2016-05-31 14:48:00

U.S. expert: Religious literacy for informed citizenship


(Vatican Radio)  The U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Religion and Global Affairs says religious literacy is at the heart of educated citizenship and that interfaith interaction in the classroom and on the soccer field can build healthy, pluralist societies. Shaun Casey spoke to Vatican Radio’s Tracey McClure on a visit to Rome this week. 

She asked him to sum up the state of interfaith dialogue, and particularly dialogue with Islam, 15 years on from the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Listen to Part I of the interview:

 

“We’re in a much better place than we were in 2001… but there’s a long way to go,” says Casey, who observes there are 1.6 billion Muslims around the world and approximately 2.2 billion Christians.

Casey recalls Pope Francis’ first address to the diplomatic corps in 2014 in which he stressed the “deep need for dialogue in the Christian world and the Muslim world”  and the Catholic Church’s  “very fruitful” interfaith engagement “and interesting dialogues across the Muslim world.”

Grassroots interfaith conversation in the neighborhood

“I think the good news is, in the United States, the Muslim community has grown.  Some estimates are that between 3-5 million Muslims are living in the United States and at a grassroots level, the number of non-Muslim Americans who now know Muslims as friends and neighbors has grown quite significantly so there’s been what I call ‘grassroots conversation at the neighborhood level.’”

Casey notes that his daughter attended a high school in Virginia where Muslims were among her teachers, classmates and neighbors.  “When we moved to Washington in 2000, that really wasn’t the case in public schools in Fairfax county (Virginia).  So in a 10-15 year period, there’s really been an expansion just at the level of lived-religion, a lot more conversation at the school lunch table and on the soccer field.”

This, he adds, is “happening all across America today.  It’s not just a phenomenon of the two coasts – but there’s a rich pluralism religiously that is now growing across the country,” and it’s entering school life, athletics and local government.

At the national level, Casey says there are ongoing discussions in” a very robust, complex way between Christian leaders, Jewish leaders and Muslim leaders.  I think when you open the aperture a little wider, there’s an amazing array of dialogues going on across the faiths, across the world.” 

Pluralism and diversity at work in the U.S.

Asked why does such pluralism seem to work in the U.S., Casey replies,

“It’s the nature of civil society.” American society is “far from perfect,” he admits. 

“We certainly have our prejudices; we have our intolerances…But our vision of democracy welcomes - at least in theory - diverse groups of people to whatever tables there might be in public life and I think American Muslims are very diverse in terms of their countries of origin, many of them now are the fourth, fifth generation of Americans.  They are participating in democracy.  There’s not a sense that ‘oh, we’re going to bar you at the door because you’re a member of this faith group or another faith group.’”

Casey looks to history for some of the clues,  recalling his own Irish American roots and the stigmatisms felt by that community in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  “It was hard [for them].  Now, you go to Boston and the feeling is that the Irish Americans own the place.”

“I think we can point in our history, in the not-too-distant past, where various ethnicities, various religions, have come to America in waves and it’s been a bumpy road, but it’s been a road of progress for them.”

Religious literacy: to be a fully educated citizen means having a basic understanding of world religions

Growing up as he did in the southern United States, Casey says, religious literacy “meant you knew the difference between Methodist and Baptist…the diversity wasn’t huge; it was within the Christian tradition.  But now, understanding the other, all the world’s major religions and some of the smaller religions are internally complex, plural.  Simply because you meet one Catholic or you meet one Sunni Muslim, does that mean you understand the full complexity of those communities?  It takes work – it is something that can be taught and learned: what are the basics of each faith, where do they overlap, where are they different.  And I think now there’s more intentionality in a lot of public education systems: that to be a fully educated citizen means you need to have at least a basic understanding of the world’s religions that you might interact with, or your family might interact with.”

Casey calls it a “global” movement, “but it’s hard; it’s difficult.  You have to have people come together to write [school] textbooks because there’s no one faith that has the expertise or the right to describe all the others for any particular public school.”

Marrakech Declaration:  a call to Muslim states to protect minority rights, begin conversation on citizenship

In the Arab world, he observes, some Muslim leaders and intellectuals have acknowledged a growing need for informed and tolerant, citizenship.  Casey cites the Marrakech Declaration, a document issued in the Moroccan city in January 2016 in which 120 Muslim leaders and scholars affirmed the need to protect the rights of minorities in predominantly Muslim societies.  It is based on the 1,400 year old Charter of Medina allegedly written by the Prophet Muhammed himself.

Though some commentators say the Declaration does not go far enough in the area of religious freedoms and minority rights, Casey invites listeners to “Google it.”  He says, “At the center of the Declaration is a call for a wider conception of citizenship within the Muslim world.  I would say, first of all, that’s a very good thing: that 120 Muslim leaders from across the planet came together and came to that theological and political consensus.  It’s not my office’s business, it’s not the U.S. government’s business, to argue theology with anybody…we have no competency theologically, to make those kinds of judgements.”

“I think the Marrakech Declaration is a very good thing,” he asserts.  “This has been part of a process that this group of leaders has been in for some time and the Declaration represents…in many ways, the beginning point now for a public conversation in the Muslim world. “

He admits that change won’t happen overnight, “but it is a good trend…. This is certainly an issue where the Muslim world needs to do more work, and I think frankly, that the fact that scholars of this kind of diversity and prominence came together.. I’d say they’re midway in their process.  They’re now trying to promote this at the grassroots level.”

The “intra-Muslim conversation on this nexus of issues,” he says, “bears watching.”  And, “if they can heed the advice to have a conversation around this notion of citizenship, I think that one can only be hopeful that that process will continue.”  We see it as a “salutary moment,” Casey concludes, and are “intrigued to see how that dialogue will continue.”








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