Interfaith Journeys
  • Home
  • Interfaith Journeys
  • Stella Reekie

Reading Scripture Together

30/3/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
I recently took part in a dialogue with a small group of Baha’is. I was in fact the only Christian and more than a dialogue it was an account of the teachings of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith but referring to some Christian scriptures. I learned a lot in the process about myself and about interreligious dialogue. 

Dialogue can be challenging especially when you see your faith from another perspective. Sometimes it challenges your very identity. This is especially true when it comes to supercessionism which is also called replacement theology, that is when one religion believes that it has a revelation that replaces or develops that of a previous one which can suggest a superiority.  Christianity did it to Judaism. Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Hebrew scriptures; the Jews didn’t recognise him, so those who did and followed Jesus fell heirs to the promises given by God to the People of Israel. Christians had in fact replaced Jews as God’s Chosen People.  Islam then did it to Judaism and Christianity when Muslims, while respecting the prophets of Judaism, including Jesus, claimed that Mohammed was the final prophet and the Qur’an the true expression of the Word of God. And the Baha’i faith reflects this attitude in believing that Baha’a’ullah is a further revelation from God which is appropriate for the modern age.

While in no way explicitly rejecting previous revelations it did feel a bit like supercessionism as I listened to an interpretation of the Christian scriptures which Baha’u’llah reinterpreted to show how he understood them or fulfilled them. This being accepted by Baha’is as the correct understanding of the scriptures. It raised for me questions about how to accept the integrity of another faith when one faith develops from another or is influenced by another. How do we accept the integrity of a faith’s understanding of scripture when it is shared or used by another faith but understood differently?

I had an experience of this a few months ago when I was involved in a project to interpret a scripture story depicted on a medieval tapestry which was to be put on display in the newly refurbished Burrell Museum in Glasgow. The story chosen was that of the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son but being saved from doing so by an angel. The Christians and Jews shared the same text but interpreted it in different ways and even had different names for it. For Jews the story is called the Binding of Isaac or the Akedah and shows the total submission to God’s will of Abraham, the exemplar of faith. It’s because of Abraham’s obedience and willingness to kill his son that God tells him, “Because you have done this…I will bestow my blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:16–17). Isaac was saved and a ram sacrificed in his place and in memory of this a ram’s horn is blown each year at the festival of Rosh Hashanah to remind God of the Akedah and his promise to bestow blessings on God’s People and safeguard their future.

Christians on the other hand refer to the story as the sacrifice of Isaac and see in it a prefiguration of the death of Jesus on the Cross. They approach the same story from a different viewpoint, from their own theological understanding of seeing Christ at the centre of revelation. For one person in our group this was a bit disconcerting – another faith interpreting her faith, not only differently but in a way that could suggest the Christian understanding was the correct one. It was very obvious that we are standing in different places with different mind sets even when we read the same scriptures.  

This was the case with my interaction with my Baha’i friends which was enjoyable and friendly but used passages from the Gospels and understood them in a way that was alien to me. It was obvious that our whole approach to the Gospels was quite different. For me the scripture was saying something about Jesus and the reality of God’s relationship with humanity, while for the Bahai’s the same scripture was used to show that the Christian understanding was inadequate and replaced by a further revelation.  Do I have the right to say that this was wrong?  Not really because I don’t own my scriptures. The scriptures of the world religions contain a wisdom that is universal and available to all and as such are not the property of any one faith.  For the Baha’is or Baha’u’llah to interpret the Christian scriptures as proof of the validity of his own faith is an act of faith in itself and it’s this that has to be acknowledged by saying Baha’is believe that this ……… means……….. Christians too have to acknowledge that their understanding of these same texts is based on their faith, perhaps even foundational to it.     
​
What all this says to me is that we need to be sensitive when using scripture within the context of dialogue. We need to listen and acknowledge different understandings, be sensitive to supercessionist texts and what impact they can have on our dialogue partners. We also need to face up to the challenges that a replacement theology poses as we acknowledge our respect for the integrity of other faiths – a respect which is foundational to interreligious dialogu
e.

0 Comments

A Historic Encounter

13/3/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/yousif-kalianWhen Pope Francis met Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2016 he declared that the meeting itself was the message. This was a hailed as a historic encounter which both sides hoped would lead to greater understanding and dialogue between the two faiths. That hope materialised into a friendship between the two men which resulted in the signing in 2019 of a statement on ‘Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together’ – a document that has been promoted throughout the world and quoted in Pope Francis’ latest encyclical ‘Fratelli Tutti’.  So too the meeting between Pope Francis and Ayatollah al-Sistani, the most important, revered and followed Ayatollah in the Shi'a world, in the city of Najaf this past week is historic. The meeting was a private one but a message in itself and likely to lead to more cooperation and dialogue. Yousif Kalian, a program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace based in Erbil, underlined this by stating   "Ayatollah Sistani doesn't meet with just anybody. It is well known and well documented that he only meets with people as a way to send a signal and a sign."

The meeting took place during Pope Francis’ historic visit to Iraq, the first ever for a Pope. It happened in spite of concerns for the Pope’s safety and warnings about crowds ignoring covid restrictions and the possibility of a spike in the virus. The Pope was committed to honouring his promise of a visit and the people of Iraq showed their delight by the warm welcome they gave him. The Christian community in Iraq includes a range of rites and traditions which include Syriac, Assyrian, Chaldean, Armenian and Melkite and is one of the oldest in the world, dating back to the first century and mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. Now it is facing extinction after hundreds of thousands have fled the violence and destruction of the so-called Islamic State. Francis travelled to Iraq as a pilgrim of peace to show solidarity with a community whose spirit has been broken, an expression used by Yousif Kalian "What the pope's visit is doing is bringing back some of that hope again," said Kalian, "the visit is really going to be giving a huge vote of confidence from the pope to the people that they can handle and sustain themselves, despite the challenges."
 
