900 Years: What Have We Learned?

Last evening a number of folks from Trinity, including yours truly, had the privilege of participating in an interfaith dialogue sponsored by Hartford Seminary, Public Agenda, 20,000 Dialogues, Trinity Church and several other local organizations. Following supper, the groups watched the movie, Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain. The film tells the epic story of one of the world’s great civilizations: the European Islamic civilization of Muslim Spain. Its rise and fall was due in large part to the rise and fall of tolerance among its Christian, Muslim, and Jewish inhabitants, fostered to a large degree by parochial forces from outside of the region seeking to advance their cultural, religious and political agendas. The film seeks to warn of the dangers of cultural and religious struggles for supremacy in the world.

Following the movie, the large group was split into groups of 6 to 10 for discussion. An opening question to spark discussion was: What comes closer to your belief with respect to the role of religious and cultural diversity within a community:
A. A society functions optimally when a diversity of cultures and religious faiths can co-exist and appropriate among the groups those traditions of another group they find desirable or compatible with their own traditions.
B. A society should accept the free flow of ideas and cultures and faiths and let the marketplace of ideas determine which, if any, gain ascendancy.
C. A society should be tolerant of a variety of cultures and religious traditions each maintaining their own traditions, in a "live and let live" type of environment.

Which of these comes closest to your view of the model society?

Further discussion followed within the small groups, culminating in the sharing of ideas for encouraging interfaith understanding and dialogue. The proceedings from all of the groups will be made available in the coming weeks.

What struck me was how little we have learned in 900 years since the fall of the Spanish Islamic state, followed closely by the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. I was reminded of how history is written by the victors, and how the losers are relegated to forgotten history. As a boy growing up in 1950s New England, what I remember of 1492 was the "discovery" of the New world by Christopher Columbus. What was not taught -- or at least emphasized -- was the persecution of non-Roman Catholics, and the expulsion from Spain of Jews and Muslims. How different our own cultural heritage in North America seems when considered through the lens of those other, contemporaneous events.

One of the main ideas that came out of the group for which I served as Recorder was that just society can best be achieved when people of differing religious and cultural backgrounds can feel safe, respected and valued in order that the free interchange of knowledge, values and cultural understandings can be nurtured. How we create that safe space in society at large is the challenge. I pray that in communities of faith like Trinity we may model such a place.

Have a blessed day! Your brother in Christ, Don+