RELIGION: A Bridge Across Global Gaps

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brian Kenety

PRAGUE, Oct 21 2003 (IPS) - The Dalai Lama and other religious leaders have appealed for more dialogue on the role of religion in a globalised world.

The appeal came at a meeting in Prague of the Forum 2000 Foundation that former Czech president Vaclav Havel helped launch. The Forum has been holding conferences since 1997 to debate problems arising from globalisation. It has now begun to hold meetings under the theme of "Bridging Global Gaps"..

The meeting of religious leaders held Sunday (Oct. 19) was a part of the Forum 2000’s ongoing inter-religious dialogue, and an effort to move towards a "Grand Spiritual Coalition" that Havel is seeking to promote peace and understanding between peoples of different faiths.

"It is important again and again to stress not what makes us differentàbut to pursue what we have in common, whatever it is that unites religions, what could bring a brighter future of peace and cooperation, different insights into our human existence," Havel said in is opening remarks to the conference.

Besides the Dalai Lama who is the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, other religious leaders on the panel were Mustafa Ceric, a leading European Islamic thinker, Rabbi Julia Neuberger from the United Kingdom, Tomas Halik, a priest secretly ordained in then Czechoslovakia under communism and now professor of theology at Charles University in Prague, Archabbot Kakuhan Enami of Japan representing the Tendai Buddhist denomination, and Jana Silerova, a Bishop of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church and the first woman bishop in the post-communist Europe.

More than 250 groups from all over the world attended the conference. El Hassan bin Talal, a prince from the Jordanian Hashemite royal dynasty moderated the event.

The Dalai Lama was in the Czech capital also for the International Conference of Tibet Support Groups, held for the first time outside Germany.

On the margins of the Forum 2000 conference the Dalai Lama advocated autonomy for Tibet. He also said he would discuss with Havel the creation of a group of human rights activists including Nobel Peace Prize winners to help promote peace in Iraq.

But at the Forum event Sunday his comments were confined to the theme at hand, whether it was either possible or desirable to seek a strict separation of church and state.

"Religion and politics are not contradictory," he said. "People have the impression that politics is somewhat ‘dirty’. Why? Politics is in itself not dirty. It is because some people’s motivation is not always healthy."

To be ‘secular does not mean a lack of religion, but rather a respect for all religions at the expense of none, the Dalai Lama said. All religions allow for the transformation of the mind, and teach compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, charity and self-discipline, but each has a different approach, he said.

Rabbi Julia Neuberger said human rights had come to be seen as a ‘secular’ notion but that religions all held the common goal of "alleviating human suffering and poverty", and that alleviating suffering was to a great extent also a "political imperative".

Archabbot Kakuhan Enami of Japan took the analogy a step further, noting that in Japanese the words "politics" and "worship" have a common root.

The Czech priest Tomas Halik said that the model for the separation of church and state that prevailed in the United States was "outdated". He noted that the two political systems that had worked for total exclusion of religion from political life, communism and Nazism, had brought enormous destruction.

In essence, most panelists agreed that politics was too important to be left to politicians alone, and theology too precious to be left to theologians alone.

Rabbi Neuberger concluded her speech saying that if dealing with religion at the local government level was not easy, and at the national level even harder, at the international level it was "critical". At the end of the free-flowing discussion, which largely steered clear of commenting on specific world problems, Prince El Hassan bin Talal read out a statement from the participants prepared in advance.

It said that "during many years of work with interfaith and intercultural groups we have noticed a tendency for our faiths and traditions to ‘rediscover each other’ every time we meet" but that "familiarity has not always bred respect."

It said: "Conflict in the Balkans, in India, Indonesia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the Congo and elsewhere has shown that perceived (or manufactured) differences can catalyse horrifying violence."

The statement said "the task for spiritual leaders is to provide impetus within their communities and take a leading role in promoting global responsibility and mutual enrichment as an outcome of respecting the value of difference."