrated society, causing friction and
fragmentation to obstruct commonsense efforts toward harmony and peace.
In such a world, dialogue is fundamental to survival and systemic change
(Winter 2008:26).
P. E. Michaelides (*)
University of Nicosia, 46 Makedonitissas Ave., P.O. Box 24005, Nicosia 1700, Cyprus
e-mail: pavlosm@primehome.com
e-mail: michaelides.p@unic.ac.cy

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Introduction
This article probes the spiritual depth of Panikkars understanding of the nature
of interfaith dialogue and in turn, tapping into the dynamic interrelationship held
between religion and culture, shows the inextricable relationship amid interfaith
and intercultural dialogue clarifying their standing in global perspective. The
main purpose here is to investigate todays global landscapean ambivalent
terrain in flux and sometimes in conflictso as to spell out the challenges
interfaith initiatives face in our times, disclosing their potential for initiating
world peace.
A literature review on interfaith or interreligious dialogue (the terms are used
interchangeably as in much of the literature) will disclose mutual transformation to
be the challenge of our epoch and the challenge par excellence of interfaith dialogue.
It is argued that given global complexities mutual transformation constitutes the
conditio sine qua non of harmonious coexistence between peoples, cultures, and
religions. It is not a fad, the belief of open-minded scholars or of people at the fringe
of their tradition, but the way of the future, the way of interfaith dialogue looking
toward a more integrated society.
For a deeper appropriation of mutually transformative realities, aporetic
dimensions of interfaith are explored elucidating how the cultivation of an attitude
of wonder is central to the success of interfaith initiatives. In conclusion, the
necessity of youth involvement in dialogue is discussed. Now, we turn to Panikkar
for existential considerations on the potentiating power of deep pluralism and
diversity.

Panikkar on relativity, ultimate mystery, and the axiomatic place of pluralism

Panikkar (1987) eschews relativism in favor of relativity. He finds that our inability
to know absolute truth undercuts relativism giving an axiomatic place to a deep
plurality, a relativity of interrelational perspectives. Relativism, he says, destroys
itself when affirming that all is relative and thus the very affirmation of relativism,
whereas on the other hand, relativity asserts that any human affirmation, and thus
any truth, is relative to its very own parameters and that there can be no absolute
truth, for truth is essentially relational (Panikkar 1987:127).
Panikkars unknowable absolute overflows contingent human forms of thinking
and being, disengaging from experiencetranscending relativism as absolute
claimto resonate with the whole of deep plurality, disclosing its contextual,
relational, and unifying parameters. Although we are unable to know the absolute
truth, its truth binds us to the relativity of contingent truth and as Trapnell
(2004:434) points out, in the grammar of Panikkars interreligious discourse the
distinction between relativity and relativism [...], functions as a principle of
relating the bewildering diversity of contexts and languages to an almost
unspeakable whole (totum) heard through that diversity.
A totum existentially conceived through which words born from silence become
icons of the mystery, leading back to a new silence, echoing the inexhaustible
reservoir of diversity. Since the divine mystery is ineffable and no discourse

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describes it genuine dialogue entails deep listening to the plurality of interrelated

