Donal Dorr SPS begins with the idea of mission as dialogue between Christianity and other religions, spiritualities and value systems. He goes on to look at mission as evangelisation, as inculturation, as struggle for liberation, as option for the poor and as power from the Spirit. He also looks at the options missionaries for the future.
308pp. Columba Press 2000. To purchase this book online, go to www.columba.ie
CONTENTS
Introduction
Part one: Mission as Dialogue
1: Dialogue
2: Dialogue with World Religions
3: Dialogue with Primal Religions
4: Dialogue with the Western World
Part two: Key entry-points to the notion of mission
5: Mission as Evangelization
6: Mission as Inculturation
7: Mission as Struggle for Liberation
8: Mission as Reconciliation
9: Mission as Option for the Poor
10: Mission as Power from the Spirit
Part three: Re-visioning ‘mission to the nations’ (Ad Gentes)
11: New Models, New Images, New Attitudes
12: The Purpose of Mission
13: New Frontiers of ‘Mission to the Nations’
Part four: Foreign missionaries
14: Missionary Strategy: Vehicles of Evangelization
15: Missionaries and Development Workers
16: Moving on or Staying on
17: Bringing it Back Home
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Review |
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PART ONE: MISSION AS DIALOGUE
Chapter 1: Dialogue
The notion of mission is so broad and rich that to understand it we need to approach the subject from a variety of different points of view. If I had been writing this book twenty years ago I would have begun with an account of mission as evangelisation. But at the present time it seems more appropriate to devote the early chapters to an account of mission as dialogue.
The main argument for starting a study of mission with dialogue rather than evangelisation is that it provides a corrective for the very one-sided notion of mission which people took for granted in the past. The emphasis then was almost entirely on the great work done by the missionaries and the great gift brought by them, with little attention paid to the recipients of this gift. One reason why the whole notion of mission has lost much of its glamour in more recent times is that people have become aware of how unbalanced this approach was. By starting with the notion that dialogue is integral to mission we take account of the fact that the Spirit is at work in the people being evangelized as well as in the evangelisers; and we acknowledge that there is a two-way exchange of gifts, between missionaries and the people among whom they work. Furthermore, the notion of dialogue conveys the impression that mission is not just a matter of doing things for people. It is first of all a matter of being with people, of listening and sharing with them.
The very notion of mission as dialogue is a direct challenge to an assumption that was sometimes made in the past that the successful missionary is one who gets many converts and builds up the institutional church. Of course we can still find some crusading missionaries who are so convinced of the importance of the good news of Jesus Christ that they become preoccupied with the numbers of their converts. Their attitude is that dialogue between Christianity and other religions would be a distraction from their missionary work – though they would hardly dare to express it so crudely. Perhaps they are secretly afaid that their missionary enthusiasm would be weakened by engaging in religious dialogue. The irony is that the missionary enterprise is undermined much more by this kind of insensitivity than by devoting time and energy to understanding non-Christian religions. It is now generally accepted that, far from being opposed to mission, dialogue is in fact an integral aspect of mission. (1)
In my book Divine Energy I outlined a variety of ways in which the Spirit of God is at work in the world. In the very first chapter of the Bible we are told that at the beginning of creation the Spirit moved over the waters, bringing order out of chaos (Gen 1:2). Since then the Spirit has touched our lives through the influence of countless prophets, as well as through our own personal signs and dreams and all kinds of spiritual experiences. The various religions may be seen as attempts to give some institutional shape to such movements of God’s Spirit and God’s grace. In all of the religions we can find rituals, symbols and traditions which express or foster or embody people’s religious experience. These symbols and rituals evoke in people a sense of the loving, healing presence of God in their own lives and in the wider world. But, like all human institutions, religions can become distorted and even corrupt. When that happens they may foster religious legalism, or arrogant fanaticism; or they may promote superstitious or quasi-magical practices.
This means that the non-Christian religions are channels of grace in some respects while in other ways they can lead people astray. However, when we look at Christianity, not in its ideal form but as it has actually developed through history, we have to make a similarly nuanced judgement about it. Undoubtedly, it has been and remains a powerful instrument of divine grace. Yet there have been situations where it has, at the same time, been a hindrance to authentic religious experience. That is why we hold as part of our Christian faith that the church is always called to allow itself to be reformed by God’s grace. Both as individual Christians and as a church we must accept the pain of being called to conversion by prophetic people inspired by God’s Spirit.
