This document discusses the need for modernity to develop a more open and pluralistic understanding of religion in order to avoid fundamentalism. It argues that approaches that view religion and science as inherently opposed only breed further conflict. Instead, modernity should seek to foster shared spaces of understanding between religious traditions through dialogue, forgiveness, trust, and solidarity. This can help establish common ground and interpretations that give foundations to modern values amidst cultural diversity.

1. Introduction

2. Why IR?
“Modern culture is threatened by a dangerous ignorance of religion. The past
year has seen a spate of books in England and American that identify
religion as such, whether at home or in the Middle East, as the enemy of
rational, ‘reality-based’ civilization. The authors put forward arguments
that they confidently believe will undermine all religious faith and destroy
it. In short, they take the superiority of Enlightenment values of a certain
kind as self-evident, and assume that people that people, once they
understand, will flock to them. In fact, such attitudes only oppose
fundamentalism of the religious kind with fundamentalism of the
positivist scientific kind. Such naïve attitudes leave modernity exposed to
both sorts of fundamentalist enemies because such a construal of the
struggle fails to grasp what is really going on. It fails to grasp why the West
is morally reviled by so many around the world and why the opposition is
so lethally passionate. To answer such threats, modernity needs not to
answer one fundamentalism with another but to reach an open,
dialogical, pluralistically expressed religious consciousness that puts
foundations under eroding modern values” (81)

3. Why young people?

4. Munir’s Example

5. Power of Forgiveness Example

6. Omaha Example

7. Shareda’s Example

8. Mudge/Schweiker
“Futhermore, such shared interpretive activity
generates what I have called ‘social space.’ If you
gather people around a concern or a cause, you
create a social space of common intentions and
understandings. William Schweiker calls such
settings ‘spaces of reasons,’ that is, settings in
which people speak a common language and
understand one another because they share a
certain vocabulary and a certain set of
perceptions” (118-119)

9. Mudge: Reflexivity
Reflexivity: “But in a reflexive, multicultural
world, the symbols by which we interpret the
meaning of our acting will lack coherence
unless the living religious traditions find ways
of entering into one another’s reasoning
spaces

10. Mudge’s 3 Virtues
Acted out virtues: “giving and receiving
forgiveness, fostering conditions of trust, and
acting in solidarity” (183)

11. Schweiker’s “theological humanism”
“To make this possible, theologies must begin
with the ethical claim of the Other, ‘to see
faith traditions as ways of life rather than
primarily systems of belief and doctrine.’
Recognition of the ethical claim of the Other
leads to openings in social experience to the
diving. Such ‘lateral transcendence’ is always
saturated with the reality of God.
Responsibility with and for others manifests
‘life’s poroursness to the divine’” (130)

12. Notes for me during presentation
Moving from “thin forms” of arrangements…
armatures over which we build these experiences
and arrangements. “If you live for a wile with a
‘thin’ agreement, you begin to supplement it with
other sorts of relationships. At the very least, the
agreement needs to be commonly interpreted,
founding a shared legal culture, grounded in a
shared moral ‘framework.’ Confidence raised by
forgiving, trust-building, and solidaristic behavior
at one point spawns confidence at other points”
(246)

13. Common elements

14. Missing elements

15. Extra challenges to consider

16. Intended outcomes