viewpoints, a stance that coheres with the silence from which the word is born and to
which it returns (Panikkar 2006:19). Religious truth arising from silence leads back
to relativity/plurality, ultimate mystery, and unknowability: to an invisible harmony
betokening cosmic confidence in realitydialogical opennessand human cosmic
trust (Panikkar 1987).
Panikkar forewarns against prejudging an interfaith encounter or our direct
relation with religious others on the basis of permanent or fixed identities. For him
truth is relationalever-changing and ultimately mysterious; permanence lies only
in the relativity of changing perspectives that are contingent on personal collective,
cultural, traditional, or other relational parameters. Both intra- and interfaith dialogue
are context related, and any claim to possessing absolute or universal religious truth
is fallacious and so is the extreme exclusivist claim of one religion holding a
monopoly on the knowledge of truth (Panikkar 1999).
He finds the classifications of exclusivism and inclusivism hubristic; they assume
a universal truth by eschewing relation to particularity, finitude, and cultural
contingency. Pratt comments:
The religious exclusivist assumes that his or her religion is, in fact, the only
universally true one. All others are necessarily false. The inclusivist holds
views that allow for a measure of universal religious truth being found in more
than one religion, but that, nonetheless, it is his or her religion that fully
contains, or is the full expression of, the universal truth. So the paradigms of
exclusivism and inclusivism are problematic as adequate contexts for
interreligious engagement (Pratt 2007:260).
Panikkars distinction between relativism and relativity avoids not only the
pitfalls of universalistic theologies but also those of extreme pluralistic or
particularistic viewpoints of religion, which essentially lapse into relativism by
radically differentiating religious truth only as pluralistic, claiming thus interfaith to
be a pointless, impossible and futile attempt to communicate across incommensurable languages and standpoints. As Knitter (1999) points out, this is a mistaken
understanding of difference and diversity, an outright denial of relational unifying
threats bridging the plurality of different perspectives.
In Panikkar, difference and diversity are dynamic and open relational systems
beyond classifications that isolate religious truth and religious traditions. Classifications cannot capture the dynamism of existential realities or bring about authentic
interfaith encounter and exchange. Genuine dialogue overcomes conceptualizations
by engaging existentially the plurality of religious perspectives allowing them to be
unifying (related) intimations of ultimate mystery. Each faith is considered an
equally legitimate way of life exemplifying symbolic, historical, and cultural
occurrences of ultimate mystery, and openness to ultimate mysterythat indeterminate and ungraspable reality constituting the greater whole of which each religion is
but a manifest fragmentis the only way to existentially bridge the gulf and mediate
the distance between faiths.
For Panikkar (2006), interfaith dialogue carries the meaning of a serious spiritual
practice, a radical journey that highlights our insight into ultimate mystery,

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disclosing across creative spaces of difference in acts of faith, and faith that
constitutive element of being human (29) holds as it where the mystical key (59)
to our humanness, to what is common, ultimate, and unifying among traditions.

Intercultural and interfaith dialogue in global context

Every religion constitutes a unique journey and there is no unified vision of religion,
rather only unifying experiences of peace, love, truth, and justice differently
conceived (Aram 2006; Cilliers 2002; Rambachan 2006). Through unique narratives
and an elaborate system of codes, rituals, symbols, art, sacred texts, liturgical, and
other languages of worship, all religions speak deeply to the human heart of
historically lived ideals such as those of love, peace, justice, and harmony, ideals that
transformedperhaps differently but steadilyhuman culture many a time and
which have the power to guide humanity outside of its present deadlock.
It is widely acknowledged today that the sphere of activity of every religion plays
a central role in the dynamics and development of culture. Conversely, being in
perpetual interrelation and dialogue with society and culture, all religions are
culturally contingent immensely affected by cultural contexts as well as by societal
and situational relations and dynamics. But the greatest strength of religion lies in its
very claim to transcendence its ability to affirm by reason and faith a skillful means
to accomplish the requisite transformation needed for self-constructive critique of
cultural forms and their movement, a complex critique of culture that cannot be
pushed to the periphery for it is a genuine witnessing of human spiritual heritage.
Every religion oscillating between culture and faith points at every turn to
transcendence and the expansion of consciousness; it embraces a conception of
journey and transformation and of vision and revision, displaying ways for greater
cultural and societal integration. A mere glance at the historical development of
every faith provides attestation to the irrevocable interrelation and interaction taking
place between religion and culture, their ever-renewed, mostly positive, dialectical
relation. Anchored in culture religion has a profound impact on societal values,
convictions, and normative structuressuch as the institution of family and
marriage, the moral and spiritual law governing relations, and so onand this is
more evident through the positive and pivotal role religions play in times of crisis
when societal or cultural institutions crumble.
Interfaith dialogue as a central part of intercultural dynamics/studies (Massoudi
2006) has a definite role to play in the crisis civilizations and cultures are presently
facing. As shown in this article, the truest aim of interfaith dialogue entails mutual
openness to change, already an oeuvre (open-ing) toward mutual transformation of
cultural and religious realities for the benefit of peaceful and harmonious coexistence
(Abe 1995; Abu-Nimer 2002; Cobb 1996; Eck 1993; Moyaert 2005). The reflexivity
of our global predicament leaves no other margins than those of intercultural and
interfaith dialogue, our only way forward and our only hope. More than ever before,
civilization needs a moral and spiritual transformation.
Certainly, today, there are many positive factors to globalization, more for some
than others, but the discontents of the phenomenon are overwhelming and its costs
for humanity bewildering. Before todays global dynamics of unpredictable change

