The Right Approach for a Target Audience

I recently received an email from Interfaith America, Eboo Patel's organization. Here was the thrust of the text:

"This weekend, Interfaith America hosts the Interfaith Leadership Summit, the largest gathering of students and educators committed to bridging differences and strengthening our nation’s social fabric. The theme, “Many Plates Make a Feast,” was inspired by Danielle Allen’s assertion that rather than oneness, our nation should strive for wholeness. Wholeness underscores the sacred importance of everyone’s contributions to our diverse nation.

This also includes the idea of a Potluck Nation, which focuses on everyone having something to offer no matter how simple or small, much like a potluck."

I appreciate what Patel and his organization are trying to do, and I'm sympathetic. But in my view this approach will resonate only with the already committed. For those opposed to religious diversity and see it as harmful, with the potluck foods in the metaphor representing a spiritual poison and a threat to the moral and sacred order, a different approach is needed. This is is our audience, and for them we draw upon a religious diplomacy method which seeks to conversations over irreconcilable differences among trusted rivals who can work together despite differences for the common good.

A brief summary of my experience leading me to my present understanding.

For years I thought education and a different theology was sufficient. However, among conservative evangelicals I constantly experienced strong resistance to religious others. So in order to understand the dynamic I pursued a grant through the Louisville Institute that brought social psychology into conversation with an evangelical theology of multifaith engagement. I discovered that evangelicals (and I think this is true for many other Christians and conservative religious adherents), the religious worldview of others is seen as harmful, and as a result there is a perception of intergroup threat. This creates a situation where defensiveness, separation, disgust and anger are often found. With this audience and this context an interfaith approach with an appeal to diversity is a non-starter. Instead, a variation on contact theory that brings religious rivals together to discuss deep differences creates a situation where trust can be developed in spite of differences that are held in a peaceful tension.

My intention here is not superiority or triumphalism, but given the dire need in our polarized times, to ensure the utmost efficacy in the methods we use to try to bring people together.

For more on this here are some links on harm-based morality with a study on the perception of harm through sacrilegious ideas, a recent study on the efficacy of intergroup contact even where strong prejudice exists, and a couple of articles and a video link arguing for the need to test conflict resolution strategies.

https://www.academia.edu/72319964/Harm_Mediates_the_Disgust_Immorality_Link

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369113397_Intergroup_Contact_Is_Reliably_Associated_With_Reduced_Prejudice_Even_in_the_Face_of_Group_Threat_and_Discrimination

https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/assets/imported/Beyond-Dialogue-Interfaith-Engagement-in-Delhi-Doha-and-London.pdf https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?id=3275092&url=article

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324154422_Evaluating_inter-faith_initiatives_A_Cambridge_case_study

https://youtu.be/0--EQolDwMU