Will the real Christians please stand up

The New York Times has carried two stories recently that give hope to the idea that thoughtful commentary on thing religious still exists. The first was an article about Krista Tippit’s NPR program Speaking of Faith, recalling how a remarkable woman has managed to blend, “the child of small-town church comfortable in the pews; the product of Yale Divinity School able to parse text in Greek and theology in German; and, perhaps most of all, the diplomat seeking to resolve social divisions.” In doing so, she attracts a sizable regular following. You can read the whole story here.

The second article was an Op Ed by the Dalai Lama in which he challenges the premise that the world’s religions have nothing to learn from one another. He recounts his early meetings with Thomas Merton, and their discussions about how one can learn from one religion while remaining faithful to another. He goes on to say, “I’m a firm believer in the power of personal contact to bridge differences, so I’ve long been drawn to dialogues with people of other religious outlooks. The focus on compassion that Merton and I observed in our two religions strikes me as a strong unifying thread among all the major faiths. And these days we need to highlight what unifies us.” The entire story is here.

The Episcopal Church is full of examples of this sort of productive, inspiring contact with other denominations and faiths. We will do a much better job of spreading the Gospel—in whatever form—by reaching outward, focusing on these commonalities and ignoring those who would chastise us for the ways in which we are different from them—and therefore, presumably, somehow less Christian.