On Admiring the Religious Other

[Guest guest]

THE FAITH DIVIDE

Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth

Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that promotes

interfaith cooperation. His blog, The Faith Divide, explores what

drives faiths apart and what brings them together.

 

On Admiring the Religious Other

 

Brother Wayne Teasdale was like a character out of a movie, a cross

between Zorba the Greek, St. Francis of Assisi and the mad scientist

from the Back to the Future series. He would give twenty dollar bills

to homeless people on the street, evenly discuss politics with

mentally ill people in coffee houses, gaze deeply into the eyes of

dogs and, with complete sincerity, pronounce them " very spiritual " , a

declaration which alternately pleased and alarmed their human owners.

 

I met Brother Wayne when I was a young teacher in Chicago, a few

months out of college, trying to make sense of faith identity and

activism. He took my youthful confusions seriously, and I loved him

for that.

 

That Brother Wayne seemed so clear about his identity amazed me. He

was a Catholic monk with a PhD in Philosophy who had spent years

studying at Hindu ashrams in India and was now entering a serious

theological dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His apartment

in the Catholic Theological Union complex was filled with pictures of

Jesus, CDs of Indian meditation music and books on Buddhism. When he

lectured on Zen koans, he often had a rosary with him.

 

Didn't he see these things as mutually exclusive, contradictory? Not

at all, he would tell me. He was a Catholic monk who had learned a

great deal from Hindu philosophy and Buddhist practice. He was

interested in the similarities and the differences – both enlarged

his Catholic commitment. Buddhism's non-theism expanded his

understanding of God. Hinduism's diffuse authority structure gave him

a deeper appreciation for the Vatican.

 

Brother Wayne reminded me that many of our most significant Abrahamic

religious leaders – Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, Badshah Khan,

Martin Luther King Jr. – had a deep admiration for Eastern spiritual

traditions.

 

Of course, admiration sometimes comes about in unexpected ways.

 

There is a great story about a Christian missionary who goes to India

to convert Gandhi, promising his congregation that he will introduce

the Mahatma to the Bible and Jesus. He is surprised when Gandhi

professes love for both, saying that he read the Sermon on the Mount

when he was a young student in London, and it reignited his interest

in faith.

 

Gandhi was a proud and devoted Hindu, but he did not feel that his

faith commitment to one tradition meant he had to denigrate others.

In fact, to Gandhi, insulting other faiths was a violation of the

Hindu ethic.

 

When this missionary returned to the West, his Christian compatriots

eagerly asked him about Gandhi's conversion.

 

The missionary responded that the most Christ-like person of the 20th

century was an Indian Hindu.

 

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/eboo_patel/2007/04/on_admir

ing_the_religious_othe.html