Dialogue between the religions is one of the most powerfully effective ways in which Christians and other religious believers can open themselves to the influence of the Spirit of God. Those who take part in inter-religious dialogue are submitting themselves and their own religious traditions to the judgement of God. The Spirit works partly by enriching those who engage in this dialogue; they grow in wonder and insight when they are allowed to share something of the religious experience of people from a different tradition. God’s Spirit also inspires the partners in the dialogue to allow themselves to be challenged at a deep religious level. They are called to acknowledge that not only may they have much to learn in a positive sense from others but also that their own articulation of spirituality may be inadequate and even quite distorted in some respects. They are invited to admit that God’s Spirit may use the other partner in the interreligious dialogue as a key instrument in showing up this distortion or inadequacy.
The Depth Dimension
There is a danger that we would think of inter-religious dialogue mainly in terms of an exchange of information. If we do so, then we may well feel we should leave it to the experts, the people who have a lot of knowledge about the different religions. But this would mean that we are treating religion in much the same way as geography or history or motor mechanics – that is, as a distinct area of knowledge with items of information, some of which we already know and others which we have not yet learned. That is a very mistaken approach. Religious faith cannot be fenced off into a separate domain. For it is concerned with all aspects of human living. Instead of thinking of it as a separate area of knowledge we could think of it as an exploration of the deep questions which underlie our everyday concerns.
For instance, when a child is sick, its parents normally go first to the doctor. But suppose the child dies, despite every effort the medical people can make. This death raises deep religious questions for the family. Why did God allow this innocent child to die? Why did this tragedy happen to us rather than to another family? Are we being punished by God for something we have done wrong? Often, the questions lead on to still deeper issues. Does God really care? And if God does care, is God really all-powerful? The death of a child may even lead parents to ask what is the meaning of life and to doubt whether their own lives are worth living. So there are spiritual or religious questions lurking behind people’s everyday concern about sickness and health.
The same applies on a larger scale when a whole community comes up against major problems. For instance, one legacy of colonialism is that many of the poorer countries of the world are afflicted with widespread corruption in government. The problem is so pervasive that the ordinary citizens feel powerless to overcome it. This is a political and cultural problem. But it also has an important religious aspect. For there are some spiritualities and religious traditions which encourage fatalism in the face of evil and some which call for unquestioning submission to authority in the face of oppression and injustice. In sharp contrast to this, there are other spiritualities or religions which call people to struggle for liberation. They help people believe in their own goodness, their own power, and their responsibility both for their own destiny and for the well-being of their nation. They evoke in people the energy to resist oppression. The point I am stressing is that the political issue of challenging corruption also has a religious dimension. So religion cannot be fenced off from the political sphere any more than it can be partitioned off from the sphere of everyday personal and family concerns.
This point is expressed in more technical terms in a document issued by the (Vatican) International Theological Commission: ‘… religion is an integral constituent of culture, in which it takes root and blossoms. Moreover, all the great cultures include the religious dimension, as the keystone of the edifice they constitute.. .’ (2)
All this brings home to us the fact that inter-religious dialogue is not a marginal activity unrelated to everyday life. It affects – and is affected by – the political, social, economic and family issues that shape our daily lives. So it would be a serious mistake to assume that it can be left to specialists. It is a concern for all of us.
Different kinds of Dialogue
If inter-religious dialogue is to play an important part in the life of mission-minded people then it must not be confined to theoretical knowledge about the beliefs or practices of other religions. It has to be the kind of exchange which both nourishes people’s faith and challenges them at the very deepest level.
This is not to play down the importance of the kind of formal intellectual dialogue which takes place in inter-religious conferences. There is no doubt that such meetings can foster better understanding between the different religions. But dialogue must not be left to the experts and church leaders who take part in such high-level gatherings. The meetings at official level play an important symbolic role and they can provide a stimulus and a focus for dialogue. However, they can easily be reduced to empty rhetoric unless they are underpinned by a more everyday type of dialogue.
The difficulty is that most people have no clear sense of how to go about this ‘lower-level’ dialogue. So, without minimising the significance of official inter-religious dialogue, I propose here to focus attention on the everyday informal dialogue in which we can all play a part.
In 1991 the Vatican issued a document entitled Dialogue and Proclamation. (3) In paragraph 42 of this document a distinction is made between four forms of dialogue:
– the dialogue of life, i.e. sharing of joys, sorrows and concerns;
– the dialogue of action, i.e. collaboration in furthering human development and liberation;
– the dialogue of theological exchange;
– the dialogue of religious experience, i.e. the sharing of spiritual riches such as ways of praying.