Interfaith dialogue in global perspective and the necessity of youth involvement

453

and growing global complexityof warfare, terrorism, environmental degradation,

demographic changes, poverty, media and technology, depression, and, alienation of
billionshumanity is called to initiate the best context for mutual transformation of
cultures, and, for this, it needs the expertise of religions which specialize in means
of transformation and the expansion of consciousness.
Of course, transformation of global realities needs time and is no easy task.
Overwhelming consumerism, commercialization, advertising, the generation of new
desires and needs leading to the translation of everything into spectacle and imagery,
as well as large-scale demands for liberalization, deregulation, and so on are all part
and parcel of global complexity. The sweeping dominance of economic and
technological forces of innovation such as television, satellite, internet, and other
media technologies mostly overloads individuals and collectivities with a surface
knowledge economy that undermines local and national identities, heritages, and
histories, bringing about cultural uncertainty and fragmentation.
The hegemonic rule of globalized networks tending toward technologys
propensity to sameness forward the endless transmission of homologized culture,
setting society toward the univocal, the popular, and the uniform even in matters of
speech, thinking, and truth. The leveling forces of modernity moving in
unprecedented speed offer no viable alternatives other than the erosion of values,
cultures, and traditions. The greater cultural proximity brought through the
expansion of space and time has paradoxically introduced greater distance and
fragmentation through burgeoning globalization of culture.
The enhanced meeting and interaction of cultures has intensified the already
existing fear of uprootedness bringing conflict and instability, thus fellow humans
are caught in the menace of solidified cultural and religious identities causing the
phenomena of nationalism and fundamentalism to multiply, stultifying intercultural
and interfaith growth and communication. Collectivities and nation states now
evolving in contact with economic, cultural, and religious forces from outside find
themselves in flux and sometimes in limbo. Even the larger more affluent nations no
longer govern the economic means, nor do they control the circulation of culture and
the knowledge economy despite the deployment of their diplomatic and cultural
machinery (Krzysztofek 2002).
Realizing that the solution to global problems no longer lies in individual
responses but in collective efforts, nation states and collectivities are now calling
with great urgency for intercultural and interfaith communication, turning to
dialogue as means for integration and exchange, harmony, and peaceful coexistence
among peoples and traditions (Kng 2005). All cultures and religions are called to
communicate among themselves to share their intergenerational wisdom so as to
guide humanity beyond the cultural gap and yawning void of fragmentation; they are
in effect called to irreversibly transform the global landscape for the benefit of all.
The truest and noblest goal of interfaith dialogue and its only weapon to contest
the leveling forces of globalization is to wholeheartedly embrace the call for mutual
understanding, unity, and transformation. What can bring a sense of unity in
diversity is not a universal vision (or theology) of religion or culture which can never
truly exist (Hofmeyr 2004; Moyaert 2005; Pratt 2007), but rather a greater sense of
our connectedness as humans, a unifying sense of wonder concerning our
differences in view of our predicament as citizens of a globe in crisis. Then, the

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call toward unity in diversity becomes a call to turn to all that is unifying, all that
makes us human, and this involves a turn toward humanity by turning toward each
other.
Stricto sensu, a genuine turning to interfaith dialogue can neither subvert our
uniqueness nor ask of us to give up our faith (Baumer-Despeigne 1989; Panikkar
1999; Phan 2008). A priori all religions and cultures are ipso facto unique and have
an important mission to accomplish in the global terrain of todays multicultural
world. In fact, a straightforward emphasis on religious uniqueness is necessary to
resist and overcome the forces of cultural homogeneity. In the face of deep
pluralism, uniqueness and incomparability provide the axis for affirming diversity.
Notwithstanding, this is not a time to turn inward unduly overemphasizing the
uniqueness of our religious and cultural heritages, rather a time to understand each
other, a time to mutually transform through dialogue the subverting and nonedifying
spread of civilizations discontents (Forward 2001; Phan 2008). Dialogue, says
Schreiter (2003:37), is the only way perhaps to address and embrace the
complexities of the world in which we live, and again, dialogue is the invitation
to explore how fragmentation can provide us with the resources for a new synthesis
which will be of benefit to our planet and the living beings which inhabit it.
Necessarily, the persistent proximity of pluralism is calling upon us to expand our
consciousness to resolve contradictions, to cross cultural and religious borders and
even to overcome anthropocentric notions of self and cosmos, that is, we are called
to embrace mutual transformation through the direct exchange of wisdom for the
benefit of finding common responses to global issuesfor the sake of our humanity.
Today, dialogue, as Schreiter (2003:37) puts it, becomes more than an ornament
to an otherwise comfortable existence, or yet another source of knowledge. It not
only becomes the recognition of our incapacity to resolve present-day dilemmas
alone but it also constitutes a challenge to uncover the ambivalences within our
own traditions which seem at once to bespeak both peace and violence and to hold
both apocalyptic visions of harmony and destruction.
First and foremost, interfaith dialogue helps us critique constructively the
limitations of our own faith (Hwang 1989; Kim 2005; Panikkar 1999). It is a call
for overcoming limited forms of religious thinking. Ultimately, it personifies an
oeuvre into the existential dynamics of dialoguing (dialegesthai) augmenting
communication (communion); it is a straightforward welcoming of the divine in
the other. Before the vulnerability at the backdrop of the human experience genuine
dialogue, coinciding with the human desire for the divine1 affirms that only one
heart can bring world peace (Coff 1989; Shinn 1987).
Interfaith dialogue, on one hand, affirms the singularity of human spiritual
heritage. But on the other hand, aiming to bridge differences, it re-enforces peopleto-people exchange with cultural/religious others (Arinze 2004; Cilliers 2002).
1

