Communication Between Cultures And Between Traditions

From Peacebuilding

Author: Bob Schreiter

The work of peacebuilding and reconciliation frequently requires crossing the boundaries between cultures and religious traditions. Sometimes these are boundaries between the parties that are seeking peace and reconciliation. In addition, there are often boundaries between Caritas workers and the people with whom they are working. It is important to be aware of the existence of these boundaries, and to learn how to learn how to cross them with sensitivity to the parties involved and with an efficacy that builds peace and promotes the possibility of reconciliation.

Contents 1 Dialogue 2 Obstacles to dialogue 3 Intercultural communication 3.1 Capacities for interaction 3.2 Three places to begin in intercultural communication 3.3 Training for intercultural communication 4 Religious traditions in interaction 4.1 Sensitivity to religious values and practices 4.2 Religious resurgence 4.3 Misuse of religion 4.4 Religious revival 4.5 Fundamentalism 4.6 Interacting with religious revival and with fundamentalism 5 Useful literature on cultures and traditions 5.1 On the Christian understanding of dialogue and obstacles to dialogue 5.2 On intercultural communication 5.3 On religious resurgence, revival and fundamentalism

Dialogue

The general term that the Catholic Church has come to use for such boundary-crossing is dialogue. The Church recognises four kinds of dialogue:

The first is the dialogue of life. This dialogue witnesses to the human values of living together in harmony and cooperation. Its intent is to build trust and relationships between the parties involved, by living out of the values that best express our common humanity. It is not so much speaking explicitly about those values. Rather, it is a living out of these values. This is the kind of dialogue St Francis of Assisi promoted to his followers as he sent them to live among Muslim peoples.

The second is the dialogue of common action. This dialogue occurs when two parties address social issues and social challenges together. Each party acts out of its own traditions and values, but does it in such a way as to respect the traditions and values of the other party. There is a common focus upon a challenge to be addressed or a problem to be solved. Working together for peace and working together for social healing are examples of this dialogue of common action.

The third is the dialogue of religious ideas and teachings. This dialogue tries to bring the teachings of the respective religious traditions into contact and interaction with each other. It is usually carried out by experts in the teaching of each tradition.

The fourth is the dialogue of religious and mystical experiences. This dialogue seeks to compare and understand more deeply the most profound experiences of the divine and the transcendent. It is typically carried out between religious adepts (such as monastic men or women, or extraordinarily gifted wisdom figures).

In the work of peacebuilding and reconciliation, it is usually the first two forms of dialogue – dialogue of life and dialogue of common action – that come into play.

Obstacles to dialogue

Dialogue or communication is not something that happens automatically. There is often suspicion and mistrust of the other party. This is especially the case when there has been conflict in the past, and when stereotypes about the other have blocked communication in the past. In both of these instances, the first step before there can be any encounter or collaboration is to build relationships built upon trust. Features of building trust are explored below in the section of intercultural communication.

There are a special set of obstacles when parties of different religious faith try to communicate with each other. The most common obstacle is that the invitation to dialogue is seen as a stratagem to proselytize the other party. Because Christianity has a missionary tradition, this is a common suspicion. Steps have to be taken to allay these suspicions. Some of the most helpful steps are given below in the section on intercultural communication.

A second fear about dialogue is that it will require sacrificing religious truth in order to have sustained communication. This is a relativising of what each party holds as fundamental truths of their tradition. Dialogue is not about giving up one’s commitments. It is about acting out of one’s commitments and respecting the commitment of the other party. How one acts, and how one expresses oneself are the most important elements in allaying these fears.

Other obstacles will present themselves along the way in dialogue. When these arise, three principles need to be kept in mind. First of all, one must act within the integrity of one’s own commitments and views. To give these up makes one an unreliable dialogue partner. Second, these commitments must be expressed in a way that is sensitive to and intelligible to the other party – that is, in ways that respect the commitments of the other part and in ways that the other party can understand. Third, each party must keep the common goal in mind – be that to live together peaceably, or to meet a common challenge, or carry out a common project.

