We have been engaged in Interfaith Dialogue for several years. Many of us will come and go and have taken our message the way we shared it with them. But, we never went back, reminded ourselves and tried to evaluate our practice and listen to our new participants. It is good time for us to start a discussion to remind and energize all of us on the basic rules of interfaith dialogues and share practice of other groups nationally and globally. Such an approach will reenergize and motivate us to bring more projects and discussion points. Dr. Leonard Swidler stated elegantly the three goals of interreligious dialogue as follows:
- To know oneself ever more profoundly and enrich and round out one’s appreciation of one’s own faith tradition
- To know the other ever more authentically and gain a friendly understanding of others as they are and not in caricature
- To live ever more fully accordingly and to establish a more solid foundation for community of life and action among persons of various traditions
The purpose of our next Interfaith Dialogue meeting is to bring up for discussion the golden rules of dialogue and share with each other how to improve our practice and advance to the next level of dialogue. (http://brookingsinterfaith.org/p/principles.html)
We encourage you to check out websites of interesting groups like ours that have a collection of excellent articles. For example, (https://www.scarboromissions.ca/interfaith-dialogue/principles-and-guidelines-for-interfaith-dialogue).
