Interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims is, as an organised practice, largely a creation of the last century. Encounters among Jews, Christians and Muslims are as old as the traditions themselves. Organised dialogue aimed at mutual understanding is largely a development of the last two centuries. The Second Vatican Council’s declaration on other religions in 1965 is often taken as its starting point.
In this article
Early milestones
The World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, brought representatives of many faiths to one platform and is often cited as the beginning of the modern interfaith movement. In the twentieth century, organisations dedicated to Jewish and Christian understanding formed in several countries, and the experience of the Holocaust led many churches to re-examine their teaching about Judaism.
Changes in church teaching
In 1965 the Second Vatican Council issued a declaration on the relation of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions. It rejected the charge that the Jewish people as a whole bear responsibility for the death of Jesus and spoke with respect of Muslims as worshippers of the one God. Many Protestant and Orthodox bodies have issued their own statements since.
Muslim initiatives
In 2007, a group of Muslim scholars and leaders addressed an open letter to Christian leaders, proposing love of God and love of neighbour as common ground between the two faiths. The letter drew many responses and led to a series of conferences.
Forms of dialogue
- Dialogue of life: neighbours of different faiths sharing daily life and civic concerns.
- Dialogue of action: cooperation on social causes such as relief work.
- Theological dialogue: scholars comparing beliefs and practices.
- Shared reading: Jews, Christians and Muslims studying their scriptures together.
Aims and limits
Dialogue seeks understanding and respect; it does not require participants to set aside their convictions. Participants often find that honest discussion of differences builds deeper trust than a focus on agreement alone.
More on interfaith dialogue
The movement has older roots. The World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, was the first attempt to bring the great traditions together on one platform, and it is remembered as the beginning of organised interfaith encounter in the modern West. The Second Vatican Council gave the Catholic Church a formal footing in 1965, and the World Council of Churches opened its own programme of dialogue with people of other faiths soon afterwards.
Muslim initiatives followed later and on their own terms: the Amman Message of 2004, which set out who may speak for Islam, and A Common Word of 2007, in which Muslim scholars addressed Christian leaders on the love of God and of neighbour. Both documents drew on the Qur’an’s call to the People of the Book to come to a common word, and both have since been answered by Christian and Jewish leaders in turn. See The Amman Message and A Common Word.
What distinguishes these efforts from the disputations of earlier centuries is their aim: to understand the other tradition as its own believers understand it, and to find common ground for justice and peace, while leaving each community free to hold and to state its own convictions.
Further reading: Faith and reason in medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim thought, The Sabians of the Qur’an and Jerusalem in three traditions, The Amman Message and A Common Word, A Common Word.
