We need interfaith dialogue to establish mutual understanding

OD: This is a complex question. One of the reasons for the prevalence of secularism in the West probably has to do with the intensity of conflict within Christianity from the sixteenth century onwards. Europe was exhausted by this and there was a sense that a consensus was needed based on secular principles. It has been argued that Islam has traditionally been a more tolerant religion. I am not sure that the picture you give here is wholly correct for either the U.S. or the UK. Religion is everywhere in American politics and an apparent secularism can in fact be based simply on the need to be religiously inclusive in terms of the different religious identities of ethnic groups. In the UK the Government is currently attempting to embrace religious organizations as playing an important social role contributing to community-building.

It is true however that there is a very vocal community of militant atheists and of militant secularists in public life in the UK. Perhaps these go together in the sense that religion is a very complex phenomenon to understand if you are not part of that life or very closely connected with it. The militant atheism is generally quite uninformed about what religion is and isn't, while there is a pronounced tendency in public life to accept the demands of well organized human rights pressure groups without taking much account of the effects of legislation on other sections of the community. We have seen that recently in the banning from public life of Catholic adoption agencies on the grounds that they were unable to follow other agencies in allowing same-sex adoptions. The whole issue was discussed recently on the grounds of the rights of same-sex couples to adopt children without ever considering the effects of closure of these agencies, which tend out outperform other agencies with the more difficult children, on the rights of vulnerable children themselves to be cared for adequately.

KZ: Many atheists, in mutual debates, ask me that what proofs and evidence I do have for the existence of God. I respond by saying that logically, the existence of every creature implicates the existence of a creator. Such a multifaceted, complex and intricate universe could not have appeared overnight without the premeditated and conscious planning of an intelligent designer. I say that even a simple timepiece needs creator and cannot be brought into existence without planning and design. We, the multifaceted and complicate human beings could not have tumbled on earth without an intelligent, invisible creator who dominates the whole world. Then, they ask me that who has created this all-powerful creator? Who is the creator of this creator which we say? What's your response? How does Christianity respond to the question of the proof of existence of God? How do you convince an atheist that there's a God who has created this universe and whatever exists in it?

OD: Personally I wouldn't attempt it in that kind of way. I think the existence of a fine-tuned universe is consistent with belief in a Creator God but does not demand it (the universe might just be like that). I think there are more effective ways of presenting the case. The first is in the kind of life we lead, involving a unity of belief and action. This is for us a meaningful life and can be recognized as such by others, even if they don't share our beliefs. Secondly, it is not easy to explain the extension of religions such as Islam and Christianity through space and time on such an unparalleled scale unless there is something in them that 'works'.

Human beings are generally very pragmatic and hard-headed creatures, and societies based on crazy ideas tend to self-destruct. Everyone who has their own ideas about the world would like to think that their ideas could last for centuries and influence countless numbers of people. It would be difficult not to take that as a validation of the ideas themselves and the person or people who had them. We don't often think of religions in this way, but in fact they are the most enormously successful forms of community, with a global extension and extraordinary longevity. How can we explain their survival often under difficult circumstances unless to be a Muslim or a Christian offers us a profoundly meaningful way to live as a human being? To live a meaningful life in a thorough-going unity of belief and act requires real powers of judgment, resilience and responsibility, and Islam and Christianity must have these at their core substantially for them to have survived so long.

KZ: In July 2010, Terry Jones, the extremist pastor of an evangelical church in the U.S., sparked international controversy when he announced that he would be burning copies of the Holy Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 attacks. In the recent months, also, American soldiers in Afghanistan burned copies of the Holy Quran. The U.S. government reacted to the incident very passively and didn't condemn it as contradictory to the spirit of religious tolerance. What's your idea about burning the holy books? Why hasn't the U.S. government adopted a serious stance in this regard?

OD: I think these incidents are indicative of how destructive small groups of individuals can be. The media focus very quickly on extreme groups of people as being newsworthy even when they don't necessarily represent the view of a majority or even of a significant number of people. After all, these acts are clearly attempts not only to intimate but also to provoke violent feelings or confrontations which can be in nobody's interests. My impression is that the U.S. government doesn't like this kind of thing at all, for all kinds of reasons and not just security ones, but their condemnations don't get the same headlines. It is also the case that such events are an attack upon religious identities which in the Islamic world are also to a large extent, political identities. Western governments are not representative of religious identities in that sense at all; the secularist traditions make that impossible. Religious institutions and, even more, religious values inform political life in the West, but even where one kind of Christianity predominates, religious representation through leadership is often at odds with political representation.

KZ: As a professor of theology, do you think that religion has solutions for universal problems which the human being faces today such as poverty, racial hatred, state oppression and occupation? Can we use religion as a basis for solving the major problems we grapple with?

OD: I think a key aspect of religions for today is their global character (they are the most global forms of human community). This is bound to give them importance. I think there is a substantial though also developing awareness in the West that secularism struggles to offer robust ethics which can shape and change society. There are real concerns at present that the lack of an ethical centre may be undermining the economic success of the City of London for instance: what is the social price of profit? There is clearly a great potential for world religions and especially Christianity and Islam to work together in ethical ways on the world stage. I would like to think that we will see such a much more united front around basic ethical issues developing before long. I know that this is already a significant emerging political force in London, where there are so many different religions in close proximity to each other, facing the same kinds of social and ethical challenges.

From a more academic or theological perspective there is also the challenge of understanding exactly how it is that world religions such as Islam and Christianity can develop such strong systems of solidarity and community which function across the major divisions which separate us human beings from one another. Is there something to be learned about how to be a truly global society in today's world, including Middle East and the West, as well as China and India, from the historical experience of humanity in our world religions? The dialogue between Judaeo-Christian traditions and Islam would play a very important role here and that is something which we are very much concerned with at this point at King's College London.

KZ: What's the message of Christianity for world peace and brotherhood among nations? What does Christ say about the necessity of promoting peace and friendship in the world?

OD: For all its manifest failings, Christianity is the bearer of a powerful image of goodness in life. It represents an ideal of human love. It tells us that the ethical life, even the most radically ethical life, is ultimately the most meaningful. It is also a religion that tells us strongly that we don't always get it right and that we need always to be aware of our own shortcomings. We need to be able to start again. This is the language of resilience, and of hope, as well as a pragmatic common sense about what it is to be human, caught between fear and hope. Most centrally perhaps it tells us – against Western individualism – that we are all in this together. The way ahead for each one of us is through community and that community can never be closed off as a pure collectivism of corporate self-interest but is intrinsically open-ended.

The two tendencies, towards closedness and openness in our community life, can seem at times to be equally strong. But the meaning of both Christianity and Islam as they are passed on across the generations is that ultimately it is the open, inclusive and hospitable community which survives in all contexts. These two religions may be representative of what is perhaps the most fundamental thing of all about human beings in our long social and biological evolution, which is our capacity to form an open-ended bond, beyond our own immediate family and kinship group. Only when we share our resources, and share positively the time and space we have in common with each other, can we adequately deal with the challenges which come our way.

We are as a species currently at the beginning of an immense challenge to 'pull together' in the face of all kinds of global challenges arising from technology and the effects of technology as well as the social complexity of the forces of globalization. Since we are already ancient and very successful forms of 'global' community, Christians and Muslims will need to learn to cooperate together in humanizing the forces of globalization and in developing new forms of solidarity that cut across the boundaries that divide us, even the boundary of religion itself.