Overview: Pragmatic Theology as Means of Mediating Religious Conflict

In an important speech to the Yale Divinity School in April of 2004, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright told a story which got to heart of the problem of religious polarization. Shortly after September 11th, 2001, Secretary Albright served on a panel with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel: “He asked us to name unhappiest character in the Bible. Some said Job, because of the trials he endured. Some said Moses, because he was denied entry into the Promised Land. Some said the Virgin Mary, because she witnessed the Crucifixion of her son. Wiesel said he believed the right answer was God, because of the pain he must surely feel in seeing us fight, kill and abuse each other in the Lord’s name.”

There is no question that religious conflict and the tension between religious tradition and modernity are at the center of much of what ails the world today. It would be hard to pick up a newspaper on any given day and not find some such conflict leading either the national and international sections of the news. This has led some, such as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, to argue that it is time to give up on the God Delusion. As Publisher’s Weekly noted in its review of his provocatively titled book, “For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe.”

However, whatever Mr. Dawkins and other devoted secularists may prefer, there is no question that billions of people around the world will continue to look to religious faith for generations to come. As Sec. Albright argues, as a pragmatic matter, world leaders need to understand basic theological questions to help reduce rather than inflame such conflicts. But what is striking is how poorly equipped most of our leaders (the very people we send out to manage and reconcile these conflicts) are in approaching such questions with anything like a clear head.

Many world and local leaders exacerbate the problem by understanding only the language of their own tradition. Some leaders purposefully exploit such language, in a cynical effort to play to existing bias; others unwittingly offend due to a lack of understanding of the consequences of their approach.

The fundamental premise of this series is that a pragmatic theology can offer much needed guidance that can have tremendous real world consequences as leaders seek to manage and abate religious polarization as a political and social reality. This is true whether one accepts the fundamental value of religion or not. In other words, and perhaps ironically as seen by many secular-oriented leaders, a pragmatic theology itself offers our best hope for understanding the phenomenological fact of religious polarization and conflict. As we seek to manage such conflict, theology is one of the only tools at our disposal.

Fortunately, theology offers a rich and highly developed discourse that provides two important elements that often seem to be missing from current secular and faith-based discussion. First, theology provides a sensitivity toward and recognition of the value of diverse religious traditions that is absent from much secular thinking (as Mr. Dawkins and others have recently demonstrated). Similarly, theology provides a spirit of questioning inquiry, and “a readiness to question and be questioned” that is not a part of the dogmatism that has characterized much recent religious discussion.

In recent years applied or pragmatic theology has accomplished much, setting aside or resolving many bitter disputes between Catholics and Protestants, and forging important inter-faith linkages that provide new opportunities for ongoing understanding and dialogue. There is every reason to hope that a pragmatic theological awareness could help to mediate many of the religious conflicts that are at the center of both our national and international politics.

With this premise in mind, this series will briefly survey several types of existing religious conflicts, and will provide some preliminary approaches to overcoming them.

As the word “preliminary” suggests, this is merely a first inquiry into an important new dialogue between theologians and political leaders of all kinds. In this way serious popular theology may have a particular role to play, as it is more readily absorbed and understood by those outside the academic realm. Further, while using theology as a pragmatic force for mediating such conflict is not a new idea it is particularly urgent that we do so at the present historical moment– when religious conflicts have us engaged in a “culture war” at home, and real wars and a seeming conflict of civilizations abroad.

There are three broad types of conflict which this series will explore: first, the fundamental tensions between religious tradition and modern secular and political culture; secondly, polarization among co-religionists; finally (and perhaps most difficult), the conflicts between the faith traditions.

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Notes: Note: the Elie Wiesel quote also appears in Sec. Albright’s wonderful 2006 book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs, as did many of the other themes from the YDS speech.)

http://faithfulprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/02/can-theology-save-us-from-religious.html