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Karl Ernst Nipkow

The University of Tübingen, Faculty of Protestant Theology (Dep. of Pract. Theol.) and Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (Dep. of Education)

FAITHS IN DIALOGUE - TRUTH AND LIVING BELIEF SYSTEMS

My paper will have three parts. First of all I should like to clarify what we are talking about when we use the term truth (I), second I’ll turn to truth in education (II); the third part will elaborate rules of dialogue which try to do justice to both, the dignity of the issue of religious truth and our educational responsibility as teachers towards children and young people (III).

I Dimensions of truth – an analytic approach

1. Truth as true facts

“Truth” is a complex term. In ordinary language, the adjective “true” is mostly associated with true facts. In the 18th century the English term “matter of fact” (in Joseph Butler’s book “Analogy”) was translated into the German language by Johann Joachim Spalding (1756) as “Tatsache” (Staats 1973). The breathtaking career of the term soon propelled the new “Tatsachenwahrheiten” to the front of the consciousness of the Enlightenment. For the rationalistic modern mind it was convenient to identify truth with facts. Still today, our students want to make sure that religious truth too deals with matters of fact. Otherwise they suspect them not to be “true” but “false” and “wrong”. This has become the dominating coding.

There are a lot of items in each religion that are historical facts which one is not permitted to deny as for instance the fact that Jesus has lived and that he was crucified, something that seems to be beyond dispute, but that Muslims may have difficulties to accept. The controversy about religious truth claims starts already in this dimension; much before ultimate truth.

2. Truth as adequate interpretation

Facts need interpretation in order to find out what they mean. We use to say that an interpretation is adequate if the meaning of the particular features of a historical event, a piece of literature, or a painting, and the intuition we are

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getting from the whole support each other. In this case, we would say that a “true” interpretation is an “appropriate” one opposed to “inappropriate” hermeneutic vagaries. However, even this criterion of cohesion is insufficient for solving the struggle between diverging reading, e. g. a feminist reading of the Bible over against a more conservative one, or an Islamistic reading of the Koran opposed to a more liberal one. A bulk of teaching in RE has to do with interpretation. Again the stage for our problem is set before ultimate truth issues, though it relates to them.

Calling a religious conviction an “interpretation” can erode religious certainty. Certainty means a feeling and knowledge that nobody has any doubts about. Believers may feel puzzled if they are told that they believe in something that is tinged by human interpretation. The hermeneutical issue marks a water-shed in separating believers of the same faith tradition and between different ones. Beside the realm of facts (see above), hermeneutics add to give rise to religious truth conflict. Christianity and Islam differ in that the first rests upon an event that is interpreted as God’s “incarnation”, while the Koran is regarded as God’s “inlibration” (Schimmel 1995, 197). If God incorporates in a human being, human life and history must necessarily become God’s appropriate living media which as historical human phenomena require an interpretation of the ways God is acting through them. In Christian theology the field of hermeneutics has been highly developed from the onset (see Paul in resting on Jewish exegetical traditions). In Islam hermeneutical developments meet with the absolute divine authority of the Koran in all details (Waardenburg 1997).

3. Truth as certain experience

The apostle Paul was an outstanding scholar, but he didn’t become a Christian by books, it happened because of a completely unexpected personal experience. His conversion before Damascus was to him “a real ‘objective’ seeing of a supernatural reality in divine splendour of light”, which made itself known as the ‘Lord’ and was recognized by him this way. “Nowhere is there any thought that this could have been an illusion.” (Hengel/Schwemer 1997, 39). His visionary ‘seeing of the Kyrios’ in 1 Cor. 9.1 was an experience with the character of a fact. Thus, a “matter-of-fact truth” (“Tatsachenwahrheit”) as described above (sse 1.), and a new “experiential truth” (“Erfahrungswahrheit”) can coincide and become one and the same.