Here, the term divine bespeaks ultimate or transcendent mystery. In her introduction to In Search of the
Divine, Shinn (1987) articulates the unexpected consequences of interfaith dialogue by showing how
scholars from diverse faiths (Saivite, Vaisnava, Jain and Islamic, Christian, Jewish-Kabbalist, Theravada,
Mahayana, and Tibetan Buddhist) experience their traditions in search of divine mystery. Interestingly,
Keating (1989:21) says: those who seek the ultimate mystery relate to everything that is true and of
genuine spiritual value in every religious and cultural tradition including science, art, human friendship,
or the service of others.

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Abramovich (2005:294) says: the promotion of successful people-to-people efforts

is an important arsenal of peace building, and Siejks (1995) finding that effective
interfaith dialogue presupposes openness to a dialogical community organized
intentionally to bring about transformation for the good of people, things and the
world emphasizes that genuine dialogue opens us to the possibility of being
personally transformed (230) if it has the propensity to be open to friendship,
inviting the growth and development of all participants in an environment
nurturing wholesome and loving persons (239). This entails opening to the stranger
and perhaps to what may be uncomfortable and alien, even to that which we may
disagree with.
According to de Bthune (2007), the existential reality of encountering others
within an open context of participatory engagement builds deeper trust potentially
initiating an atmosphere of welcome and of sharing insight and of the fruits of
practice. It can become the locus of peace and enrichment, a gesture of sacred
hospitality. Interrelating in profound love with one another, says Coff (1989:209),
demands an awakening, openness, hospitality, a listening heart, knowledge of the
other, full interior freedom, integrity, and unshakable dedication to ones own inner
truth.
In effect, interfaith dialogue through creative encounter and genuine engagement
leads to the realization that other religions compliment our own (Abe 1995; De
Bthune 2007; Panikkar 1999). Every religion is a different yet unifying expression
of ultimate mystery already a journey of mutual transformation of self and other and
of the in-between spaces that bespeak of peace, love, and justice.
The participants of the First AsiaEurope Youth Interfaith Dialogue remind us
that the ultimate goal of dialogue is deeper awareness, understanding, respect, love
and sustainable world peace. The youth recognize that dialogue is a very important
and an essential part of building bridges between religions and cultures for the sake
of deepening interfaith and intercultural relations. They affirm the need for
dialogue to be inclusive of all faiths, religions and world views, including those of
secularism and atheism. Further, interfaith ought to address issues that affect not
only humans but also all other forms of life on earth. Most importantly, dialogue
should be conducted in a safe and open environment of mutual trust and respect
(Javier Declaration 2006:62).

