I've seen interfaith dialogue work really well, kind of ineptly, and really, really badly.¹ I've noticed some things that make a difference in where on the spectrum an effort is likely to fall. So, some observations.

To people who are interested in it at all, religion is generally an important and deeply personal subject. If not handled well, it can also be extremely polarizing -- wars, pogroms, and jihads have been conducted over religion, to say nothing of people merely getting beat up. Some perceive a critical duty to convert or "save" others, and setting aside that duty would be wrong. And it seems that everybody has an opinion about those heretics over there who are destroying the world. How do you bring people together under these circumstances? How do you have a civil conversation that sheds more light than heat? It's tempting to say that this is fundamentally impossible, except that, as I said, I've seen it work sometimes.

First, of course, everybody needs to actually be there for the purpose of learning and sharing. If people are there primarily to preach, then just give up -- you cannot have a dialogue under those conditions. (In my experience, this is particularly a problem with evangelical Christians, but certainly not only them.). But even if everybody has the right intentions, there are pitfalls. And that's what I'm going to talk about in this entry -- presuming that people have good intentions, what else can go wrong?

I see two critical elements beyond the right intentions: the language people use, and how these conversations are moderated.

Language

When interacting with people who you know are wrong -- not just wrong, but idolaters, heretics, or blasphemers -- it's critical to avoid truth assertions and to use descriptive language. It's one thing to say that "we believe X" or "we read this biblical passage to say Y" or "we connect with God by doing Z". It's quite another to say that "X is true" or "this means Y" or "the correct way to connect with God is by doing Z". You would think this would be obvious, but it fails over and over and over again.

Look, I know deep in my heart that certain religions are wrong, and that some people have tragically rejected God. And some know deep in their hearts that I'm a stubborn idiot who has thrown the gift of salvation in their savior's face and who is going to hell as a result. These things happen. Get over it. We will never persuade each other, but as soon as somebody says "Jesus died for your sins" or "treating a man as God is idolatry" or, more subtly, "when Isaiah prophesied the messiah as the suffering servant he said...", you've elected to shut down dialogue and fire up a fight. And if the people you're talking with are extremely gracious, they might be able to defuse it... once. Or might not. If you want to have a respectful conversation, you just shouldn't go there.

Why is this hard? It shouldn't be, but it fails enough to make me wonder. I think part of the problem is that some traditions have a bombastic preaching style, plus street-corner and TV evangelists, and this dulls everyone's sensitivities. It becomes perfectly normal to accuse another of killing God or of refusing to submit to God's will or of rejecting the law. It may seem normal, but it's wrong. Unless the terms of a discussion explicitly allow this kind of heated discourse, you have to leave the "I know the truth and I must proclaim it to all!" rhetoric at the door. Because to at least one person in the room, you are Deeply Wrong -- and that person might be willing to argue the point. Loudly, like you. And then we all lose, because you lose any claim that you are interested in learning and listening.

Moderation

It's human nature to mess this stuff up. It's hard for people to learn a new style of interacting, one that may run counter to what they hear regularly in their places of worship. So the other key is moderation.

Somebody has to oversee the conversation and nip problems in the bud. If a particular community has an ongoing interfaith dialogue it might be possible, in time, for the community itself to perform this moderation -- the regulars will help guide the newcomers, gently steering them toward the kinds of interactions that work, and if necessary being more firm. That's a great goal -- but you don't get it right out of the gate, and sometimes you never get it at all. So it's important that, regardless of the good intentions of everybody in the room, there be someone who has the community-granted authority to say "stop" or "let's talk about X instead".

This is a skill and must be learned. Some seminaries teach "people skills" and psychology and systems alongside bible and theology, and plenty of lay people are exposed to training in these areas professionally. And we all (I hope) know someone who's a natural diplomat, who may not have any formal training but just knows how to defuse problems and redirect discussions. These people, whether trained or instinctive, are essential.

There's a challenge to being a moderator, though -- you're there at all because you care about the subject, but moderators are accountable to the whole community. So, first and foremost, your job is to be fair. You've got to be willing to call out the people who are right, not just the ones who are wrong, so to speak. And that requires a special type of perception, to be able to listen to somebody who is speaking the Truth but doing it disruptively and to step in and say "no".

The usual failure of moderation is not having it. But sometimes the failure is of the other type -- there are moderators, but they're caught up in the content enough that they lose the ability to do their job for the whole community. They're great at challenging the heretics but not so great with the defenders of the faith. And once you lose the perception of fairness, it can be really hard to recover.

Bottom line

So, bottom line -- I think it's possible for interfaith dialogue to work, even on deeply personal and polarizing topics, if everybody works hard to keep it respectful and descriptive and if there are moderators who keep an eye on the discussion and apply correction as needed -- even at the cost of some of their own participation.

If a community can do that, it can have a productive discussion. If it can't, you may as well just give up on those idolaters and infidels -- it's not like they're going to listen to your preaching anyway (since they are, after all, idolaters and infidels), so you may as well just go home.

¹ The original version of this post linked to a user-profile page that has since been deleted. I've updated the link to point to an explanation of that problem.

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There is discussion in the comments about Clay Shirky's A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy, which I had not previously seen.