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Furthermore, with Paul both, the event and the new revelation-based conviction, were imbued with a new interpretation of religious tradition. Paul’s new experience hit upon him within a specific context of a former certain religious knowledge of his. As Saul he had forcefully defended the Torah as the only valid guide-line in life. He had regarded the early Christians’ talk of “a risen Messiah” as the “Lord” as a crying blasphemy which, when coming up, had prompted him to a bloody persecution of the young congregation in Jerusalem. Now this interpretation was overthrown; in addressing him directly the “risen Lord” revolutionized his interpretive knowledge. The objectivity of the new experience was accompanied by a new interpretation. Thus, all three aspects which we have highlighted so far were cojoining and supporting each other. Still today they can form a compound whole. What we see as a turning point in Paul’s life must not happen that dramatically everywhere and every time. What we have to keep in mind is the new coding that comes into sight: “true” as “certain” or “uncertain”. With very many young (and older) people today, even believers, to be absolutely certain about one’s own faith is not the rule. Beside the possible irritation by diversity, it is this general skepticism that we are confronted with in the RE classrooms in almost all European countries. It goes without saying that teachers have their religious doubts as well.

4. Truth as convincingly disclosed reality

Does an external point of observation and knowledge exist from where to decide upon the truth of differing religious truth experiences? We may say that life proves what is true when religious experiences meet the realities of life in a way that we can’t help say “Yes, so it is!” Ian T. Ramsay has regarded “revelation” as an experience of “disclosure” (similar Herms 1982).

Why are the stories of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, so convincing? Because the fact of fratricide between Cain and Abel (Gen 4), in the context of religious cult at that (!), meets the sad and continuing fact of murder throughout human history. Murder and war are a historical constant (Shaw/Wong 1989). The same truth is with the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11). It is simply obvious that there are deep rooted structural barriers to mutual understanding everywhere on this globe.

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Or to give an example of spontaneous affirmation to the truth of religious statements with young children. Together with children Ingo Baldermann (1996) has discovered the truth of Psalms. He offered them sentences like

“I sink in deep mirewhere there is no foothold.I have come into deep waters,And the flood sweeps over me.I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched.” (Ps 69, 1-3)

The children didn’t need any artificial motivation to get interested in, nor much help to grasp, the truth of these lines since they could immediately confirm what is said by their own perceptions and early troubles in life. Now the coding reads “true” as “realistic” or “unrealistic”.

5. Truth as a reliable relation to a person

From the very beginning of our life we are receiving names and are gradually calling others by name. When I call someone “my friend” she or he, indeed, becomes my friend through the power of a performative act of speech. Names are speech in its highest potentiality (Rosenstock-Huessy 1950, chapt. 1), for they generate or change social reality, to the better or to the worse! Let us look at the positive side.

Names can create relationships of mutual trust. A child trusts in her mother and her father that they will behave as mother and father, in accord with these names. The word “truth” obtains a social meaning pointing to personal reliability, the coding being now “true” as “trustworthy” opposed to “not trustworthy”.

The Bible has a lot to tell about this dimension of truth. One is permitted to even say that the God of the Bible is nothing but this: to prove his nature as the trustworthy Other. In manifesting God’s loving loyalty to his creatures, Jesus also primarily embodies this truth by his person. Christian faith is life in relationship to God through Jesus as a person. This was exactly the way the early Christians took it.

Again we can demonstrate this dimension already to young children. They know very well about people whom they can trust or not. We don’t need any examples.

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In the Hebrew language the word for “truth” (“emet”) and the word for “faith” (“emunah”) share the same root which means “reliable” and “truthworthy”. Under the influence of the Greek philosophical tradition, in Christian theology “truth” became the expression of a cognitive process denoting the relation of the individual’s mind to the outer world of matter. Statements (language) had to be adequate to facts (reality). This view of truth remains an important dimension, but if we get fixed to it, we leave the biblical roots by transforming direct personal faith relations into indirect, objectivated faith statements about the personal. It comes as no surprise that today fixing at theological doctrine prevents us from understanding God’s living reality.

II Truth and religious education

What has truth to do with education as such? I do not yet at once refer to religious education. Does the issue of truth deserve a place in school education at all? I definitely affirm this question. If removing religion from the curriculum schools would lose the access to a vital dimension of human affairs.

1. Handling truth claims as a multi-dimensional task

For the following sketching of tasks, we recall the analytic dimensions above (part I) together with the general reminder that the multi-dimensional character of the concept of truth as proven needs a basic clarification again and again already with youngsters. Therefore, let us handle truth claims in the classroom by dealing already with the term “truth” itself as deliberately and distinctly as possible!