It is important for us to remember that, in varying degrees, all of us can be involved in the first, second and fourth of these. If we engage ourselves as far as possible in these less theological forms of dialogue, then we can in good conscience leave the theological exchange to the specialists who take part in scholarly conferences where they share the fruits of the intense study of the religions to which they have devoted their lives.
Where people of different religious faiths live in the same area, it should be normal to have ‘a dialogue of life’ and ‘a dialogue of joint action’. In fact, these forms of dialogue should be far more common now than in the past, because in recent times the world has become much more pluriform as a result of emigration and immigration. Many areas which used to be religiously homogeneous now have significant numbers of people who belong to religious traditions very different from that of the majority. Sometimes these minority groups are left isolated, almost as though they were in a ghetto. In other situations, however, serious attempts are made to integrate them, while respecting their distinctive traditions.
If these attempts are to succeed, action at the social and political level is not enough; there is need for people to make a serious attempt to understand and respect each other’s religious beliefs, values, rituals and organisation. So the dialogue of life and joint action leads on naturally to what the Vatican document calls ‘the dialogue of religious experience’. The ideal is that there should not only be a sharing about each other’s faith but an actual sharing of faith to whatever degree is possible, culminating, hopefully, in joint prayer-services where that is feasible.
Inner Dialogue
In addition to the four kinds of religious dialogue already mentioned, there is a less obvious but even more fundamental form of dialogue. It takes place not so much between one person and another as within each person. It is a question of seeking to ‘get inside’ the religious outlook of people of different religious traditions. What takes place is an inner dialogue of the heart, rather than a dialogue at the verbal or intellectual level. As the great theologian Paul Tillich says, ‘… every dialogue between religions is accompanied by a silent dialogue within the representatives of each of the participating religions. (4)
It has become a commonplace to say that the difference between the religions is not that they provide different answers to the same fundamental question but that they set out to respond to different questions. I would like to express this insight in a somewhat different way. I suggest that each of the major religious traditions has a distinctive central core. Each of them focuses on a particular religious value or set of values. Consequently, each religion offers us a distinctive perspective on the deeper dimensions of life.
These different perspectives are by no means mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they tend to supplement and reinforce each other. We might even say that a fully comprehensive and integral spirituality will take all these different values into account. To live a rich and fully human spiritual life involves an appreciation of the various perspectives of different religions and even an ability to shift at times from one perspective to another.
I have an image of a circle entitled ‘The Deeper Issues’. The circle is divided into ten segments. Each of these represents a major religious value or need which lies at the heart of one or more of the religions of the world. (There follows a diagram entitled The Deeper Issues which for technical reasons we cannot reproduce here. Instead we simply list the ten segments of the circle)
Sense of being chosen
Sovereignty of God and Sense of Destiny
Order, Respect
Being in tune with the flow of Life
Rootedness in nature and cosmos
Mystical Experience
Enlightment
Compassion
Human wholeness and ecological sensitivity
Human Dignity: Basis for ethical values of justice and participation
The important point here is that all the ‘deeper’ (religious) issues cannot be reduced to just one basic issue, as some people mistakenly assume. Rather there is a whole constellation of concerns, all of which are spiritual or religious. As I noted earlier, none of these issues exists in a separate so-called ‘religious’ sphere. All of them are deeper aspects of our everyday interests and concerns. The various religions differ from each other mainly in the emphasis which they give to these major religious issues.
The key to engaging in a truly fruitful and challenging ‘inner dialogue’ with the different religions is to have a sympathetic understanding of their core values and interests. I am being profoundly disrespectful to another religion if I am interested only in discovering its attitude to the religious questions or values which are the main concern of my own religion. I need to broaden my horizon to take in all the various values or needs outlined in the diagram – and other values not mentioned explicitly there.
Provisos
I do not want to make a strict one-to-one correlation between each religion and one of the values listed on a segment of the circle in the diagram. This is because every religion focuses attention on more than one of these values; and also because there is a considerable overlap between the different values. The differences in ‘tone’ between the different religions comes largely (but not entirely) from the particular constellation of values which characterises each religion. Furthermore, different religions vary very much from one area to another and from one time-span to another. For instance, there can be no doubt that Western Christianity has undergone a major change of ‘tone’ since about 1960; it now puts far more emphasis on ‘worldly’ values such as justice, human rights, and ecological sensitivity than it did in the past.
