FOREWORD

GEORGE F. McLEAN

            The issue of "Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict" can be taken up at a number of levels, each with its own concerns. The fact that ethnic conflicts have undermined the high hopes for peace which accompanied the end of the cold war suggests that our analysis of conflict in our times had been superficial. It appears to have ignored the deep human sensibilities and commitments in-volved in ethnic identity and their even deeper religious roots.

            This is not surprising, for in modern secular culture all is directed toward ignoring these dimensions of life -- toward placing them on the other side of "a wall of separation" according to Jeffer-son’s term, or behind a "veil of ignorance" as employed by Rawls in his Political Liberalism. Due to such exclusions it can be expected that even the best intentioned public efforts at overcoming ethnic conflict will be but palliatives which treat the symptoms while leaving the real causes to fester unattended and suppressing the real remedies. Indeed, only by pure and improbable chance could such efforts avoid exacerbating those causes while weakening the roots of human comity which they refuse to acknowledge.

            This suggests, rather than ignoring cultural identities, the need to take the opposite route looking positively into the nature of ethnicity and its roots in religion in order better to understand the nature of both and their mutual relation. In so doing the goal is to see how they are ordered to creating harmony, how, like all that is human, this can devolve into conflict, and how such conflict can be avoided or overcome.

            The approaches found in this work are then twofold. One looks to the political order in ways which separate ethnicity and religion from public policy, and searches for responses to ethnic conflict in terms of the isolation and/or reduction of ethnic and re-ligious identities. The other looks for insight into the nature of ethnicity, particularly as this is rooted in scriptural faiths, and the possibilities these provide for understanding a cohesive diversity from within a deeper unity.

            In this light some of the main themes of this study of "Abra-hamic Faiths, Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict" might be ordered along a trajectory moving from the level of political structures, to the pattern of civil society, to ethnic groups, to religion, and thence returning inversely to ethnicity and civil peace once again.

            Political Structures: In the North Atlantic region a liberal, capitalist outlook has shaped public legislation and funding, the courts and the media. This focuses upon the human person as an individual subject of rights; all is related adversarially, especially in terms of the individual’s acquisition of property. The social order is constituted of the compromises required in order to promote and protect this right of the multiple individuals, which is the chief task of the political order endowed with coercive power. The necessary compromises of personal freedom are considered tolerable if based upon full and equal assent, which, in turn, becomes the overriding sense of freedom and the center of proximate concern.

            With regard to religion, on the supposition of one variant that this is a purely individual matter, and conceiving the different faith commitments also to be related adversarially, equal participation in society is seen to require that religion be carefully separated or "walled off" from the state. Conversely, the state is to be indifferent to religion and to assure that all and only secular concerns have recognized standing and are promoted in its domain. As society becomes more complex and the political dimension expands, in reality, as notes, Rabbi Jack Moline in Chapter XX below, religion comes to be relativized and marginalized. It is considered only as the servant of secular concerns for equality in competitiveness, which presume to judge a God-centered approach in terms of whether it meets this test of liberal correctness.

            Problems were noted with this more negative view:

            1) its ethnocentric character: that it is constructed on the basis of the individualistic prejudices characteristic of the nomina-list Anglo-Saxon culture, a dichotomy of public vs private, and a particular theology of religion as a purely private matter.

            2) its ideology of aggressive secularism sedulously removing the consideration of God and religion from all that touches upon public life; and

            3) given the present importance, on the one hand, of the state and international organizations in public life, and, on the other hand, of religion as the basis of culture, items (1) and (2) combine to generate a public policy which is consistently negative with re-gard to cultural distinctiveness: along with religion, ethnicity too must be relegated to the private sphere. In this individualist and adversarial ideology ethnicity can be understood only negatively as fundamentally aggressive, and hence, like all creative freedom, must be subjected to the political concerns of the Grand Inquisitor.

            In contrast, David Walsh’s analysis of Dostoevski’s classic passage points to the forgotten but essential need of the liberal view for a positive religious context

The secularization of the Christian faith in the tran-scendent value of freedom cannot survive the loss of faith in the participation of transcendent reality. By itself the liberal faith in the unconditional worth of the person, their free donation of self in love, cannot be sustained. . . . Without a recognition of human openness to the reality that is beyond all reality, the political expression in the preservation of inalienable rights becomes a hollow shell. . . . Once faith in transcendent reality is firmly rejected, faith in the transcendence of human nature cannot survive.

This suggests that a more positive approach to the issue of religion, ethnicity and peace be explored.

            Civil Society: The difficulties in the above arise from the supposition that the only reality is the individual human being, and that all social relations are purely contractual ones between con-flicting individuals for utilitarian purposes. Hence, the first step of a response is to restore the sense of the inherently social nature of humankind.

            This could begin in faith from the recognition that human beings as created by the one God are by nature social. But for those who can consider all, even faith, only in an adversarial perspective it is sufficient to recognize that persons can be born only of, and into, a social union, and that their own survival depends upon the concern of others, which must be mutual. This social sense implies a reconception of the public order. It must be seen no longer as exclusively for individual welfare, but for the common good of all, and as including not only individual persons, but the various inter-mediate solidarities they form between the individual and the state. Concretely and foundationally, these include the various ethnic and religious groupings. As we move beyond the conflict of cold war ideologies which destroyed personal and social life, it is in the reconstruction of this intermediate civil society that hope for progress on the issue of ethnicity and scriptural faiths must center.