Careful engagement of these principles together will go a long way in overcoming the obstacles encountered.

Intercultural communication

How does one cross cultural boundaries? To begin with, people are often not aware of such boundaries until they have to cross them. If one lives in a relatively homogeneous situation, or if one is part of a majority or dominant social group, one can live one’s life with little attention to differences in culture. For those involved in peacebuilding and reconciliation, a capacity for intercultural communication is of paramount importance. It involves not only awareness of cultural differences between parties involved, but also (if one is an outsider to both cultures) an awareness of the impact of one’s own culture upon the interaction of the parties involved.

Capacities for interaction

The three capacities one needs to build for effective intercultural communication are: (1) knowledge, (2) attitudes, and (3) skills. Knowledge has to do with seeing and recognising the differences between cultures, as well as the components that make up each culture.

Those components include ideas and values that hold a culture together, practices (how people within the culture interact and come together), and material aspects (food, dress, housing, what material objects are valued or despised). Language is a prime conveyor of all three of these aspects.

Of course, no one has knowledge of all of these different aspects. But being able to ask about and to learn key elements of each three provides a basic knowledge necessary for interaction.

Attitudes are the stances one takes toward one’s own culture in its interaction with cultures of others, and how one perceives the culture of others. If I consider my culture superior to that of another, it will cause me to have blind spots that will impede and even obstruct interaction. How I deal in general with cultures I do not know bespeaks certain attitudes as well. Important for interaction with other cultures are respect for the other culture, interest in learning about the other culture, and willingness to change attitudes when confronted with new knowledge.

Skills are capacities that enhance communication with others. Language is the most important of these. It is not possible to learn all the languages needed, or even at times one language well that one needs. But efforts to learn phrases of greeting and thankfulness, as well as other rudimentary elements of the language, will indicate to one’s interlocutors that I am approaching with respect and interest in them. Such respect and interest are important in building the trust needed for communication.

Other skills to develop relate to ideas and values, to practices, and to interaction with the material dimensions of the culture. For example, what are the most important understandings about God, about living with one’s neighbours, about the values necessary for family are present in the culture? How do men and women interact, how does one interact with elders and with children, how does one celebrate and mourn? What are the proper eating habits, dress codes, and use of animals and tools? Skills are things we can learn.

Three places to begin in intercultural communication

For initial encounter, it is extremely helpful to have someone familiar with the culture (called an “informant”) who can give guidance and answer questions. There are three places to begin in order to familiarise oneself with what one will need.

The first is basic information for entering a country for the first time. One such source is known as “culture grams.” These are handy summaries of basic information to get one started in a new situation. These can be sought out at http://www.culturegrams.com. They are typically four-page handouts that can give staff a basic orientation.

A second area for beginning is body language and basic gestures. How to greet someone (shake hands? bow slightly? kiss on the cheek?), how one sits, at what distance to stand when speaking, how to conclude interaction are among the basic features of bodily interaction. Other things include whether or not to make eye contact, how to operate within hierarchies of older/younger, male/female, social superiority/inferiority, etc., can help create an atmosphere of trust and respect. Informants can help equip staff in these vital areas.

A third area is offering and receiving hospitality. What hospitality means to parties involved (is it respect, may it have a more specific goal, does it commit the parties to an ongoing relationship) is the most important place to begin. Recognising the difference between what I consider hospitality to be, and what our interlocutor thinks hospitality to be, is of crucial importance. Whether food and/or drink (and what kind) is a major dimension. When to move from palaver or small talk to the issue at hand is another. Again, informants can be extremely helpful here.

Training for intercultural communication

If there is to be sustained contact and interaction, it is important for staff to get some training in the basic aspects of the culture. The knowledge and skills attained will promote the work of peacebuilding and reconciliation. If training is not available, knowing the right questions to ask can create a framework for new learning.