Another point to remember is that the differences between religions does not arise only from differences in the values they accentuate. There are also major differences in the rituals and symbols they use, in the way they are organised and governed, and in the fundamental beliefs they stand for. What I am at present suggesting is not a comprehensive comparison of the different religions under all these aspects. I want rather to look at the values which are given prominence in various non-Christian traditions, with a view to promoting greater understanding in ourselves of these different outlooks. This better understanding can help us to learn from them. It can also enable us to become more aware of where non-Christians might be interested in some of what the Christian faith has to offer them.
I think it is quite likely that most readers who look at the diagram may say that the Christianity which they believe in is one which fosters all of the values in all the different sectors of the circle. Certainly, that is my own outlook. This raises the interesting point that at the present time one of the values which is most respected by many Western Christians is openness to the values of other religions (whereas fifty years ago we tended to be quite hostile to other religions and would have been inclined to look askance at some of the values they stood for). So at this point we have to distinguish between what I may call our ideal Christianity (including the values I believe Christianity should take account of and treasure) and the actual reality of Christianity as it exists in a particular area in a given time-period.
Each has a Gift
Having noted these provisos, I still think it is a very useful exercise to compare the religions on the basis of the values which are promoted by each of them. In the next three chapters, I propose to look briefly at a variety of different religions and philosophies of life, and to identify, very tentatively, some of the religious values or concerns which lie at the core of each. Chapter 2 is devoted to the topic of dialogue with six of what may be called ‘world religions’, namely, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. In the third chapter I propose to explore the question of dialogue with the primal (traditional) religions. Then in Chapter 4 I shall go on to consider the issue of a religious or quasi-religious dialogue with the religious and moral ‘searchers’ of the Western world today.
I am making the assumption that each of the great religions puts its adherents in touch with one or more profound religious values – and may well do so in a manner or a degree that makes it unique. Furthermore, I assume that the uniqueness of each of these religions puts it in a position to offer a vital and perhaps irreplaceable contribution to the religious experience and understanding of people of other faiths.
In other words, my starting-point is that each of the great religions of the world has a special gift to offer to the others. No religious believer has the right to say: ‘Our religion is complete in itself, in the sense that we have nothing significant to learn from the others.’ And this applies to Christians as well as non-Christians. As Christians, we are called by the Spirit to open ourselves, with eagerness and with humility, to engage in a dialogue of the head and of the heart with the followers of other religions. In this way we can work towards a far richer, deeper, and more rounded understanding of our own Christian faith than we have at present. Indeed, if we take this invitation seriously, it is not just our understanding of the faith which will deepen. Even our faith itself will grow and blossom in ways that we could never have guessed.
In taking on this task of identifying key values in various religions I am very aware of my own ignorance and of the dangers of over-simplifying and even misunderstanding them. I take seriously the warning of the scholar Eric Sharpe that ‘there is a somewhat romantic attitude abroad these days, decreeing that imaginative sympathy is to be preferred over actual knowledge, where the Christian encounter with other religious traditions is concerned (5). But I think it is worth while taking the risk of oversimplification, because otherwise the spiritual treasures of the various religions may be available only to a small number of specialist experts. My hope is that what I have to say here may help people to locate within themselves the deep needs or values that are being responded to by the different religious traditions – and that this may lead them to a profound interior encounter with the core of these religions or worldviews.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
1. If you were not a Christian, what religion would you like to belong to? Why?
2. What do you consider to be central aspects of Christian belief which are not found in other religions?
3. Is there any aspect of any non-Christian religion which you find very attractive and valuable but which you consider to be incompatible with Christianity?
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
1. Cf. Redemptoris Missio (Pope John Paul II’s 1990 encyclical on the Missions), no. 55.
2. N. 8 of ‘Faith and Inculturation’ in The Irish Theological Quarterly, 55 (1989),145.
3. On the issue of dialogue between the religions see also, International Theological Commission, ‘Le christianism et les religions’ in Documentation Catholique Vol XCIV (No 2157) (6 April 1997), 312-332.
4. Christianity and the Encounter of World Religions, 57. The inner dialogue I am suggesting can be related to the notion of ‘passing over’ to another viewpoint, as outlined by John Dunne in The Way of All the Earth, (viii)-(ix).
5. Eric Sharpe, ‘Mission between Dialogue and Proclamation’ in William R. Burrows (ed.), Redemption and Dialogue, 171.
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