A few years ago the distinguished Roman Catholic Scholar Hans Kung made an observation that has become something of an axiom, a self-evident truth. He said "There will be no world peace without peace between the world's religions. There will be no peace between the world's religions without dialogue between the world's religions."

Kung's comment was made in 1991, in a book called "Global Responsibility" which was an attempt to develop some theological groundwork for a Global Ethic. The Global Ethic is a statement by the major faith traditions setting out the basic moral principles on which all religions agree as the basis for responsible global citizenship by religious believers. It was adopted by the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1993. It is hoped it might one day acquire the kind of status of United Nations charters such as those on Human Rights and the Environment. If you haven't seen it, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

The Global Ethic represents an effort by world religions to address problems together. It has stimulated many people to think about the possibilities of inter-religious co-operation to relieve the hardships of our world and to face its challenges in a spirit of partnership rather than competition. This is not an easy task, because we are not starting from scratch.

The Global Ethic represents an effort by world religions to address problems together

Religions have a history of relationships with each other. Some of it has been hostile and violent. There are many victims of inter-religious strife, and we are surrounded by people who bear the marks of suffering in their lives and in their communities at the hands of religion. Even well- intentioned and gentle practitioners of faith in many of the traditions have been taught that partnership with other believers, dialogue and co-operation with other faiths, is a betrayal of belief, a blasphemy against God.

Despite all this, there are urgent reasons to do challenge these inherited suspicions and to find new visions to overcome these historic antipathies. We are aware, as no generation before us has been aware, of the fragile nature of life on this planet. We face enormous challenges in safeguarding humanity's future, in preserving environmental integrity, in ensuring equitable and sustainable development. We know this is a spiritual task and not simply a political task because it involves the way people believe, the way they live their lives, the way they see the very nature and purpose of human existence.

I don't want to recite a litany of doom this evening, although it's a well known preacher's tactic for manipulating an audience and introducing some unpalatable message. But the fact is our children are traumatized by the threat of the future. There is a growing sense all over the world that neither enlightened governments nor market economies can provide the basis of hope we need to survive and to co-exist.

Over the last hundred years there has been a growing interest among adherents of religion, and even among people who have abandoned any religion, in the possibility of harnessing the spiritual power of faith for global responsibility and peace. Even though we are fully aware of the destructive potential of religion's fanatics, we also know that faith has the capacity to change peoples lives, to transform individuals and societies for good. We know that at the core of every religious tradition there is an ethical imperative toward justice, love, and righteousness. Human beings are profoundly spiritual creatures, and we tend to give deep assent to beliefs which give our life its highest meaning. It's at the level of belief that religions can play a positive and unifying role. Can humanity's beliefs be shaped toward global partnership rather than global hostility?

The 20th century has seen some of the greatest advances in history in inter- faith dialogue. We have had a century of exploration in the building of bridges between global faiths which ought perhaps to be noted one of the great achievements of this closing millennium. Religions have always been in contact with one another, of course, in local situations, but this is the first time we have seen the rise of global movements promoting consultation and co-operation among the world's religious peoples.

~   Lambeth Conference

The recent meeting of the Lambeth Conference in England, for example, featured for the first time Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs walking in procession with Christian leaders at the opening service in Canterbury Cathedral. It was a sign of the desire for better relationships with other traditions by the Anglican Communion. The Conference itself had a full session on Christian-Muslim relations. Inter-faith issues were discussed by bishops in every section of the Conference. In his Presidential Address, the Archbishop of Canterbury said "I was delighted that representatives of other faiths were present at our Opening Service. There can be no doubting the importance of inter-faith dialogue and co-operation for the peace and well-being of the world."

This Conference produced more on inter-faith relationships than any body in the Anglican Communion has ever done, and I shall return to some of its work later. But we can see similar developments in other Christian world Communions, and in other faith traditions as well. There seems to be an emerging awareness that religious competition and hostility is dangerous, a threat to the world's future, and that new bridges need to be built if the positive power of religion is to be harnessed in a constructive way.

