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Loving Neighbors Seminars

AAi is preparing to offer several seminars to equip Jews, Christians and Muslims to build lasting bridges of understanding and cooperation between our three religious communities. Seminars are designed to move participants from ignorance, insecurity, suspicion, and even fear to understanding, security, respect and a willingness to humbly unite side-by-side with members of the other religious community for cooperative service to the poor and needy. AAi seeks qualified Jewish, Christian, and Muslim teachers for these seminars, and will serve these peacemakers with assistance to develop seminars appropriate for their own faith community.

Philosophy of Peacebuilding Education

AAi seminars are designed not to replace but compliment a wide variety of faith-based, peacebuilding initiatives. Some excel in the science of conflict transformation, but exclude thorough studies about the faith of other religious communities. Others focus on the common ground shared between religions, while avoiding deeper issues of difference which often prove divisive. However, these deeper issues often lie at the root of social division, disrespect, dehumanization, and even demonization. Many conclude the other faith community is sadly mistaken about their interpretation or acceptance of prophets and messiahs, or utterly deceived. Such conclusions are a powerful force to keep people ignorant of that community, especially when people fear that a sympathetic presentation of its faith may seduce coreligionists into heresy, syncretism, or even conversion. This fear often hinders the adoption of many faith-based, peacebuilding efforts which require participants to listen and learn from the very people they believe are terribly deceived, from strangers not trusted even to speak honestly about their own faith. AAi offers an alternative approach.

Interfaith learning works best when participants are secure enough in their own faith to not fear it will be jeopardized by the encounter. Interfaith learning requires a level of openness and humility often frowned upon by conservative religious communities. We therefore need an approach that will first help ground participants in their own faith while preparing them to respond with both confidence and humility to the challenges they will face when dialoging with faithful members of the other religion. Furthermore, we need to inculcate a level of security enabling participants to safely listen to members of the other faith without feeling threatened. This is necessary not only to learn from the exchange effectively, but also to experience the paradox of actually being inspired by members of another religion to be more faithful members of one's own religious community.

AAi seminars are designed to begin this process by providing a safe environment where participants can learn about the faith and culture of Abrahamic neighbors from respected members of their own faith, skilled at interpreting their own sacred text, and able to speak the same faith-vernacular as the students. Because seminar leaders are insiders of the faith community they teach, participants can freely ask any question without inhibition or fear of being politically incorrect in interfaith environments. In addition to grounding participants in their own faith while preparing them for interfaith dialog, seminar leaders build respect for the faith of the other community by exposing unjust stereotypes and showing vast areas of common ground through helpful parallels with participants' own faith traditions and history.

Outsiders of a religion can at best only present a helpful introduction to another faith, preparing students to continue learning through personal interaction and friendship with members of the other faith community. Nonetheless, this respectful introduction through a paradigm of peacebuilding often results in students gaining both the confidence and sensitivity to finally participate in interfaith peacebuilding efforts, without the fear and apprehension that once inhibited involvement.

For example, when AAi seminars on Loving Muslim Neighbors are taught among evangelical Christians in the United States, the Islamophobia experienced by many Christians is often replaced by a desire to make Muslim friends and an openness to participate in collaborative community service with Muslims. Once Christians begin to learn directly from Muslims in a context of genuine friendship, they are better able to see that common Islamophobic stereotypes are myopic violations of prophetic commands to love our neighbors. Significant religious differences will remain, but proper understanding of the other community can prevent perceptions of these differences from degenerating into disrespect and contempt. Personal experience with virtuous Muslim friends helps Christians refute disrespectful stereotypes which promote Islamophobia.

Clearly, the same approach is equally effective to refute anti-Semitism and anti-Christian hostilities. It's easy to hate those we don't know. Many need assistance crossing the social barriers that separate faith communities, especially when navigating through divisive complexities in theology and culture. AAi seminars provide this assistance in the safe environment of one's own faith community.

Nonetheless, the purpose of AAi seminars is not merely to inform people about the faith and culture of other Abrahamic communities, but to sensitize participants to matters of intense importance to the other religious community so they can avoid offensive behavior and faux pas so easily committed by those ignorant of such issues. Minimizing offense helps maximize peacebuilding opportunities. AAi seminars therefore help prepare participants to unite side-by-side with other Jews, Christians and Muslims to pursue common goals together, for as Muqtedar Khan well stated:

"... most advocates of dialogue assume that conflict is a consequence of misunderstandings and therefore, dialogues can foster understanding and eliminate conflict. Perhaps just understanding the other might not be enough. Even inculcating respect for the other may not douse the fires of conflict. At the core of all conflicts are competing and incompatible interests that may have material as well as moral basis. Conflicts will dissipate when understanding is followed by the replacement of competing interests with common interest. In simple terms, it is not enough that we talk. We must find common goals to pursue together."

The following AAi seminars are designed to provide a helpful introduction for Jews, Christians and Muslims to better understand and love their Abrahamic neighbors in order to collaborate together in pursuit of two common goals: active peacebuilding and compassionate service to the poor, weak, and needy.