(1) Empirical and historical testing of fact-related truth claims

Many aspects of our issue can be dealt with in a straightforward, constructive, reasonable way. Religious statements referring to facts can be more or less checked on empirical respectively historical grounds (see above I, 1).

(2) Looking for coherent interpretations

Differing interpretations can either be explained, or at least be fairly understood, when one examines their background (I, 2). The first criterion is to arrive if possible at a coherent interpretation of each document or item in itself.

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Secondly, students will have to learn about the ways of a re-lecturing (relectura) of a text tradition in changing times and from different points of view.

(3) Tracing back truth claims to truth experiences

If used in isolation, the term truth “claim” is misleading. The word “claim” either means something which someone says that cannot be proved and may be false or you use the word if you have a claim on someone as if you were entitled to demand something from a person. In both cases the term “claim” completely hides the roots from where a so-called truth claim springs into being, namely by truth experiences (I,3). Therefore, abstract generalizations of religious doctrine are to be traced back to their concrete historical and biographical life-contexts and life stories.

(4) Discovering true insights on life as it is

The students will have to learn to realize life as a process which has to do with the search for meaning. They become aware of the interest of people to make sense of their life and of the fact that religious documents can contain surprising and convincing “disclosures” of life as it is (I, 4). To assume that people will merely construct meaning as a constructivist epistemological standpoint suggests is one-sided. The complex issue cannot be dealt with incidentally. At any rate we can become overwhelmed by the appearance of something quite new which we had not expected at all with an impact on our construing mind, not simply just as something construed by it; the process of gaining knowledge is a dialectic one : “… faith is a new experience we make with our (old) experiences” (Jüngel 1972, 8).

(5) Learning about personal truth through persons

Eventually, on the personal level, children and youth ought to learn about truth as a reliable interpersonal relation, truth as trust in others (I, 5). In this perspective truth can also be connected to an adult’s accumulated personal wisdom, as paying witness to the younger generation. Children and young people still enjoy the encounter with teachers as persons who authentically present their own experiences and argue from a standpoint of their own. They are as well interested in meeting other adults as guests in the classroom. In the teaching-learning process the personal element is unavoidable; it is simply

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present. Each instruction implies interpersonal interaction, and neither the personalities of the students nor that of the teachers can or should be neutralized. Learning about truth includes learning through persons.

2. Handling religious truth claims as a controversial issue in public education

What I have summed up as resulting from part I of my reflections may be convincing that far. But what about religious truth in education? Are we now forced to close the door and to exclude the issue of truth? Have we even to be afraid of religious truth claims in public schools? The clarification in part I was intended to promote a transparent and broadly acceptable instructional discourse. But are all religious traditions open to it? In other areas we Europeans oftentimes naively apply a modern European pattern of rationality to non-European cultures. In the field of religious education we have good reasons to stick to some features of European thought patterns. In an open society and liberal democracy the public school has the right to set certain standards for each subject whatever, also for RE. It is up to the religions to accept this frame of general standards or not. Intolerant religions which undermine freedom, peace, and tolerance can hardly be tolerated.

How to handle religious truth claims depends on whether or not a sort of religious instruction in state-maintained schools is to be established at all. The objections (see below 1-2) and the restrictions (see 3) come from three sides.

(1) The sectarian argument

A sectarian standpoint is usually desinterested in RE in the rooms of a public school because of its open-minded critical spirit which might destabilize the own convictions. The own religious truth is regarded as sacrosanct and in need of careful protection within the premises of the own group.

(2) The laicist argument

It is widespread in two forms, in a kind (see the United States) or hostile attitude to religion (see the former Soviet Union or the German Democratic Republic), risking a certain oversimplification for there are also attitudes in between (see

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France). Most recently, before our Supreme Court of Law (Bundesverfassungsgericht) a lawyer defended the view that a regional state (Bundesland) should have the right of running its public schools bare of any confessional religious elements (“bekenntnisfreie Schulen”). If religion was to be introduced at all, it should be administered by the government alone. Throughout history, since the ancient Rome, politicians were keen on a sort of useful “state religion” (J. J. Rouseau) or “civil religion” (R. Bellah). The laicist argument is either radical refusal or a reductionist one.