There is a local imperative to this as well. Almost all of us now live and work alongside people of other living faiths. They are our neighbours and, in some cases, members of our family. In many places the rights of religious minorities are coming to be protected by law. In our schools we have seen a change in religious education from, at one time, exclusively "Christian propagation" now to "multi-religious education." Some school boards over the last few years have paused at a stage of "no religious education" but this has proven in most places to be unsustainable. There is a growing acceptance in Canada and throughout the Western world not only of the fact of religious plurality but the potential benefits of it.

But there is, of course, another side to this picture. Many people regard these things not as a sign of progress but as a slide into confusion and fragmentation. There are countervailing forces at work in all the major religions aimed at limiting the boundaries of inter-religious accommodation, at defining faith in such a way as to prevent any moderating or mitigating of its core doctrines. There are movements of protest, declarations and manifestos, prayer gatherings and political lobby groups, all intent on opposing what is described as liberalism and unbelief, the fatal surrender of truth to the seductions of an emerging global consciousness.

Religious fundamentalism is on the rise all over the world

Religious fundamentalism is on the rise all over the world, in every major tradition. It is a reaction of fear to modernity, to the rapid speed of change in modern societies. It is a nostalgic longing for simplicity, both intellectual and political, a deep impulse to stem the tide of change that is sweeping away social and cultural traditions right across our globalized world.

Hardly anyone today underestimates the force or danger of fundamentalism. There is scarcely a more toxic combination than religion and fear. There is no limit to its barbarity and intolerance. One of the characteristics of fundamentalism, whether Christian, or any other, is its endless capacity for rationalization and self-justification in the name of sacred text or sacred tradition. The power of fundamentalism lies precisely in its ability to claim divine authorization, the imprimatur of God, and its ability to manipulate the anxieties of people by dogmatic and unquestioning use of ancient and holy myths.

Fundamentalism is not the only obstacle, however. Mainstream conservatives, who must be distinguished from fundamentalists, exhibit the same motives of anxiety. There is anxiety that new relationships between religions will require the sacrifice of something foundational to faith, something that cannot be negotiated away without destroying belief itself. There is anxiety that the inter-faith movement is unconcerned with preserving religious identity, that it cannot be trusted to protect the irreducible core of faith which is at the heart of each religion. There is criticism that the erosion of traditional religious belief will actually undermine world peace, and that the best chance for survival is for the world's peoples to come together into one flock under one shepherd.

Mainstream conservatives  . . . exhibit the same motives of anxiety

Both fundamentalism and mainstream conservatism see a common enemy in religious pluralism. Pluralism is an emerging school of thought in Western universities and seminaries which is trying to build theological bridges across which people of different faiths can travel. It wants to create a framework in which people can embrace each other in good conscience, without sacrificing their own religious identity and without denying the identity of one another. It seeks to overcome both religious exclusivism, by which one tradition claims to possess all the truth to the denial of others, and inclusivism by which one tradition allows a measure of truth to others, but only insofar as they reflect the truth of that tradition itself. For pluralists, neither of these provides a very firm basis for dialogue or co-operation.

Pluralism is a theological effort not to negate the differences between religions but to hold them together

Pluralism is a theological effort not to negate the differences between religions but to hold them together. Pluralists are searching for a way both to respect the distinctives, the uniqueness, of religions while at the same time going beyond them. It is based on the conviction that simple tolerance and mutual respect are not enough, and that the faith traditions need to affirm each other within a larger theocentric framework. This leads inevitably to an investigation into the roots of tradition, new Scholarship of the world's religions, an examination of the core revelation which gave rise to the community that responds to it and protects it. Hans Kung has said more recently that there can be no dialogue between religions without an examination of the foundation of each religion.

It's this examination of the foundation of faith that has the protectors of tradition deeply worried. They suspect that the real project of pluralism is to eradicate belief, to revise or eviscerate the central truth claims of faith in order to make it more possible to fit the religions together. They raise the alarm that pluralism is nothing more than a modern Procrustes, lopping off those parts of religion which don't fit into the inter-faith bed. They warn that dialogue must not become more important than truth or witness.