Loving Jewish Neighbors (taught by Muslims to Muslims)
Loving Jewish Neighbors (taught by Christians to Christians)
Loving Christian Neighbors (taught by Muslims to Muslims)
Loving Christian Neighbors (taught by Jews to Jews)
Loving Muslim Neighbors (taught by Jews to Jews)
Loving Muslim Neighbors (taught by Christians to Christians)

Seminar Objectives

AAi understands that seminar content will be determined by seminar teachers, those naturally most familiar with the unique needs of their own faith community. Seminar objectives will therefore differ accordingly. For example, unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism does not actively seek converts. Jewish seminars, therefore, may not need to include content about converting Christians and Muslims. At present, AAi only teaches the Loving Muslim Neighbors seminar to Christians internationally, as reflected in the following objectives.

Introduce students to the basic tenets and values of the other Abrahamic faith community with respectful parallels to our own sacred text, traditions, and history.
Describe the best of the other faith community both with personal anecdotes and historical examples, exposing the shortsightedness and myopia of common but unfair stereotypes of them at their worst.
Gently help students see that disrespectful stereotypes about our Abrahamic neighbors are equally true of our own faith community at our worst throughout our own sordid history. If an enemy is one whose story we have not heard, introduce students to the stories of our Abrahamic neighbors who have often suffered injustice and tragedy perpetrated by the students' greater faith community.
Sensitively help students see their own faith community through the eyes of their Abrahamic neighbors. Include critical opinions of both present and historical belief and practice, then show how our own sacred text can be cited to support these criticisms.
Survey the vast areas of common ground between both faith communities as rooted in our sacred texts.
Share numerous stories to illustrate that true virtue exists among faithful members of the other Abrahamic faith community, who often demonstrate greater obedience to the teachings of our prophets than many devout members of our own faith community.
After significant respect is built for both the faith and culture of one's Abrahamic neighbor, describe the major differences between our two faiths, taking care to explain the reasonableness of their disagreement according to principles in our own Scriptures. Review related theological controversies in our own history. We can't disagree well until we understand the controversy in our own history.
Demonstrate how many (though certainly not all) areas of significant disagreement between our Abrahamic faith communities can ironically prove to be areas of significant agreement after carefully comparing our sacred texts in their original linguistic, cultural, and historical context of meaning. By contrast, comparing translations of our texts often makes reconciling these differences extremely difficult. Comparing popular commentaries of our texts makes reconciling our differences virtually impossible. In other words, challenge participants to see these areas of disagreement more closely to the way earliest readers of our Scriptures likely read them before centuries of tradition contributed to today's practice and understanding.
Explain the reasonableness of our faith traditions, why they developed as they did, and why they are worthy of continued affirmation despite their strident rejection by the other Abrahamic faith community.
Equip students with respectful ways to explain their faith traditions to the other Abrahamic faith community when asked or challenged. Encourage humble dialog. Discourage debate.
Explain the immense difference between blessing nations with the teaching of our prophets, and converting them out of their religious community. Gently help students rethink scriptural verses commonly presumed to mandate proselytism. Expose students to the thinking of respected scholars in their faith community who neither advocate proselytism, nor see it supported in Scripture.
Challenge students to see that the kind of faith that pleases God most is not only our best effort at correct doctrine and theology, but also complete submission to His commands to love neighbors, care for orphans and widows, and serve the poor. Show students this same truth is also wholly affirmed in the Scriptures of the other Abrahamic faith community.
Given that even our own religion can not agree in all areas of theology, challenge students to focus energies on tangible obedience to the clear commands of all prophets: loving neighbors, feeding the hungry, and serving the poor.

Post-Seminar Opportunities

During the final seminar session, announce opportunities to:

Collaborate in local community service with the other Abrahamic faith community, not only to demonstrate obedience to God's command to love our neighbors, but also to model peaceful coexistence before a watching world, showing that both religious communities can cooperate to serve society for God's great glory.
Be mentored as a peacemaker among the other Abrahamic faith community.
Engage in ongoing community service with a peacemaking apprentice from the other Abrahamic community who wants to serve the needy with a friend from student's faith community.

Qualifications of Seminar Teachers

Seminar teachers must be:

Peacemakers, not polemicists, proselytizers, or quarrelsome debaters.
Comfortable using exegetical tools to study their own sacred Scripture in its original language.
Experienced at teaching their own sacred text to their own religious community.
Deeply committed to serving God and their own faith community.
Respectful of the great diversity and different opinions among other communities in their own religious tradition.
Close friends with numerous members of the other Abrahamic faith community.
Familiar with and deeply respectful of the sacred texts of the other faith community.
Able to affirm that their faith has been deepened by meaningful encounters with members of the other Abrahamic faith community.

Interested?

Would you like to develop and teach such a peacebuilding seminar to your own faith community so they can better love their Abrahamic neighbors and successfully unite with them in collaborative community service for the common good? We stand ready to assist you in this process. Email us at seminardev@abrahamicalliance.org for more info.