(3) The pluralist argument

A third concern of whether or not to allow a specific faith tradition (and corresponding truth claims) entering state-maintained schools is multi-faith society. In Germany the proportion of Muslims amounts to more than three millions of Muslims amongst them about 750.000 Muslim students in public schools. How is it possible to do justice simultaneously to each specific religion including the dignity of the issue of truth along the lines of each specific faith tradition, and to religious and ideological diversity with the pupils? The salient point is the religious conscience of each of the children in front of us, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu, and among them also a growing or already vast amount of children from agnostic or atheist background. In a way they are entitled to have RE of their own. In Germany Roman-Catholics, Protestants, and Jews do have, Muslims not yet everywhere. In many classes there is a multifaith situation with up to 60 per cent Muslim pupils in big cities. To sum up, despite narrow-minded sectarian or rigid laicist arguments there are good reasons to have religion in state schools, but how to respond to diverging truth claims?

3. Escaping normative issues in RE?

There can be several reactions. What we observe in Europe in the last decades is a tendency to avoid normative questions on principle, the extreme being the complete exclusion of normative discourses: No valuing in RE! Another reaction is, as it were, to ‘soften’ the issue, that is to make it less urgent and – as a side-effect – to make it hereby also less clear. One looks for a level of dealing with living religions that will not irritate anybody. “You must not say or do things which appear to conflict with the claims of other religions”, Daniel W. Hardy (1996, 30) ironically describes this standpoint. Thus, the issue of truth is on the brink of being expelled in public schools just in that subject which from the

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nature of its substantial content can at least do without it. What can be argued against this reductionism?

(1) Avoiding indoctrination on a false assumption

A widespread suspicion draws on the undeniable fact of possible religious indoctrination. However, a first mistake is to assume that avoiding religious indoctrination necessarily implies to drop all normative religious talk as such. “Some forms of religious instruction are (to indulge a pun) obviously damnable but it does not follow that all are, unless one simply insists on regarding any imparting of religious beliefs and practices as educationally unacceptable.” (Haldane 1990, 187)

None type of RE is neutral as is no education as such (Paolo Freire). Even if teachers try to treat different faiths in exactly the same “objective” way, they will transport normative biases in their teaching. First, as a more general “hidden curriculum”, they communicate the message that differences between faiths are more or less rather subordinate features. Hereby RE is relativizing what might be essential to members. Second, by avoiding judgements in order not to become judgemental, obviously problematic traits of religions that would require an honest discussion for reasons of humanity are maybe unwillingly justified by silencing them. Instead, the pupils should be enabled to enter a frank dicussion on the pros and cons of all religions their own faith tradition included (to the rules of communication see below part III).

(2) Recasting faiths as material of self-development

Another way to solve the problem is to shift the tasks of critically negotiating truth claims by exchanging arguments, weighing pros and cons, and valuing almost completely to the individual students. It is said that it is up to them to pick up what suits their individual religious interests. But, by this “current wave of experiential RE with its convenient identification of spirituality with inwardness”, the specific contents of the faith traditions are easily neglected or even “devalued” (Thatcher 1996, 128f.). Adrian Thatcher maybe too harsh in this critical remark of his, but by confining teaching to the presentation of religious “items” and “materials” in abstaining from commentaries except of informational or clarifying nature, RE runs the risk, indeed, of marginalizing the task of “handling truth claims” in a constructive way and due respect to each religion.

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(3) Assimilation of faiths to the tools of their neutral analysis

The pluralist situation urges teachers to emphasize those traits which belief systems have in common. I welcome this interest since it is necessary to promote a feeling of togetherness and to highlight and strengthen common human values, but this approach seems to be insufficient to create a deeper mutual understanding. The reason why is the trend to “generalities” (Thatcher 1996, 123) at the cost of characteristic essentials.

As to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, one would emphasize the common monotheism. “God” becomes the common denominator regardless of the different ways God or Allah is seen. As to the dialogue with the Islam, teachers who dare talking about the trinitarian faith are sometimes blamed by others who are vividly advocating the “multifaith approach” not to disturb harmony by “theology”, although without understanding the triune God Christian faith becomes unrecognizable. As Buddhism is a religion without God, the next step is to drop God talk as such and to leave it with talking of “a transcendent reality”. In order to encompass people on a non-religious search for meaning, eventually the term “religion”itself is replaced by the term “spirituality”.