            Ethnic Groups: As each social group has its own self-under-standing and identity, understanding and responding to ethnic groups becomes essential. Here the focus shifts from the individual as the subject of empirical observation and dissociative analysis, to a people’s culture as a distinctive grasp of the meaning of life and a commitment to a distinctive mode of its realization. This implies a set of values as a preferential ordering between possible goods, and a set of virtues as developed capabilities for acting according to those values. As values and virtues develop from generation to generation they create a culture and, as this is handed on to sub-sequent generations, a tradition. This constitutes the self-under-standing both of persons and of peoples, and indeed of ethnicities as local groups which share a culture.

            Religion: This takes us, in turn, to religion as the depth dimension or well-spring of cultural and ethnic identity. Chronolo-gically, from the beginning it constituted the unitive center of meaning as the basic integrating vision and commitment of the earliest peoples. Over the ages this evolved under the Providence of God; the various scriptural faiths are shaped continually by rereading and reintepretating the written account of this Providence and its teaching. Through their genetic relation, Islam, Judaism and Christianity all share the model of Abraham and Sarah as a setting out from one’s own people and hence opening to others, and in so doing continuing one’s proper heritage in new ways.

            The great Sacred Scriptures of Asia also are ways in which divine Providence has been present to humankind. It is not sur-prising then that the Vedanta Sutras I 1, 2 state that Brahma is "that from which, in which and into which all are." Philosophically, this is the model of participation of the many from, in and into the One which has been the center of Platonic thought through the ages.

            Such a model allows for multiple and unique unfoldings of the meaning of the Absolute, and hence for diversity and pluralism. It escapes the danger of one’s absolute commitment to the Ab-solute becoming exclusive of all others and provides instead a real basis for complementarity between faiths based upon the ability to depart and yet remain.

            This can be considered on two levels. One is the hermeneutic awareness that faithfulness to one’s own tradition can become static and repetitious unless kept alive by an active questioning and exploration of its meaning. For this, active engagement with dif-ferent religious experiences is important. To look upon other faiths simply as alien or, worse, with indifference does not enable them to question us. If, however, they are seen as real modes of relating to God, and hence as at least potentially complementary, then the multiple religious traditions can enter into a dynamic and creative interaction and thereby unfolds new meaning for each generation.

            Any relativity pertains not to the divine in itself which is infinite, eternal and transcendent, but to the various human points of awareness. This, however, may not tell the whole story, for if God is the God not of the dead but of the living, then the living faiths are vital modes of interaction between God and His peoples. This is the eternal living in time, the absolute in our world of change, endowing all our actions, great and small, with absolute meaning and inspiring self-sacrificing commitment.

            Further, if religion is the basis of culture which, in turn, is the basis of ethnic identity, then the attitude of the Abrahamic faiths to their mutual differences and potential relatedness is of the most fundamental importance for the relation between various ethnic groups. To consider these as mutually unrelated, exclusive or even adversarial one to another leaves them available for manipulation and employment for political purposes. Today many consider such manipulation to be the basis of the various fundamentalisms. Nor do we need to reach far into the past to find the classically godless propaganda machine of Hitler attempting to mobilize people to attack the East under the pretense of mounting a new crusade.

            Religion, Ethnicity and Civil Peace: In contrast, it is possible now to appreciate the various major religions, in their progressively more self-aware cultural and ethnic forms, as rich and com-plementary unfoldings of divine life and Providence in our world. This lays the basis for mutual cooperation, rather than rejection; it implies not a reduction of ethnic and religious differences, but rather seeing these differences as the basis of complementarity between peoples.

            This is founded in a deep conviction that the Spirit is present in all, guiding all peoples in the image of Isaiah on their pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain. It implies an attitude between ethnic groups not of conflict, but of mutual appreciation and admiration, of com-mon hope and concern, and of willingness to help others on their path under the Providence of God by sharing what one has received in the Spirit.

            This invites a true conversion on the part of the Abrahamic faiths to a deeper self-understanding, which at the same time opens new possibilities for greater union with God and with other peoples.

            Structure of the Volume: In order to study this progressively and in a systematic manner a six part interchange was held be-tween members of the three Abrahamic faith. These are the six parts of this volume, each with its own introduction to its proper argument. As a whole they unfold in the following sequence.

            Part I introduces the issue of religion, ethnicity and conflict in the world today. To conflate the three would, of course, be prejudi-cial and in planning the study it was the explicit intent not to do so. For if religion is at the root of ethnic and cultural identities then it is essential to see how it can contribute also, though not solely, to the construction of peace rather than of conflict.

            Part II presents a first response to conflict by turning to the Scriptural call to Abraham and Sarah to go forth, to enter into di-versity and yet to retain their deep unifying religious roots. This calls for extended reflection which is the content of the following three parts.

            Part III begins this reflection by a philosophical and anthropo-logical examination of the nature and human significance of eth-nicity and culture as primordial solidarities.

            Part IV undertakes a primarily theological exploration of how the transcendence of God should exercise a corrective pull beyond any absolutizing tendencies on the part of monotheistic religions.

            Part V reviews these themes in relation to attempts to form a political order adequate to the increasing pluralism of recent times, and surpassing the extremes of enlightenment rationalism with its abstract universalism, on the one hand, and a reactionary funda-mentalist particularism, on the other.

            Part VI reviews the three monotheistic Abrahamic faiths with a view to identifying what each can bring to the resolution of present conflicts.