Interfaith dialogue calls for mutual transformation

Kim (2005:489) contends that interfaith dialogue in the age of globalization calls for
a wisdom to realize the secular as sacred through mutual self-transformation. He
proposes a tao paradigm of mutual self-transformation in the unity of knowing and
acting that reconfigures diverse religious wisdom as complimentary ways toward
life. For one thing, all religions, he tells us, discern narratives of the exploited life
that initiate discord between knowing and acting. Ultimately, for Kim, interfaith
discourse opens up to intersubjective communion with self and cosmos and the
trajectory of life (Tao).
Abe (1995) claims that in view of global calamities and violence, religions must
engage each other for the sake of mutual transformation; they ought to strive beyond

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the achievement of mutual understanding to that penetrating depth which mutually

transforms both self and other, and the religions implicated. Abe, exposing issues of
requisite transformation with immense clarity, says:
[...] every religion engaged in transformative dialogue should demonstrate its
own deepest authentic spirituality by surpassing the traditional verbal
formulations of teaching and practice. The life-sustaining value involved in
breaking through reified structures [...] cannot be properly solved within the
framework of any of the existing forms of the worlds religions. For the sake of
overcoming fundamentalism and religion-negating ideologies, a radical reinterpretation of each religions own spirituality is absolutely necessary.
Spirituality is deeper from an existential perspective than mere doctrinal
formulations. This is why I insist that in religious dialogue today, mutual
understanding, though always necessary, is insufficient; going beyond mutual
understanding, interfaith dialogue must be concerned with the mutual transformation of the religions involved (Abe 1995:5).
According to Abe, mutual transformation is the only way to bring an opening of
a deep and expansive spirituality [...] before each of the worlds religions (Abe
1995). Ray (2005) finds that open engagement already embraces dialogue as radical
journey (12); it bespeaks of unity within difference (15). Here, unity alludes to
openness, exemplary change, poignant cooperation, and harmony across cultural/
religious differences. Similarly, Cobb (1996:55) claims that the basic pattern for
interfaith engagement among religious traditions is one of mu-tual openness leading
to mutual transformation. Openness, he points out, is a prerequisite for
transformation and irreversible change: religious traditions that open to change
can never be the same again.
Moyaert (2005:47) emphasizes that every religion changes as it interacts with
other cultures and traditions, and this recontextualization transforms the essence of
the religious language leaving nothing unaltered: it is not the case that only the
exterior form of the tradition changes but that the core idea remains always the same.
The substance of the religious language changes throughout history and throughout
this interaction with differing contexts. Moyaert contends that identities like
languages, religions and cultures are dynamic, interactive and porous; they change
with the passage of time and are not closed or blocked systems of meaning rather
comprise open, interactive foci of transformation (Moyaert 2005).
For Moyaert, imagination constitutes the necessary condition for interreligious
dialogue. She says:
What makes interreligious dialogue and comprehension possible is not some
universal religious or ethical language but the human capacity we call
imagination. Imagination allows people to locate differences and equivalences
and question static and essentialized interpretations of religious languages.
Imagination is that human capacity that makes empathy possible and enables
us to cross boundaries and to enter different worlds and perspectives (48).
Charaniya and Walsh (2004:30) contend that interfaith dialogue gives rise to a
learning which explores the quest for personal, cultural, and spiritual transformation
only if there is openness toward the crossing of borders of religious difference.

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Here, the crossing of religious borders does not entail a surface traversing of
boundaries to another religious context rather elicits a lasting change and reshaping
of the world and its interrelations, transforming ones idea of totality expanding
language and ones vision of self and other infinitely (Shinn 1987).
Eck (1993) claims that crossing over into the spiritual life of another tradition
opens the possibility, for some people the risk, of real change and transformation
(164). This is not a journey, she says, that one embarks for quick answers or
spiritual souvenirs (164); it rather becomes a journeying, an opening up of ones
religious commitments to the give-and-take of mutual discovery, understanding,
and, indeed, transformation (168). The give-and-take of interfaith discovery, Eck
points out, requires to risk mutual transformation (189) through a mutual
questioning and listening (16); it entails to wrestle with the meaning of one
anothers terms (189).
Graef (2005:120) finds that interfaith encounters challenge our boundaries
because learning about other religions is no different, in truth, from learning a new
language: we are exposed to the vocabulary that other people use to live their lives.
The exposure to the others language of faith and life radically transforms our
horizons of knowing and acting, changing the way we see and apperceive, feel, and
intuit ourselves and others and each others faith commitments (Charaniya and
Walsh 2001). Heim (2003) says: to interpret other faiths ultimately outside the
categories of the home religion means that each regards the others ultimate as
penultimate, leaving open the further possibility for transformation (1).
According to Halsall and Roebben (2006:448), interfaith engagement is mutually
transformative because learning in difference and learning on common
groundparticularity and universalitycome together. Through the intercultural
and interfaith encounter, they tell us, I am challenged to redefine and re-dignify
myself; to know myself better and respect myself more as a human person with
dignity, who makes a difference in encounter with others. Massoudi (2006, 433)
suggests to think of the participants and the whole process of dialogue as boundless
systems, where ones thoughts, in addition to ones gestures and words, also affect
the outcome of this encounter. Effective interfaith engagement largely depends on
being attentive, responsive, inclusive, and tolerant of a plurality of often contradicting viewpoints.
Yagi and Swidler (1993:5) say that each partner should come to the dialogue
with no-fixed assumption as to where the authentic differences between the
traditions are. Fruitful interfaith dialogue entails not to insist on fixed theological,
dogmatic, or other differences between traditions (Hick 1982; Panikkar 1999). What
underscores differences is to learn anew the potentiating power of dialogue to
disclose what these differences truly are in light of existential dynamics (Azumah
2002; Tracy 1990). The best way to engage differences is by encountering others as
equal partners in dialogue (Yagi and Swidler 1993:5). When our differences are
perceived as differences among equals, says Siejk (1995:229), we are freed to
create new patterns of relating with each other.
Fruitful dialogue calls for adopting and maintaining a mature stance toward the
ultimate unknowability of the other. This means trusting ourselves and others in a
prevailing receptive attitude of honesty and sincerity. The radical alterity of the other
opens space for unsullied learning. It teaches new ways to profoundly re-appropriate