Concepts of a “universal theology of religion” (Swidler 1987) try to justify such generalizations. John Hick (1989) has reached a final stage in generalizing by formulating his “pluralist hypothesis”. It is supposed to bridge all different faiths by an overall distinction, drawing on I. Kant (see Kant’s “Ding an sich”) the distinction between “the Real in itself” and “as humanly experienced”.

The analytical instruments of Religious Studies also teach to look at different faiths from generalizing standpoints, e. g. by comparing the “founders” of the religions, their “rituals”, “doctrines”, “ethical rules” and so on. In Germany, some years ago, the Jewish Congregation Brandenburg has criticized this procedure with the words that it supports “the transformation of the content of a religion into a method”. Daniel Hardy regards this procedure to be the main cause for the devaluation of concrete authentic faith by supporting

“the assimilation of religious beliefs and practices to the very tools which have been used to analyse them. There is a regulating of what is understood by the means by which it is understood through which the former becomes subject to

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the latter, and ends by being confined to it. Interestingly, therefore, the substantial content of religious beliefs and practices is methodologically diminished” (Hardy 1996, 16).

(4) Moral values as common ground

Another way to solve the problem of pluralism will focus on common moral values, although as we have seen, religious valuing is rejected. We have already touched this approach above. But can we neatly separate the areas of religion and morality? I am leaving part II with the question whether we can find ways of less a reductionist kind which allow to take serious regard of both, the authentic character of living faiths (and the affiliation of children and young people to a specific religious or non-religious background) and an open-minded RE in the spirit of creative religious discoveries and critical appraisal.

III Principles of dialogue

1. Focusing on faith as the centre of each religion and most effective source of mutual understanding

In the sphere of religion, faith, not morality, is the centre. Faith is the characteristic content each religious self-understanding is revolving around (see also the terminology of this conference). Hence, the power of effective mutual understanding between believers of different religions should if ever possible flow from this source.

If faith is neglected, the believer is not taken seriously in his or her personal and corporative commitment. Everything else, be it ritual observance or moral behaviour, is grounded in this centre of religious identity which will deliver what can be called the prime mover in religious thinking and acting.

Faith is the core where a believer’s personal religious consciousness of truth is located. If on the road of ecumenical and interfaith education one fails to reach this centre, the prospects of effective dialogue and true reconciliation are less probable. An agreement on shared moral values such as social justice, non-violence, and tolerance is of high importance too. But a more solid basis of mutual understanding might be built upon each believer’s fundamental religious convictions, for it is these basic convictions which direct the interpretation and concrete implementation of moral values as the diverging interpretations of the “true” road to justice and peace between Jews and Palestinians show.

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I am aware of the difference between the nature of a faith dialogue between adults and the situation in schools and at school age. Interfaith education is something to start with on a grass-root level with careful regard of developmental factors in addition. But are we allowed to skip or water down the principles of interfaith dialogue when switching to interfaith education in schools? For national interests in social cohesion, RE serving “civil religion”will maybe do, in particular when linked to patriotism. There is no exhaustive proof, however, that this approach can effectively overcome ethnocentrism, xenophobia and racism.

2. Expressing one’s religious conviction and standpoint

Is the weight given to faith issues a viable stance in secularized situations when the majority of pupils lacks any religious background? Shouldn’t secularism and indifferentism prompt to reduce RE to a more or less phenomenological approach? I don’t see any really convincing rationale in it. It is poor logic to follow from lack of religious knowledge and convictions to abstain from introducing youngsters into the living centres of a faith tradition. Why not promote at least some preconditions to acquire faith? Even though as humans we cannot create living faith nor should ever try to think in categories of ruling over someone’s religious conscience, the fact of religious indifferentism or superficiality makes an emphasis on particularly profiled faith traditions more, not less important.

3. A strong picture of pluralism and the principle of truthfulness

Facing diversity and the ways how to handle it, I have distinguished between “a weak image of pluralism” and “a strong image of pluralism”. The first tends to glossing over differences between religions, the latter doesn’t.