It is important to acknowledge that there is a legitimate concern here. Some enthusiasts in the inter-faith field, and some theologians of the pluralist school, have not paid sufficient attention to the question of doctrinal integrity, to the authenticity of the Christian gospel in relationship to other faiths. Alister McGrath, a conservative evangelical, complains that there is a tendency among pluralists to revive the Ebionite heresy, the idea that Jesus was simply a human figure, one of many outstanding religious figures but in the end only "one of the boys." Obviously, he says, no genuine relationship between Christians and others can be bought at the price of abandoning faith in Jesus as the one in whom the full being of God came to dwell. In this McGrath is quite correct. Genuine pluralism in my view does not need to reject the divinity of Jesus Christ and would gain nothing by doing so.

The Roman Catholic church, in a recent document by the International Theological Commission, says that dialogue with other religions can proceed only on the assumption that Christianity is the complete revelation of God to humanity, and that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation for the whole of humankind. Other faiths are to be regarded as mere "preparations for the Gospel." They are to be welcomed only insofar as they contain "seeds of the Word" which is Christ. This is the classic inclusivist position, the view that says other people can be accorded a dim awareness of the light, though only we know what it really is. But it seems to mark quite a retreat from the spirit of the Second Vatican Council which spoke about truth in other religions. The Commission, under the authority of Cardinal Ratzinger no less, says it is a 'clarification,' and warns believers that dialogue cannot be placed before the doctrinal coherence of Christianity.

These are useful warnings, and they are not in my view fatal to religious pluralism or to inter-faith dialogue. Pluralism holds that all the great religions of the world represent authentic pathways to God. It places God at the centre of the world's religions, not our own or any other tradition. It invites us to see all the great religions as the work of God refracted through the culture and thought-forms of the world's different peoples. It does not deny God's self-revelation in Christ, nor in the Koran, nor in the Torah, nor in other sacred symbols. It asks us to hold them together, despite their obvious discrepancies, in the greater mystery of faith.

Pluralism appeals to the modern Western mind  ~
Pluralism appeals to the modern Western mind, which has long been suspicious of religion's potential to aggravate and divide and to claim truth for itself in a way which denies other insights, such as science, medicine, humanities and the arts. Western consciousness is willing to grant a relative validity to religion as one way of viewing reality, but it is not prepared to grant ultimate validity to it, nor indeed to any other intellectual paradigm, and is not sympathetic to inter-religious jealousies.

This inherent disposition to pluralism, which is characteristic of post-modern secular Western culture, is now seen as a great danger by advocates of strict religious orthodoxy. Those who want to protect religion against the threat of accommodation or rethinking of core doctrines have now turned their attention to a critique of the Western mind itself. The way has been paved for them by secular critics and writers, like Allan Bloom in "The Closing of the American Mind" and John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards" - a brilliant evisceration of rationalism and its misuses in the modern Western era.

In conservative religious institutions today there is a full scale intellectual assault on the foundations of modernity, on the values and assumptions of Western education. In particular there is an attempt to deconstruct the Enlightenment and to represent its achievements as a danger to the modern world. In fact, since the end of the Cold War the greatest opposition to Western culture in its current form is coming from religion itself - primarily from Islam outside the Western world and conservative Christianity within.

So we see countervailing forces at work in today's religious scene. On the one hand we have a renewed recognition of the potential of religions to enhance and promote the well-being of humanity. The inter-faith movement is growing and is no longer an eccentric fringe on the edge of the major religions. All over the world theologians and ordinary believers are searching for ways of moving beyond mere tolerance, which is a perilously shifting ground, to the more solid foundation of a common vision among faiths.

On the other hand we see a concern to preserve the integrity of belief against relativism or the trading away of cherished truth in pursuit of false compromise. In the face of a catastrophic decline among all the major religions in the West, there is a strong desire among many believers to resist theological developments which might cut the nerve of mission or evangelism. The task for many believers in the West today is to ensure their own survival. This makes for very focused priorities.