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our own tradition advancing the praxis of communication. Interfaith dialogue, says
Hwang (1989:6), is needed for the refinement development and if necessary,
revision of ones own religion. When interfaith and intrafaith dialogue coexist, he
tells us, religions can surpass their early stages; they mature and meet other
religions in a dynamic fashion.
Surely, dynamic interaction with the otherness of the otherthe other which in
truth can never be wholly known or appropriatedspontaneously invites friendship
and genuine exchange of practices engendering positive religious hybridity (Bender
and Cadge 2006). In and of itself, fruitful interfaith encounter inspires the sharing of
best practices, knowledge, and wisdom; it moves us to want to understand more of
what the other is and has (De Bthune 2007).2
Ultimately, interfaith dialogue engages the deep plurality of perspectives promoting
insight across the silent spaces in-between diverse traditions (Ray 2005). It intensifies
awareness of ultimate mystery in the midst of all spiritual, secular, and scientific life.
A stance of wonder and radical amazement toward the de facto richness and
incomprehensibility of plurality creates the most proper conditions to approach
interfaith dialogue. Radical wonder is a precursor for transcendence for genuine
dialogue and mutual transformation. Rabbi Heschel (1965:78) says: there is no
insight into transcendent meaning without the premise of wonder and the premise of
awe. Entrenched in the beacon light of wonder interfaith dialogue becomes an
advanced spiritual practice a transforming perhaps mystical exploration, potentiating
possibilities of crossing religious borders and bridging differences.

Wonder: the premise of interfaith dialogue and mutual transformation

All dialogue entails a spiritual stance that allows the otherness of encounter its sheer
mystery to be a catalyst for an attitude of wonder. The aporetic relation to otherness
translates to unending wonder. In interfaith dialogue, it translates to the aporia of
discovering through dialogue peaceful co-existence among cultures and religions,
and in this regard, it is always helpful to bear in mind Hans Kngs (1987:194) now
famous insight: no world peace without peace among religions, no peace among
religions without dialogue between religions, and no dialogue between religions
without accurate knowledge of one another.
One may add: no knowledge, no dialogue, and no peace without radical wonder
binding us to one another. If we posture ourselves toward difference in the
overabundant, incomprehensible mystery says Fletcher (2007:553), then we might
be encouraged to value differences even before we understand them, and even if we
cannot understand them. The posture of wonder encourages an appreciation of
differences for the way they open us up to the incomprehensible mystery. Siejk writes
(1995:228): differences need not cause isolation and distorted relationships among us.
Rather, when properly understood, difference and diversity are able to be and used
for what they are: entirely normal, boundless resources of creativity for dealing with
our shared struggles and visions.
2

I distinctively remember how participants of the Second AsiaEurope Youth Interfaith Dialogue were
spontaneously moved to share for more than an hour the practice of laughing yoga.

