Leonard Swidler: Dialogue Pioneer and Peacemaker

One of my most important teachers was Leonard Swidler, Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University. At the forefront of interfaith dialogue for the last fifty years, he co-founded the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in 1964 and remains the editor today. Although he has written more than eighty books, he is perhaps best known for his article, “Dialogue Decalogue: Ground Rules for Interreligious Dialogue,” which has been translated into many languages and is considered to be a foundational statement on interfaith dialogue. In this article Swidler presented “ten commandments” that he considered to be essential for genuine interfaith dialogue:

1. 1. The primary purpose of dialogue is to learn, that is, to change and grow in the perception and understanding of reality and then to act accordingly.

2. 2. Interreligious, interideological dialogue must be a two-sided project—within each religious or ideological community and between religious or ideological communities.

3. 3. Each participant must come to the dialogue with complete honesty and sincerity.

4. 4. In interreligious, interideological dialogue we must not compare our ideals with our partner’s practice.

5. 5. Each participant must define [her or] himself.

6. 6. Each participant must come to the dialogue with no hard-and-fast assumptions as to where the points of disagreement are.

7. 7. Dialogue can take place only between equals.

8. 8. Dialogue can take place only on the basis of mutual trust.

9. 9. Persons entering into interreligious, interideological dialogue must be at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their own religious or ideological traditions.

10. 10. Each participant eventually must attempt to experience the partner’s religion or ideology “from within.”¹

Swidler has also worked with Hans Küng to shape the important document, A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which was signed by 200 world religious leaders at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions. The aim of this document is to lead people of all faiths to see that there is a common ethical core in all religious traditions, including humanism, and that this realization would encourage them to participate in genuine interfaith dialogue.²

Küng has become well known for constantly stressing that there can be “no peace among the nations without peace among the religions” and “no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.”³ What stands out for me in the work of Swidler and Küng is their stress on the equality and dignity of every human being. Swidler’s dialogue statement and Küng’s global ethic statement are in perfect accord with a statement by Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great Jewish pioneers of interfaith dialogue, that “many things on earth are precious, some are holy, humanity is holy of holies.”⁴ For Heschel the fundamental statement about human beings, according to the Jewish tradition, is that human beings are created in the image of God. From this perspective it is clear to me that the real aim of dialogue is to develop friendship and love and that, in the Abrahamic faiths, love of God must manifest itself in love for all human beings.

Leviticus 19:33–34 tells us to “love the stranger as yourself.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Britain, pointed out that in the Hebrew Bible only “one verse commands, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself,’ but in no fewer than in 36 places commands us to ‘love the stranger.’”⁵ The aim of interfaith dialogue is to make this command a reality. My claim that the ultimate aim of interfaith dialogue is love for the stranger is fully in accord with the religious traditions I have studied.

Although Swidler has written extensively on both the Abrahamic religious traditions and the religions of Asia, especially Buddhism, I will deal primarily with the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They are called the “Abrahamic faiths” because Abraham is seen as the ancestor of these traditions and as...