With much support from representatives of different faith traditions, my main argument is to handle truth claims in truthfulness. The Tunesian scholar Mohamed Talbi demands even a “total truthfulness” (1976, 155). Talbi distinguishes between political negotiations and faith dialogue. The latter “is not politics, not an art of making a compromise”. Talbi blames the tendency to sometimes even an “excessive compliance”, a sort of an accomodation to the other in order to establish a kind atmosphere. As useful as this may be in

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political negotiations, as insufficient it is when faith is to meet faith (to remember the series “Faith meets Faith” in the United States) and religious education is supposed to contribute to make people of different faith traditions ready to live together in a neighbourhood, agreeing to Mosques being built beside churches, and so forth, in short, to accept members of a different religion with one’s whole heart, not only superficially tolerate one another. A “strong tolerance” is active, approaching to strangers, invitating them, a “weak tolerance” is passive, refusing, displeased, grudgingly complying, and either mere toleration or religious indifference.

4. The educational productivity of religious differences

Where does dialogue in school begin? I ever mistrusted my own RE if everything was going too smoothly. Empirical data drawn from our Tübingen research project about the practice of “elementarisation” in RE in the classroom show that productive learning takes place when pupils are challenged by controversial issues (Schweitzer et al. 1995). The data are supported by learning theories about the stimulating role of “cognitive dissonance” (see already L. Festinger). Again it follows that normative controversies on truth claims should not be anxiously avoided, but courageously looked for. The famous Asian - European pioneer in faith dialogue, Raimondo Panikkar, rejects all attempts to harmonize where there is nothing or only very little to harmonize.

“There exist in the world even today well-balanced and thought-out absolutistic and mutually irreconcilable positions. And when we have to deal with sufficiently long-standing traditions, we cannot reasonably be satisfied with the proleptic attitude of a vague ‘hope’ – I would rather call it expectation – that in the future our dissensions will fade away or find a solution.” (1987, 125)

Therefore, what pupils of growing age realistically have to learn about is to cope also with harder differences. RE has to accompany them by professionally competent teachers which, of course, implies that none of us can and should deny his or her own religious background and standpoint. I recall the personal dimension of truth experiences outlined in part I..

5. How to tolerate the intolerant? – dialogue at stake and “hermeneutics of ideology critique”

Pluralism has to do with weaker and stronger religious overlappings as well as differences, but also with almost unbridgeable religious positions in case of

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religious fanatism. Why do human beings and seemingly pious believers act as “walking bombs” ruthlessly killing innocent people? Children want to know. Religious fanatism has many sources, amongst them social deprivation and basic cultural differences, but also religious roots. Therefore, the present discussion is well advised to link interreligious education to intercultural education on psychologically well-informed lines. Do western Christians really understand the values of “honour” and “pride” in the Islamic culture in the Middle East? Here is a lot to be done. But even better knowledge alone will not do.

Sectarian attitudes in general have already been touched above; what is to be to done with regard to the aggressive religious variants among them? In the discussion about RE, the problem has not yet come clear enough into sight. Are we prepared to cope with the limits of dialogue? RE is very much oriented to the beauties of the different religions, not their nasty features. That is fine with the youngest, but very soon later children are becoming aware by TV and the news what is going on in reality in Northern Ireland or the Middle East and ask for clarification, explanation, and criteria for valuing.

Refusal of dialogue by extremist religious groups and movements calls for instruments other than usually applied. Alongside with the usual approaches such as the “phenomenological”, “experiential”,”ethnographical” and others we need a “hermeneutics of ideology critique”. It means tracing false religious consciousness. Speaking of love to all human beings as “sisters and brothers” in the name of God or Allah while in fact the spirit of reconciliation is betrayed, must be studied and criticized on valid grounds, if possible against the background of a religion’s own holy writings (see below 7.). These critical judgements have nothing to do with being judgemental, for they use the own standards of a religion as criteria for a critical appraisal.

