By the Rev. Jacob Dharmaraj, PhD*

A little over a generation ago, theologian Harvey Cox wrote in The Secular City, “The fact is that atheism and rationalism no longer constitute (if they ever did) the major challenge to Christian theology today. The challenge comes not from the death of God but from the rebirth of gods and goddesses.” How true he was! It all depends upon the gods and goddesses we create in our postmodern world.

Whenever disaster strikes, as it seems to again and again, we religious leaders mouth platitudes about interfaith dialogue and interreligious cooperation. We assume that words alone will bring healing and reconciliation, but we fail to notice that we need both interfaith and intra-faith dialogue.

While interfaith dialogue fosters communication between religious partners, intra-faith dialogue challenges one’s own beliefs and practices, some of which may be detrimental to mutual relations. It can also foster a culture of peace and harmony. During that introspective process one becomes critical of one’s own faith traditions and strives to live as a good neighbor.

Edward Schillebeekx aptly observes, “The trouble with religious practices today is not in upholding one’s own religious and cultural heritage, (but) rather in claiming a kind of superiority or exclusiveness, which is one of the greatest obstacles to cohabitation of different religions within a country.”

We live in communities. All community members have the same needs and wants, goals and aspirations. We shop in the same neighborhoods. Our children, and others, go to the same schools. We all fight against crimes and work for a safer environment. We are a community first and a society second. Consequently, a religion cannot live in isolation. A genuine religion entails a relationship to people living in the community including people of other religious faiths.

Accordingly, we have big expectations of our local community and global community; and we feel their joys and sorrows keenly. After all, we like to think of ourselves as tolerant, modern, and beyond parochialism. So, seeing another global city under siege feels personal no matter where we’re from. Personal because it’s a part of us: we go to big cities seeking our private grails.

This tragedy in Colaba, the southern part of Mumbai, is personal to me, since I started out my pastoral ministry in that part of the city that was under siege. Just before I was invited to the Illinois Great Rivers Conference, I was appointed to serve as senior pastor of the Bowen Memorial Methodist Church, located just behind the Taj Hotel. My wife, Glory, and I ate at the Leopold Restaurant, another massacre site.

Colaba is a microcosm of the global community, comprising people from all over the world. It was the neighborhood that prepared me to serve the global Christian community. To me, the City of Mumbai is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Even as the city reels from this shock, we know this is not the first time that the great thrumming engine of the metropolis has been under attack—from communal anger, from natural disaster, from the malevolent energies of its own citizens scrabbling over its spoils. I’m confident that soon normality will reassert itself in Mumbai. Trade, art, entertainment, commerce and everyday life will resume. People will move on, because what else is there to do? But events like this can simultaneously bring out the best and worst in us in the days to come.

The challenge is how will the global community react in the coming days—out of insecurity or out of strength? We do not want any city to retreat into a fearful shell, to fortify its frontiers and react with wariness. Rather, we want all metropolises to stand up, square their shoulders and refuse to relinquish their freedoms. Once again, Mumbai will have to bear the weight of its present and past residents’ outsized expectations.   

The Rev. Walter Kunder, current pastor of the Bowen Methodist Church, told me the tragedy will make everyone “live forward and understand backward.” He was no doubt quoting Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who said almost a century ago that we need to live forward in hope and expectation so that we may understand tomorrow what has happened to us today.

As I continue to talk with my friends and family members living in various parts of the world, I have a lingering question: Is religion a source of violence? I hope not. Violence occurred in the very first family that God created. When people from many different backgrounds live together as a community or a larger society, violence is prone to occur. Eric H. F. Law writes, “When a wolf is together with other wolves, everything is fine. When a lamb is together with other lambs, everything is safe and sound. But if you put a wolf and a lamb together, inevitably something bad is going to happen...”

In the privacy of my study at home, I thought about Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Oscar Romero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and numerous others who have worked for peace and harmony out of their deep religious convictions. I still believe religion can offer solutions against the growing aggressive mayhem. What we need today is not a mere interfaith dialogue but intra-faith dialogue so that each religion can evangelize itself before it evangelizes others.

*The Rev. Jacob Dharmaraj, PhD, is pastor of Shrub Oak (N.Y.) United Methodist Church, chairman of the Southern Asian National Caucus for United Methodists (SANCUM)and a vice president of the National Federation of Asian American United Methodists. He served as a monitor at the 2008 General Conference for the General Commission on Religion and Race.