I’m reading Jonathan Sacks’ The Dignity of Difference for my Sin & Salvation class. Sacks is the a self-proclaimed, Orthodox Jew who has been the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth since September of 1991. President Torrance has made extensive references to it, and the first 80 pages have been some really really good stuff. Just wanted to share some quotes with you that I’ve really been enjoying:
"…more than any time in the past, we need to search – each faith in its own way – for a way of living with, and acknowledging the integrity of, those who are not of our faith. Can we make space for difference? Can we hear the voice of God in a language, a sensibility, a culture not our own? Can we see the presence of God in the face of a stranger?" (5)
"Do we speak to and within the circumscribed loyalties of our faith, or does our sense of the all-encompassing nature of the divine lead us to recognize the integrity of the search for God by those outside our faith?" (9)
"We need, in other words, not only a theology of commonality – of the universals of mankind – but also a theology of difference: why no one civilization has the right to impose itself on others by force: why God asks us to respect the freedom and dignity of those not like us." (21)
"The great faiths provide meaning and purpose for their adherents. The question is: can they make space for those who are not its adherents, who sing a different song, hear a different music, tell a different story. On that question, the fate of the twenty-first century may turn." (43)
"One belief, more than any other is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals. It is the belief that those who do not share my faith – or my race or my ideology – do not share my humanity. At best they are second-class citizens. At worst they forfeit the sanctity of life itself. They are the unsaved, the unbelievers, the infidel, the unredeemed; they stand outside the circle of salvation. If faith is what makes us human, then those who do not share my faith are less than fully human." (45-6)
"It would be to know that I am a sentence in the story of my people and its faith, but that there are other stories, each written in the letters of lives bound together in community, each part of the story of stories that is the narrative of man’s search for God and God’s call to mankind. Those who are confident in their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faith of others. In the midst of our multiple insecurities, we need that confidence now." (65-66)
"In a debate one side wins, the other loses, but both are the same as they were before. In a conversation, neither side loses and both are changed, because they now know what reality looks like from a different perspective. That is not to say that either gives up its previous convictions. That is not what conversation is about. It does mean, however, that I may now realize that I must make space for another deeply held belief, and if my own case has been compelling, the other side may understand that it too must make space for mine." (83)