Surely there is something of value in both these movements

Surely there is something of value in both these movements. Although they seem to be quite opposed, they are each quite complementary and have some common interests. Both pluralism and orthodoxy share a concern for peace and justice. Orthodox believers are not intrinsically opposed to dialogue, indeed there have been dialogues between orthodox believers through the centuries, nor are pluralists necessarily opposed to the safeguarding of doctrine. What is at stake here is the way doctrine is used, the way it is understood, the way its implications are presented for those who cannot hold it. Still, despite all their opposing interests, both have a conception of truth in which they deeply believe, a truth which is grounded inescapably in tradition itself.

Alan Jones, the Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco writes this:

"The fight is not between absolutists and relativists but between two views of the absolute . . . There are absolutes that cannot be grasped or put into words . . . our struggle with language will never end. We are pilgrims of the Absolute. Some people are protectors of the Absolute rather than pilgrims of it. God doesn't need looking after. The Absolute exists not as turf to be defended or as proof of one's own superiority, but as the horizon toward which one is for ever on pilgrimage."

There may be some help for us here in a recent book by John Saxbee, the Bishop of Ludlow in England. He has written a book called "Liberal Evangelism" and in it he tells the story of the American composer Charles Ives. Charles Ives had the unusual ability to carry two tunes in his head at the same time. He could literally hear distinctly different compositions simultaneously without losing track of them. Apparently this developed when he was a child. He grew up in a small town in America, and on the 4th of July he would watch the parades processing down the main street. It was a short street, so the bands going down passed the bands coming up, each playing different tunes. Ives discovered he could recreate them afterwards exactly in his memory.

Can modern Christians learn to sing two religious tunes at the same time?

Can modern Christians learn to sing two religious tunes at the same time? Can we sing the song of the Christian tradition, the Nicene Creed, the hymns, songs and poetry of our ancient and lovely tradition, which proclaim Jesus Christ as redeemer of the world and saviour of all humanity - and can we at the same time sing the song of the inter-faith movement, which proclaims the saving activity of God in other ways, an infinite variety of ways, in this diverse and complex world? Can we sing the Lord's song as we have come to learn it, and a new song which places God at the heart of the universe, God at the centre of other ways of believing, God who is ultimately beyond our knowing and even perhaps beyond our religion? Are they in fact different songs?

Well, one will be a Christocentric song - that is, a song centred in Jesus Christ as the final revelation of God for us. The other will be a Theocentric song, which we will learn to sing with others who love, worship and obey God by a different name. If you say this is intellectually dishonest, that these songs are disharmonious and incompatible, a blasphemy against Christ, then I would say, try it and see. God works much more effectively through music than theology in my experience.

In fact, we do sing different songs all the time. We couldn't live in the modern world unless we did. We sing ancient hymns written when people thought the earth was flat, and we translate them in our minds. We read sacred texts that presuppose ideas we no longer believe in, but we search those texts for eternal truths which still illumine and inspire us. We listen to language that excludes but hear it as including us, inviting us in. We are modern technological people, computer nerds, scientists, or at least deeply influenced by a scientific world, and yet we dance in circles, we pray to the invisible depths, we hold truths that are incapable of verification by anything except the soul.

We are Canadians, proudly so, and we are also global citizens. We sing two songs. We are men or women, and we cannot build relationships without learning each other's wonderfully foreign music. We belong to political parties with deeply opposed convictions, radically different melodies, yet there is a larger idea called democracy to which we give our assent, and it requires that we grant others the right to sing the song from time to time.

Can Christians learn to sing with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and members of other faiths without either surrendering our Christian voice or else trying to take over the choir? I want to suggest that some recent statements by the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops have made an attempt to do this.

