Jinje Seonsa and Paul F. Knitter

In no denigration of the term, the idea of "interreligious dialogue" is quite in vogue today.  I do think it is important; we do live in a world where religious worldviews are exposed to each other, but when these worldviews clash, they often do so violently.  The best example comes in the form of radical Islam, whose fundamentalist theologies cast "America" as this great Christian hegemony.  So in this "War against Terror," moderate (and, dare I say, orthodox) Islam has been sidelined, condemned to being unwillingly essentialized with radical Islam.  It is the same strategy as equating all Christianity with Westboro Baptist Church.

We need, however, to be careful.  What comes out of interreligious dialogue needs to be a greater understanding and appreciation for the religious Other.  There may, indeed, be some cross-fertilization.  But I do want to make a distinction between contextualization and integration.  Let us consider the Confucian practice of venerating one's ancestors (I refer to the religious form of Confucianism, not the philosophical).  And now, let us consider a Christian who, in seeing this, goes, "Yes, this is one apt way to bring Christian piety to bear on the 5th commandment."  And so that Christian lights incense at his or her parents' grave as a measure of thanksgiving for their lives and examples, giving thanks to God for God's provision of them.  This is an instance of contextualization. The Christian looks at the religious Other, finds something that would be useful in bringing one closer to God, and adopts it within a Christian context.  The ritual or practice adopted remains Christian.  The essentia, in other words, is Christian, but the substance is from other religions.  Christian meditation is an example of this; some interesting Buddhist-Christian dialogue has centered around the practice of meditation.  We should not be afraid of this: traditional Christianity adopted Jewish and Greco-Roman worship practices.  Today's Christians often use modern music (read: worship bands) to worship God.  This is contextualization.

But let us suppose that the Christian decides that the veneration of one's ancestors means lifting one's ancestors to the position of God.  Thus, "venerating" one's ancestors means venerating the ancestors and God, a pantheon of ancestry, if you will.  This is not contextualization but integration.  And for me, interreligious dialogue is not integration.  In fact, I don't want two religious to be integrated such that the product is not recognizable from either religions.  A religion is a narrative that a certain group of people have found worthy of preservation in a certain form.  "Mixing and matching" does not always work.

My Korean friends tell me that Union Theological Seminary Professor Emeritus Paul F. Knitter is popular in Korea among the Buddhist population.  Knitter is known for being very active in this interreligious work.  Above, he met with Jinje Seonsa, who is I gather is a Seon Buddhist master. In interviews between him and Jinje, I am annoyed constantly by how Knitter often seemed apologetic (not in the apologetics sense) of his Christianity.  Jinje was always expositing his faith with vigor, wisdom, and firmness.  He kept talking about the importance of attaining Enlightenment and to understand "one's True Self before one was born." (How that happens, God only knows.)  He keeps repeating this ad nauseum, in fact.  Find your True Self, find your True Self.  But Knitter talked about his Buddhist teacher, about how he's practicing "Buddhist-Christianity".  I don't know if that's possible, and I think Jinje Seonsa would agree.  Never once in his interviews did he affirm aspects of Christianity.  This was, in other words, a very one-sided dialogue.

Interreligious dialogue needs to be two-sided for it to be meaningful.  Yes, Christianity has had a very checkered history, but the story of Jesus is not something to be ashamed of.  We have every reason to be ashamed of Christians who don't live up to the story of Jesus, but that story itself is our glory and it is our goal to live up to.  The Buddhists have a story of their own that they live up to as well.  Interreligious dialogue shares these stories in love and peace.  It concedes its weaknesses and so learns from the Other.  But when the dialogue is one-sided, it is prone to imperialism.  Thus, in the context of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, the Buddhist dominates the Christian.  What you get is not even integration, but you essentially become Buddhist.

One note on Buddhist-Christian dialogue.  If we want to be fair, we need to distance ourselves from a romanticized notion of Buddhism, the Buddhism of "The King and I" or "7 Years in Tibet."  Whenever I hear people in the West wax lyrical about Buddhism, I'm always wondering - what Buddhism are you talking about?  The Buddhism I know of is no different than the Christian of the popular imagination.  Buddhist politicians are just as corrupt as Christian ones.  Buddhist monks can be as violent as Christian abortion-clinic bombers.  And yes, fundamentalist Buddhism exists.  So we need to disabuse ourselves of some Pollyanna idea of Buddhism.  The same goes for non-Christians; to dialogue with Christians, you need to not think of appropriations of Jesus, but actually just read the story of Jesus.  If we are to have genuine interreligious dialogue, we need to engage religions and not conceptions of it.