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May 19, 2005
The Ten Commandments for Inter-Religious And Ideological Dialogue: Can They Be Used As A Guide To More Productive Blog Commentary?
Topics: BlogosphereOver the past weeks, BlogsForTerri has seen much dialogue which more often than not became heated and argumentative. Often, it served as much as a discussion board as it did a source of information, and the discussions sometimes became just a little too argumentative. So I asked my good friend and fellow vet, John Kieffer, if he knew of some guidelines that would be useful for not only BlogsForTerri, but for use at most blog sites where posts often draw a lot of heated debate. This post on Leonard Swidler's "The Dialogue Decalogue," with John's accompanying comments, is offered by John toward that purpose. John's academic field is religious studies.
- "Dialogue Decalogue" by John Kieffer.
In a world that is increasing in religious diversity, how can
we avoid the usual and predictable pitfalls that have unfortunately led
to so much anxiety and conflict both on a personal level and on the
world stage? How can we achieve, instead, meaningful dialogue and
understanding between our own religious/ideological worldview and the
differing beliefs of others? With an academic background in religious
studies(University of South Florida), I was introduced early in my
academic career to the fact that resolving this question was not only
crucial for successful scholarship in this field, but also for
evocative discourse in seminar and other group discussion settings.
Of tremendous help to this end was Leonard Swidler's "The Dialogue Decalogue:
Ground Rules for the Interreligious, Interideological Dialogue." His
essay, published in 1983 in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, provides
ten "commandments," or ground rules, to facilitate understanding
through meaningful dialogue. The following is his work quoted and
paraphrased in brief form:
1. The primary purpose of dialogue is to learn, that is, to change and grow in the perception and understanding of reality, and then to act accordingly.
2. Dialogue must be a two-sided project - within each religious or ideological community and between religious or ideological communities.
3. Each participant must come to the dialogue with complete honesty and sincerity. (Conversely - each participant must assume a similar complete honesty and sincerity in the other partners.)
4. In dialogue we must not compare our ideals with our partner's practice, but rather our ideals with our partner's ideals, our practice with our partner's practice.
5. Each participant must define her/himself (their own religious worldview).
6. Each participant must come to the dialogue with no hard-and-fast assumptions as to where the points of disagreements are.
7. Dialogue can take place only between equals. If a participant representing a differing religion is viewed by the other as inferior, no dialogue can occur.
8. Dialogue can take place only on the basis of mutual trust.
9. Persons entering into dialogue must be at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their own religious or ideological traditions.
10. Each participant eventually must attempt to experience the partner's religion or ideology "from within."
I recommend that you read Swidler's short essay that elaborates on
each of these ten rules. Once you have done this, you can do a little
exercise that we, in religious studies, have done in several class
settings. Write down which of the ten rules would be the easiest for
you to do and why; conversely, write which one would be the most
difficult and why. Once you have engaged in dialogue, go back from time
to time and re-think/write these most easy/difficult commandments and
compare how they have changed as you progress in this venture. It would
be interesting to hear from HyScience and BlogsForTerri participants to
see how their perceptions and views have evolved.
In the process, "The Dialogue Decalogue" will not only expand
your understanding of other religious views, but, more importantly, it
will make you an active participant in reducing conflict that results
from the natural emotional reaction to the unknown and misunderstood.
It is, after all, meaningful dialogue and understanding that ultimately
differentiates a civilized humanity from other forms in our world of
religious diversity.
Cross posted at BlogsForTerri
Posted by Hyscience at May 19, 2005 10:07 PM
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