Equally important is self-awareness, that is, knowing how those same questions are answered in one’s own culture. Staff must be sensitive not only to the culture they are entering, but also be aware of how their own cultural values and practices will have an impact upon others. For example, men and women recreating or relaxing together may be offensive in cultures the staff are entering. A simple way to create such self-awareness is this: when one learns practices and material aspects of a new culture, what are the analogous practices (such as relaxing together) and material aspects (such as dress or use of alcohol) in my own culture? How are my practices and material aspects read in the place where I am now?

Religious traditions in interaction

Sensitivity to the religious beliefs and practices of others is a key component of peacebuilding and reconciliation. This is important to dwell upon, because the practices and procedures of Western/based NGOs involving response to emergencies, carrying out relief efforts, and implementation of programmes of development usually have a secular outlook, even if the NGOs are sponsored by religious organisations. This outlook is often indifferent to, or even hostile toward the religious orientation of others. Hence a sensitivity to the role of religion in the lives of one’s interlocutors cannot be assumed.

For example, Western-based NGOs are result-oriented. They define the purpose of an action, and organise the means for achieving it. Such an approach may downplay or overlook the importance of community, tradition and self-representation of a people. Development, for example, might be defined by the Western NGO principally in material or economic terms, whereas how it enhances or detracts from social relationships already present among a people.

For historical (and often complicated) reasons, religious attitudes and behaviour are marginalised in many NGOs. But for an afflicted people, it may be religious attitudes and ritual observance that have allowed them to survive at all.

Two sets of things are of immediate importance in the interaction with peoples of deep faith. The first is an awareness of and sensitivity to the role of religious values and practice for the people one hopes to assist. The second is how to negotiate the religious resurgence found in many conflicted areas of the world today.

Sensitivity to religious values and practices

For many Western educated people, religion is a compartment for a given set of values and practices. This compartment is essentially private; as such, it should not be imposed upon others or at times even mentioned at all. Such an attitude comes from living in a pluralist and usually secularised society. Religious practice is seen as the source of conflict and division.

In other parts of the world, it is impossible for people to imagine not being religious and still being part of a community. Religious belief and practice are simply part of a fully human life. Religion is not a separable compartment of one’s life.

Showing respect for the religious beliefs and practices of others, and understanding what priority they have in a hierarchy of values, is essential for effective communication. A basic knowledge of religious practices, and creating the social space for their enactment, can be crucial for setting up the relationships that make peacebuilding possible. Thus, providing a space for devout Muslims to pray and water for the preliminary ablutions may be an important prelude to other interaction. Knowing that many Theravada Buddhist monks eat only one meal a day – usually in late morning – may be important for scheduling other events. Knowledge of diet (kosher for observant Jews, halal for pious Muslims, vegetarian for most Buddhists) bespeaks basic awareness.

Religious practice may give a window onto other priorities. For example, when Catholic Relief Services arrived in Aceh after the devastating tsunami in 2004, they asked local leaders what was needed first in the relief effort. The answer was prayer rugs, so that as Muslims they could reorient themselves to the patterns of religious practice as a way of negotiating relief and repair of society. A Western operative might have thought of safe drinking water or emergency housing as the first priority. For those Muslim leaders, without the proper orientation to God there was no hope of human agency for efficacious rebuilding.

In the first stages, it is more important to attend to religious practices than to worry about exact articulation of religious ideas. Religious practices are often the glue that hold a community together and make it possible to act.

Religious resurgence

Since the last two decades of the twentieth century, the world has been experiencing a dramatic resurgence of religious belief and practice. Immigrants have reintroduced intensive religious practices in secular parts of the world such as Europe, North America, and Australia. A resurgence of religious belief has formed a means of resistance to globalization and the Westernising of cultures. Appeals to religious belief have mobilized young adults – especially men – to fight against the humiliation of their cultures by powerful forces in the West. Christian Pentecostal and Charismatic faith is sweeping through Latin America, Africa and Asia among upwardly mobile urban dwellers, and those suffering dislocation and those forced into emigration.