The documents of the Conference have not yet been published, but when they are you will find Thirty Theses on Inter-Faith Relations. They begin by affirming some basic attitudes:

1. We must have a real desire to listen to people whose faith and world- view are different from ours.
2. Respect for the faith of others should not allow us to mock the beliefs and practices of others.
3. We should be determined to believe the best about others.
4. We will want to recognise gladly all the common ground that we can find, and at the same time all the differences.
5. There needs to be a spirit of repentance which arises out of an awareness of the genuine wrongs and even crimes that Christians have committed in the past.
6. We need to recover the right kind of confidence in the message of the Gospel. By this is meant "a humble recognition that there is something distinctive about the message concerning Jesus for people of all faiths, and it will spring at its best from a spontaneous desire to share what we know of Jesus Christ."

   The Conference then goes on to talk about relationships between world religions.

7. Christians need to work as far as possible for genuinely open and loving human relationships with people of other faiths.
8. Generalizations based on one situation cannot easily be applied to another, since political and social contexts vary so much from one part of the world to another.
9. Christians need to be willing and able to talk about anything that is of interest and concern to people of other faiths.
10. Even in situations where dialogue seems impossible, there should be a real desire for face-to-face meeting, frank exchange of opinion and peace- making.
11. The way religious communities relate to each other in one part of the world can have immediate and far-reaching effects on communities in other parts of the world.
12. In the context of genuine relationships, it is entirely natural for Christians to share their deepest convictions.

    In the area of theology there are two theses:

13. The content of the Christian message is likely to focus on the person of Christ.
14. Our approaches to people of other faiths are likely to be influenced profoundly by our understanding of salvation.

    In terms of practical action, the Conference said this:

15. Christians need to know more about other faiths and to develop an understanding of them.
16. Christians will want to seek the total well-being of others.
17. Christians should be willing to work as far as possible in cooperation with people of other faiths in addressing human concerns and working for justice, human rights, and the environment.
18. In situations where there is persecution, Christians should adopt special attitudes of patience and perseverance.
19. Christians must be prepared to engage in advocacy on behalf of fellow Christians in difficult situations.
20. Churches in situations where these difficulties do not exist have a special obligation to support suffering churches in other parts of the world.
21. Many of the most difficult issues in inter-faith relations today are caused by the rise of fundamentalisms of different kinds.
22. Christians must be able and willing to present the Gospel in ways that are culturally appropriate.
23. We cannot avoid the difficulties associated with people of other faiths becoming disciples of Christ and accepting baptism.
24. There are situations where clear pastoral guidance is needed by Christian congregations.
25. Christians can and should appeal to the principle of reciprocity. This means we need to advocate for the rights of religious minorities in our own context just as we would expect the same rights for Christians where they are a minority.

    On evangelism the bishops said:

26. Christians want to make Christ known and give others the opportunity of following him. They are not however seeking to convert or in the business of conversion in the sense that their sole aim is to make the other person change his or her beliefs.
27. The word 'proselytising' refers to making converts by methods that are not appropriate, such as bullying, manipulation, use of material resources, targeting specific persons or groups for conversion, misusing power or privilege, or seeking to make Christians who are carbon copies of ourselves.
28. An ecumenical approach is needed in developing our responses to people of other faiths.

There are many obstacles to religious peace and co-operation

There are many obstacles to religious peace and co-operation, but here at least is some light. As world-wide Christianity becomes increasingly conservative, increasingly fearful and resistant to change, there are still signs of what I have tried to call "grounded openness" - that is, deep commitment to Christ which opens people up to the fresh discovery of God in other places. The current culture wars in the church are a sinful distraction from our more pressing tasks. We need to find that deeper unity that unites us beyond the differences. I want to close tonight with some words of Thomas Merton, the great Catholic monk, which express very simply what I have been trying to say. Speaking to Buddhist monks in 1968 Merton said:

My brothers,

We are already one, but we imagine that we are not. What we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we already are.

For an extended exposition of Bishop Ingham's views on religious pluralism see his recent book:

See also Bishop Ingham's Sermon at St.John's delivered the day before this address.