6. Considering specific historical constellations

The topic “Faiths in Dialogue” points to dialogues in the plural. I suggest to pay careful attention to particular historical constellations in past and present. Former colonial powers like the UK share a different history with Asian religions than non-colonial countries. For my country, there is, first, a very specific relation between Christians and Jews against the background of the Holocaust. Second, it makes another difference when facing the Islam, a religion that for many hundred years by theologians was called either a heresy or the work of the devil. There is still another constellation in the history of Christian

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churches in relation to secularism and humanism, in particular to atheism in Eastern Europe (in Germany in the German Democratic Republic) between 1945 and 1989 on the background of the heritage of militant Marxism-Leninism. Diversity has many faces.

Personally speaking, when I started my study on moral and religious pluralism (1998, I and II), I had to devote separate chapters to the specific features of each of the dialogue constellations just mentioned (vol. II, chap. 9 on Christians and Jews, chap. 10 on Christians and Muslims, vol. I and vol. II, chapt. 12, on Christian ethics and secular philosophical ethics). It is inappropriate to subsume the different partners within the same class of descriptive-analytic categories.

To give an example as a German who was born in 1928 and became a contemporary of the Holocaust, thus being fully aware of the ineffable guilt of my people towards the Jewish people, I couldn’t approach “multifaith” education like “business as usual”. How was I to call the learning processes between Christians and Jews? History prevented me from applying categories such as “multifaith” or “inter-religious” which I without hesitation would use for the relations to Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. With Jews we are facing what I have tried to call “a process of painful recollection and deep structural learning and transformations”, it is a task quite of its own. For Germans the issue of Christian education after Auschwitz isn’t just another case of inter-religious education as usual. To prevent whatever might lead to a new Auschwitz or something similar is of absolute obligation. Bracketing or relativizing the issue of truth claims would be absurd.

As to the Islam and Muslim pupils in the classroom, the dialogue has to face quite another question: Why did God ‘allow’ a new religion of revelatory character with more than a billion believers to become established after the revelation in Jesus Christ? Again I hesitate to apply ‘objectively’ equalizing descriptive categories as the only approach (for such categories in their necessary, but limited value see vol. I, chap. 3). One of these categories is to ask for the “founders” of the different faith traditions. I’ll never forget when a Muslim scholar mildly blamed me to have called Mohammed a “founder of a religion” (“Religionsstifter”). “No”, he said, “will you, please, call him ‘the seal of the prophets’ or ‘Allah’s messenger’”. While the phrase “founder of a religious community” (“Religionsstifter”) is a “generality” coined in the history

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of Religious Studies, the Muslims themselves want to be described, addressed, and hereby respected in the authentic faith language-game of their own.

7. Making familiar with the holy writings of each religion as sources of mutual understanding and criteria of (self-)critical appraisal

Each religion is asked to mobilize the power of mutual understanding and reconciliation from its own grounds. Hence, Christians do have very good and necessary reasons to self-critically start from Christian theology as their basis of reflection in the mirror of the Bible. In a reciprocal way the other religions ought to ask and start from their own grounds as well. Thus, my theory-building and practical orientation in the field of interfaith education is rooted in historical consciousness, not starting from “general theories” (DiNoia 1990) nor from general comparative overviews. This has consequences for the education of teachers in RE.

To understand each other truly presupposes to know truly oneself in the light of the answers to the difficult questions “what is true Judaism?”, “what is true Christianity?”, or “what is true Islam?”, and so forth. By carefully studying the origins of a religion – that is, by reading those religious documents, individual believers and religious camps use to draw on to justify their stances and actions - controversies within and between religions can be relatively best assessed. Both, representatives of an “Euro-Islam” and “Islamists”, look for support in the Koran. Again both, liberal Christians as well as Christian fundamentalists, defend their views by the Bible. Who is right? Although the Koran as well as the Bible can be “read” in different ways, there is no other way than studying them again and again in order to find out whether a certain stance is defendable from these most holy texts of each of the two religions or not.

Who is discerning is good at judging. Developing critical religious competence as ability to see and to distinguish is a paramount task of RE in the irrational turbulences of today. It can be promoted by having the students of the one religion become familiar also with the holy writings the other religions, as far as the (marginalized) position of RE in schools allows. Mutual understanding and appraisal rest upon the competence of reciprocal perspective taking.

Literature

Baldermann, Ingo (1996), Einführung in die biblische Didaktik, Darmstadt: Primus Verlag.

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