Written by Lucas Ngai
Illustrated by Sylvain Chan
At a secular university like LSE, it’s easy to believe that we’ve collectively ‘moved past’ religion. However, recent data from the Pew Research Centre suggests otherwise: in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America, populations are projected to grow significantly faster than the Western world, and a vast majority already consider religion to be ‘very important’ in daily life, with no signs of this stopping anytime soon.
Indeed, as a microcosm of the world, the ~70% international student body at LSE is not just a statistic padding The Times’ university rankings, but also entails the lived realities of faith for countless students that cannot be ignored.
Yet in the classroom, LSE students are often taught to view religion through the lens of detached, academic methodology — as a self-interested institutional agent with political and economic motivations, the worldview of a distant people ‘living their truth’ we cannot understand, or perhaps just a wasp’s nest we would rather not stir up.
But as religion becomes increasingly intertwined with the modern conflicts and political phenomena we study, where such fundamental disagreements come to the fore, how do we come to terms with religion’s continued salience? Can we meaningfully engage those who disagree with us, religious and non-religious alike?
Intrigued, I spoke to six LSE students involved in interfaith dialogue, as well as Revd Canon Professor James “Jim” Walters, founder and director of the LSE Faith Centre and professor in the Department of International Relations, to try and make sense of these questions.
“Improving the Quality of Our Disagreements”
For some, interfaith dialogue may open a Pandora’s Box of uncomfortable conversations. As Eilidh, a Christian master’s student in International Development, puts it, “it can be hard to start because people feel that they’re not bringing an opinion, but sharing an identity, and if that’s not received respectfully, that can be hurtful.”
So how can we respectfully approach clashing religious perspectives, especially among faiths that claim exclusive truth? If we find common ground, do we also concede our personal convictions?
“I think one of the misconceptions of interfaith dialogue is that it’s about finding agreement and building consensus,” Jim answers. “One of the phrases that we use here is that dialogue may just be about improving the quality of our disagreements.”
He reiterates that genuine dialogue does not require one to compromise their own beliefs: “Empathy is not agreement. If you listen to the perspective of someone you strongly disagree with and recognise that they hold those convictions in good faith and for good reason, that does not equate to your collusion in that view.”
Ali, a Muslim first-year Management student, finds that the discomfort from one’s worldview being challenged may simply be because those beliefs have never been properly articulated: “That discomfort can be productive. It pushes you to refine your understanding and communicate with greater clarity and humility.”
That said, an element of curiosity is essential for constructive interfaith dialogue. Aaya, a Muslim master’s student in International Relations, laughs as she recalls an encounter she had with a Latter-day Saint in the Faith Centre: “You realise how little you actually know when you talk to a person [you wouldn’t ordinarily talk to] for even five minutes, that you just want to shut up anyway.”
“We stayed for ages because we realised how many similarities there are between Islam and Mormonism, which I never thought would be the case.”
Amaiya, a Christian first-year Social Policy student, tells me how the questions her Muslim friends ask have only made her faith stronger: “It doesn’t make my faith weaker because I then do more research and have more evidence for the reasons I believe what I believe […] If you do anything from a place of relationship and love, it’s so much easier to have conversations about this.”
No One Left Behind
Interfaith dialogue is not only for people of faith.
Indeed, Jim points out that non-religious students compose a high proportion of the Faith Centre’s flagship Beecken Faith and Leadership (BFL) Programme. “We’re very pleased about that and they’re very welcome to take part. I think […] they’re recognising the contribution it can make to challenges like climate change and conflicts proving very intractable.”
“They will still bring their own commitments and moral frameworks, which are equally relevant,” he clarifies.
He also acknowledges the potential difficulty for people with negative experiences of religion to engage in interfaith dialogue: “Those can be extremely damaging and that requires its own journey of healing […] but [there’s also more to] this aspect of human life and identity.”
“I say come and bring that to the table,” Jim adds. “Maybe that’s the perspective of which they want to persuade other participants, but they’ve got to have the other side of the coin.” “There is a cost to not engaging with the people you disagree with, and I always encourage people to think about what might be gained from sitting down with someone with a very different worldview — again, without the expectation of agreement or consensus.”
Contemplating the Quran’s message and widescale Islamophobia in global politics, especially in light of the Israel and Palestine conflict, Aaya agrees: “We [Muslims] don’t realise it, but we are also dehumanising others [by] internalising these narratives, and all it does is further fracture and polarise us […] We don’t solve anything by disengaging or being insular.”
A Practical Approach
What, then, lies beyond an improvement of our theological disagreements? In pressing discussions on global issues at LSE, the Faith Centre has found a pragmatic niche in promoting the power of religious communities.
“People are recognising that climate change requires a whole societal approach, and religious communities have important perspectives to bring to the table,” Jim explains.
“So we’ve been enabling conversations around religious perspectives of ecology and creation, challenging the assumption that the material world is [independent of] human commitments and responsibilities.”
Lina, a Catholic LLM student who just completed the BFL module on climate change, looks back on her experience: “It was a turning point for me because I [always] thought of religion as an individualistic way to perceive [the world].” She reflects on being part of “a bigger purpose”: “It’s amazing because I didn’t know that you could mix religion with climate change!”
The Faith Centre also hosts a student programme engaging with conflict transformation, facilitating conversations on how to best respond to past and present global conflicts.
“Students [are recognising] that religion is a key facet of Israel and Palestine discourse, and they want to understand those perspectives better […] precisely because they understand how serious these injustices are and want to [explore] possible futures across those disagreements,” Jim remarks.
He also emphasises the necessity for interfaith community collaboration: “Muslim and Jewish communities in the UK need to talk about rising Christian nationalism on the religious right, and Christians and others need to be part of those conversations as well. These issues are just as important as the global conflicts, and [people are recognising] the need for those kinds of conversations.”
Large-scale issues aside, the power of interfaith communities can also be felt on a local level. Arjan, a Sikh master’s student in Social Policy, attests to their impact through an interfaith project he did before he came to LSE, helping the homeless in Birmingham: “We set up a food bank on our university campus and volunteered with a nearby homelessness charity every Friday for about six months. We’d be freezing, but we raised quite a lot of money and helped thousands of people.”
Discussing the impact of his interfaith project, Arjan notes: “It’s quite cool, since [only] four people met to achieve so much in our local community […] We left a legacy project and achieved quite a bit there in those few months, [so] that was a good introduction to interfaith dialogue and how powerful it can be.”
Learning to Live in a Pluralistic Society
As I reflect on the conversations I’ve had, it occurred to me how much we take for granted that we live in a religiously pluralistic society, yet are hardly taught how to truly live in it.
In one of Jim’s books, his takeaway on the parable of the Good Samaritan really stuck with me: that the person who embraces the beaten-up Jew on the road to Jericho was not the priest or Levite of his own kind, but the Samaritan — the scorned religious “other”. That in our pluralistic society, a love for one another can transcend the disagreements which mean so much to us.
Interfaith dialogue invites us to stay passionate and curious in spite of a world that rewards us for retreating into our isolated communities and compartmentalising others’ nuanced identities into personal prejudices. It equips us with the language to embrace the person right next to us — the religious (or non-religious) “other” — in their complex, messy entirety, and hopes that by doing so, we can work towards a flourishing future together, if only just a little.
