The Washington National Cathedral concluded their program on Christian and Islamic dialogue last night. In yesterday’s Washington Post, Diocese of Washington’s Bishop John Chane writes on the role of religious leaders in diplomacy.
A call for religious diplomacy
By the Rt. Rev. John Bryson Chane in the Washington Post
Today throughout the world 2 billion profess to be Christian, 1.5 billion persons profess to be Muslim, and 13 million profess to be followers of Judaism. These are the Abrahamic religions, so-called because each can trace its ancestry to the Biblical figure of Abraham. Like other religions and philosophies, the Abrahamic faiths are manifestations of humanity’s search for meaning and transcendence down through the ages. Like other religions and philosophies, they can be a force for reconciliation and unity between and within conflicted nations, or they can be used to divide us into warring camps, and prevent us from making common cause for the common good.
We must strive to harness the power of these religious movements, especially Christianity and Islam, given their vast global membership, because the stakes are too great for us to fail. The People of the Book -Torah, Bible and Qur’an–can find within their sacred scriptures a divine wisdom that urges them to seek an end to the use of military force in taking lives for political gain, to speak out against human rights violations and support the reconciliation and healing of fractured relationships with other countries. Unfortunately, they can also find calls to arms, or, perhaps more dangerously, they can find whatever it is they go looking for to suit the needs of the moment.