All of this has flown in the face of the confident predictions earlier in the twentieth century that as the world developed economically it would become more secular. From the point of view of such predictions, the resurgence of religion is a retrograde effort to turn back modernisation or a pathological reaction of those incapable of coping with rapid social and economic change.

Religious resurgence is woven deeply into the fabric of social conflict. It fuels nationalism (as in the case of Indian hindutva), resistance against the West (a variety of Islamic revival movements), ethnic strife, and global terrorism. It is also seen as a retreat from issues of social change and social injustice in the case of Pentecostalism. Religious resurgence in the United States by the Christian Right is supporting American militarization of imperial aspirations.

How to respond to such religious assertiveness, especially as it feeds and sustains conflict? Western thinking about religious resurgence is shaped by Europe’s own experience and history. The Wars of Religion in the seventeenth century were ended by subordinating religion to state political power and then relegating it to the private sphere. The persuasive power of religion was discredited by the Enlightenment, which enthroned reason over tradition and religious thinking.

The twenty-first century is not the seventeenth. The world today is not the same as early modern Europe. To use seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the lens for reading the twenty-century is bound to lead to distortions. Students of the current scene are not of a single mind of how to view the current situation. What is offered here are some broad outlines for responding to religious resurgence in a more constructive way. This way is built upon the principles of intercultural communication outlined above in this section.

Religion, like other dimensions of human life and culture, carries ambivalences within it. One cannot say that it is utterly bad and destructive (as some secularists might), nor is it really good and only misused and distorted by malicious figures (as some apologists might). It can be both bad and good. But it cannot be dismissed without severely distorting the larger social picture. What follows here will try to sort out some of the major dimensions to keep in mind when interacting with this resurgence of religion.

Misuse of religion

There are situations when religious commitment is misused. By misuse is meant appropriating religious rhetoric and commitment for other political and social purposes. Revealing in such misuse is how leaders suddenly appeal to religious adherence when it has been notably absent in the past. For example, Baathist Iraq was quite secular. However, when Saddam Hussein wanted to mobilise people against outside threats (first Iran, then later the United States) he suddenly larded his speeches with references to Islam and the Qur’an.

Highly selective uses of religion for political purposes of domination provide another example. This is evident when one aspect of a religious tradition is elevated to prominence at the expense of all others, as when the call to the Christian Crusades trumped the idea of loving one’s neighbour as oneself. Selection and distortion are key markers of the misuse of religion.

Religious revival

“Fundamentalism” is a word on the lips of many secular commentators who do not understand or dismiss how other peoples may respond to challenges around them. Fundamentalism is a real phenomenon, and it will be treated in the next section. But it cannot be understood without situating it within a larger religious revival. Students of religious resurgence such as Scott M. Thomas propose that the motivations to religious resurgence are authenticity and development.

“Authenticity” is the effort to constitute one’s own identity, rather than having an identity imposed upon oneself by outside, powerful forces. A search for authenticity is evident in the reassertion of ethnic identity against the forces of homogenisation by economic globalisation. Authenticity is an assertion of dignity in the face of being considered inferior by imperial and colonial power. Authenticity implies the right to self-determination and self-presentation, rather than fitting into categories others have imposed to marginalise us. Because religious belief and practice is so central to the identity of many communities, it is a prime resource for the assertion of authenticity. It is not uncommon, for example, for immigrants to become more religious in their new location than they were at home. The embracing of a stronger Muslim identity by second-generation young adults in Europe (stronger than that of their parents who had emigrated from primarily Muslim countries) is an act of seeking authenticity.

“Development” refers to how one incorporates change into communities. Greater wealth and self-determination may be indices for development for a Western-based NGO, but if they are seen to weaken family ties and erode traditional patterns of authority, they may be rejected as inappropriate or wrong development. Development here has to do with the integrity of communities. Giving priority to political human rights over basic needs such as housing, health, and employment has been rejected in some countries, since political assertion in itself may damage the social fabric that makes survival possible. Struggles over gender equity, rights of individuals versus the group, and a range of what are considered “freedoms” are the testing ground for what constitutes “development.”