 The Pope, 84 years of and suffering from sciatica, had a gruelling three days, visiting war torn Mosul on the Nineveh plains and praying for peace, calling for hope to triumph over hate declaring “fraternity is more durable that fratricide”; celebrating the first papal mass in the Chaldean rite in St Joseph’s Cathedral Baghdad – significant because Chaldean is a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus; attending an interfaith meeting in Ur thought to be the birthplace of Abraham, the father of Jews, Christians and Muslims. There Pope Francis told the gathering, which included Muslims and Christians but unfortunately no Jews whose numbers are in single figures, “From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters. Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion. Peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity.”

The meeting with Ayatollah al-Sistani was an image of such unity. The meeting was private and took place in Ayatollah Sistani’s home.  The Vatican, however, said Pope Francis thanked al-Sistani for having “raised his voice in defence of the weakest and most persecuted” during some of the most violent times in Iraq’s recent history. And al-Sistani’s office released a statement that said religious authorities have a role in protecting Iraq’s Christians and that the Shia leader “affirmed his concern that Christian citizens should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights”.  
​
Marsin Alshamary, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Al Jazeera that it was “a very significant” meeting. “The Iraqi public is tired of conflict and it is an opportune moment to have this visit,” she said. “But it is important to recognise that this visit is nothing more than symbolic and that is more than enough. Having the pope visit Iraq for the first time in history is such an honour and it is such a great thing to be happening. And Iraqis are so happy to be hosting him.”  “Nothing more than symbolic” sounds quite dismissive but if in this historic meeting there is a message it surely is one of unity and openness which offers the possibility of further dialogues, growing friendship and working together for the common good. There will be developments I’m sure and at some time in the future we will see what good seeds have been sown by this historic visit. 

0 Comments

Original Blessing

1/3/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
I have to remind myself that the human race is very young if you compare it to what we know of the age of the universe. Taking the evolution of the world as one year homo sapiens only appeared at three minutes to midnight on 31st December. That’s no time at all so perhaps it’s no surprise that in spite of the great innovations and creations of history we are just not good at living together.  We are still learning how to do it and making many mistakes along the way. Perhaps it’s because we don’t trust one another, are afraid of one another and see one another as a threat. There seems to be a deep zenophobia and distrust that leads us to think the worst of one another.

​I recently read Rutger Bergman’s book, Humankind, in which he tries to give a positive view of human beings and show that on the whole human beings are decent kind of beings. He does admit, however, that we also seem to be attracted to stories that shows the opposite – stories like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that suggests children left to themselves on a desert island will deteriorate into animal and destructive tendencies. Bergman shows reality doesn’t support this but somehow it has grasped the imagination of people who seem to readily believe the truth behind the story.  It’s the same I think with the Christian belief in original sin which has also spoken to the imagination and influenced church attitudes for centuries.

Original sin, the story that at the beginning of creation human beings i.e. Adam and Eve disobeyed God resulted in the belief that all human beings are born in a state of alienation from God and in need of redemption. I should say that Judaism, which shares the same story in Genesis does not interpret it in this way and Islam which talks of Adam and Eve falling to earth from Paradise sees human beings as weak and to be tested but not in any way alienated from God. It only came into Christianity in the 4th cy and as far as the Catholic Church is concerned formalised in the 16th cy at the Council of Trent. It is associated with St Augustine who, while grappling with the problem of how sin could have come into the world when the world was created by a good God, devised the belief that the original sin of Adam and Eve was passed down biologically to future generations. Human beings could then only be saved by grace which came through baptism and belief in Jesus. Such a belief in the tainted nature of humanity lays the way open for control, a negative attitude towards the body and sex, forced conversions and baptisms, a rigid moral code which punished the sinner to say nothing of a lack of self -esteem and a poor self- image. It influenced the attitude of preachers and teachers and probably William Golding in writing the Lord of the Flies.

Of course, human beings are sinful and have tendencies towards greed, power, control. It’s very obvious in the world today and just this week I’ve heard stories from a Uighur woman about the genocide that it happening in China, from an artist who has worked  with the Rohingya in Myanmar and of the  antisemitism that stems from the very false but persistent reports about a fabricated document called the Protocols of the Elders of Sion. We are not doing well as human beings.

I’m glad to say, however, that as far as Christian theology is concerned there is now much more emphasis on the goodness of creation and the innate goodness of human beings, created as they are in the image and likeness of God. Religions are living traditions. They develop their understanding of faith in dialogue with the prevailing culture in which they live. That early story in Genesis is now understood as a myth, not to be seen as a fabrication but as a story which contains a truth and the truth is that human beings are created good as all of the created world is, that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, that we are made for fellowship with God and one another but we can also be sinful and determined to plough our own furrow ignoring the need to work for harmony among our brothers and sisters and forgetting our call to care for the created world. Is this not a much more positive  view of human nature and a good basis for transforming our attitude to one another?  What if we trusted that the men and women we met were essentially good and like us struggling to live as best a human life as they could?  Would we be more open to refugees, more concerned for the homeless, for those with addictions, those of our brothers and sisters without food, water, health care or whatever.  Would we be less likely to see those of other cultures and religions as a threat and different from ourselves? Would we be able to overcome the suspicion, racism and zenophobia that sets us against one another?
I would certainly hope so. 

0 Comments

    Author

    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

    Picture

    Archives

    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    RSS Feed

    Categories
    Religious Performances
    ​​

    All

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.