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Fuller (2006) affirms that a proper relation to diversity is attained when wonder
overflows our imagination and fills our hearts. Wonder, he tells us, enriches,
stimulates and expands our intellectual, moral and aesthetic growth exciting our
ontological imagination; it enhances our capacity to seek deeper patterns in the
universe harmonizing the religious the secular and scientific dimensions of life (2).
Further, wonder motivates sustained engagement with the world around us,
unleashing our capacities for creative activity and for caring for others in their own
right (136); it fosters empathy and compassion, engendering profound transformations in our relatedness to others (157). Moreover, we will evidence a vital
and psychologically mature form of spirituality in direct proportion to the presence
of wonder in our lives (2).
Massoudis (2006) open-system approach places wonder and awe in central
position to the whole process of interfaith dialogue. In Zen, he tells us, no-mind or
original mind is empty; it is fully receptive and full of potentiality and creativity
because it is accompanied by a sense of wonder and awe (430). For Heschel
(1951:61): wonder and awe heighten the tension of the known and the unknown, of
the common and the holy, of the nimble and the ineffable, that fills the moments of
our insights. Wonder and awe invigorate sensitivity to all aspects of the everyday
calling on us to appreciate the mystery we participate in. Both wonder and awe lie at
the foundation of transcendence and faith.
Of awe, Heschel writes:
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not
only are what they are but also stand, however remotely for something
supreme. Awe is a sense of the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to
mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of
the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to
sense the ultimate in the common and the simple. [...] What we cannot
comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. Faith is not belief, an
assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning
beyond the mystery. Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by
awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided in awe to be
worthy of faith. [...] The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight (1965:8889;
emphasis in original).
Wonder and awe break with language bespeaking the marvel of the sheer passing
of the moment, disclosing the mystery of an ineffable world (Heschel 1955:140).
From voicelessness and utter silence, awe and wonder break into a rhythmic
harmony greater than the mind; they are intimations of marveling at a unity prior to
difference and diversity. Wonder, Heschel says (1955:46), is an attitude that never
ceases because there is no answer in the world to mans radical amazement.
Brown comments (1985:127): if for Plato, philosophy begins in wonder, for
Heschel, wonder is not something we find only at the beginning of the human quest
and can dispense with as we fill the gaps of our knowledge with more data.
Interfaith encounter deeply rooted in wonder links us directly to an aporetic
relationship with religious others accentuating our responsibility before the infinite
significance they themselves pose. The marvel of direct encounter with the other can
completely disable the impossible order of presuming we understand the others

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radical alterity. To really encounter the religious other is to discover oneself outside of
oneself responding to another language, to an unprecedented and unimaginable
exteriority subverting all representation or even contemplation of that other. Fruitful
interfaith engagement enables through dialoguequa otherness and radical wonder
an awesome link to the unfathomable richness of diverse spiritual heritages, allowing
us to experience our human connectedness and hear the unifying whole in diversity (in
humanity).
For Guenther (1992:1), wonder enables holy listening allowing the co-arising
of perspectives to abide in the openness of mutual recognition and responsiveness.
Holy listening, she tells us, is that art which lets hear the vicarious predicament of
humanity qua the other and before the pain and anguish, the grief and awful
suffering of letting a voice go unheard, wonder, reverence, and humility emerge as
the reflexive modus operandi of the interpreter (143). Wonder is asymmetrical,
already a transformation of the interpreter and a welcoming of the other to reclaim
together our space. Wonder and its correlate of humility invite us to claim our space
beyond the mind which classifies, judges, and, at times pigeonholes, grounding
dialogue to the articulation of cultural, doctrinal, or dogmatic differences.
To be open to wonder is to be open to mutual learning, questioning, and the
journey of transformation in interfaith encounter and dialogue. Wonder, says Siejk
(1995:227), promotes interreligious dialogue as a continuing disclosive and
transforming process; it is the creative condition for interreligious dialogue. To
encounter the other in and through wonder is the height in which dialogue upholds a
welcoming of cooperation and justice for all. Schreiter says (2003:38): today
interfaith dialogue must explore the stunning human capacity to survive against
overwhelming odds affirming the awesome potential to embrace the divine in our
midst. The arising of awesome potentials predicates an enhanced sense of wonder
augmenting our search for what concerns us ultimately, absolutely, positively:
mutually unifying through dialogue diverse responses to global problems.
AsiaEurope Meeting/AsiaEurope Foundation Youth Interfaith Dialogue forwards the continuation of fruitful dialogue among the worlds cultures and faiths,
providing the forum for mobilizing exceptional youththose bright young
representatives of faiths and religious organizations, ambassadors, and leaders of
peacethose torchbearers of posterity whose contribution brings hope to our age of
global complexity and problems, issues, and concerns.
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