A reasserting of religious values may be the glue that holds together the social fabric in the face of outside challenges. All religious revival, therefore, is not retrograde. It may be a way of charting a path through complex and difficult challenges.

Revivalist religion sees itself as returning from the complexities and accommodations of the present age to a primeval purity, that is, religious belief and practice of an earlier, Golden Age. For Salafist Muslims, it is replicating the practice of the Prophet Muhammad and his first followers. For Christians, it is re-creating the New Testament Church of the Acts of the Apostles.

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism can be seen as a subset of beliefs and practices within religious revival. Although the term is used in the media to cover any form of assertive religion that outsiders do not understand, it is best reserved for a very specific type of religious revival. In this usage, fundamentalism is a reaction that turns its back on any accommodation of religious belief and practice to a changing reality. It is obsessed with the purity of belief and practice, and wishes to avoid any outside influence. It is expressly anti-modern. It preserves its self-understanding by elevating elements of its tradition and practice to a test of orthodoxy, that determines whether one is a true believer or not. These defining elements are considered by other adherents as possibly important, but certainly not central to belief.

The term “fundamentalist” was originally used by conservative Protestants at the turn of the twentieth century. It was a self-descriptor of those who subscribed to a list of five “Fundamentals” of Christianity. Those five Fundamentals were : (1) the divine inspiration of every word found in the Bible, (2) the virginal conception of Jesus, (3) the death of Jesus as substitutionary atonement, (4) the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and (5) his bodily return at the end of time. These five doctrinal points are important for many Christians, but not as central as other beliefs, such as the Trinitarian nature of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus.

In Islam, the Taliban represent another fundamentalism. For them, the test of orthodox faith was whether men wore uncut beards and whether all women were completely covered and sequestered from public life. For the great majority of Muslims, however, the five pillars of Islam are:

1. the utter oneness of God,
2. the injunction to pray five times a day,
3. the duty to give alms for the poor,
4. fasting in the month of Ramadan, and
5. the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Note in both instances, that elements of belief and practice chosen as “fundamental” are completely incompatible with modernity. To make them pivotal is to be a fundamentalist.

Interacting with religious revival and with fundamentalism

Religious revivalists may or may not be fundamentalists. Pentecostalism is a conservative religious revival movement that is the fastest growing form of Christianity in the world today. It eschews many traditional forms of church structure and practice, and seeks direct inspiration by the Holy Spirit in the manner described in the Acts of the Apostles. Sometimes it withdraws from the complexity of modern life and the challenges of social change. In other instances, it is a striving to gain the benefits of modernity (this latter type is also called the “prosperity Gospel”: believe in the Holy Spirit and get rich). Some Pentecostal Christians are also fundamentalists, but not all of them are.

Most revivalists in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism are concerned with the purity of their faith and practice. They are not interested in any interreligious exchange or dialogue that might corrupt that purity. Consequently, they are usually difficult to engage in a dialogue of life or of common action.

Second generation revivalists, however, will sometimes accept engagement. This has been the case in a number of instances with second-generation Pentecostals.

On a wider front, if outsiders are able to find ways of acknowledging this striving for authenticity and development, there may be ways of enlisting the energies and commitments of those involved in religious revival to cooperate in peacebuilding and reconciliation. This can happen if their aspirations can be honoured in the cooperation.

Useful literature on cultures and traditions

On the Christian understanding of dialogue and obstacles to dialogue

• William R. Burrows (ed.), Dialogue and Proclamation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991)

On intercultural communication

• William R. Gudykunst, Communicating with Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002)

• William R. Gudykunst and Jolene Koesters (eds.), Theories of Intercultural Communication Competence (London: Sage Publications, 1992)

• Fred Jandt, Introduction to Intercultural Communication (London: Sage Publications, 2001)

On religious resurgence, revival and fundamentalism

• Allan Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

• Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)

• Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)