Online Inter-faith Dialogue Platform

This Research in the Wild project will lead to the development of an online platform for a well-established form of inter-faith dialogue, with proven transformational potential for a secular and religiously plural global society.In a world that is a complex mix of secularity and multiple religions, questions arise about how members of religious communities can participate fully in public debate. One dominant answer to those questions says that public argument is only possible to the extent that religious participants keep private their commitment to particular traditions of religious thought and practice. However, other answers are possible - answers that focus upon the practices of reasoning internal to each religious traditions, and upon the patterns of shared reasoning that are possible when those differing practices are brought into interaction.One prominent example of work that explores this possibility has been the development of a practice of inter-faith discussion called 'Scriptural Reasoning' (SR). In SR members of different religious traditions meet in small groups to discuss extracts from their sacred or authoritative texts together. In the process, a member of one tradition learns to explain to those who do not share her tradition the reading and reasoning practices by which her judgments (including judgments about public issues) are shaped. She also learns to respond to questions about those practices, to understand the different reading and reasoning practices by which the judgments of other participants are shaped, and to experiment as a reader of the other participants' texts. The normal outcome of the process is not consensus but a deeper understanding of the roots of others' judgments, an understanding of the kinds of flexibility and responsiveness built in to one's own tradition and the traditions of others, and an understanding of the kinds of arguments that might make sense to those whose authorities and traditions of reasoning differ from one's own. This practice of inter-faith reasoning therefore deepens understanding both within and between traditions, and enables the development of practices of reasoned debate across traditions.Existing face-to-face implementations of the SR model amongst scholars, religious leaders, students, school children, civic leaders and ordinary citizens have proved encouraging, and have demonstrated that this is a practice with a potential for transformational impact in a society where religious commitment and commitment to shared public discourse are often assumed to be opposed. Face-to-face implementation is, however, unavoidably limited: gathering multi-faith groups for discussion is expensive; numbers are limited; geographical constrains mean that participants tend to be from similar cultural backgrounds; and the mono-lingual nature of the discussions both reduces the range of possible participants, and presents particular constraints for some Muslim participants for whom reliance on as-yet-untranslated Arabic textual authorities and traditions of reasoning is essential.To ensure that the potential transformational impact of SR is realised, these limitations need to be overcome. This project offers an innovative way to do so by taking SR practice onto the web and across languages. We will build on an existing online inter-faith platform (developed by the Cambridge Inter-faith Program and the non-profit technology company Meedan) which includes a facility for machine-assisted human translation of content and discussions between Arabic and English. By means of extensive user testing with a variety of non-academic user groups drawn from Christian and Islamic communities in the UK and the Middle East, we will tailor this platform for specific use in Christian-Muslim SR, extending SR across geographical and linguistic barriers in the process.

This project is directed towards improving social cohesion, and enhancing cultural enrichment. The project will primarily benefit members of Christian and Islamic religious communities, in the UK and in the Middle East, with an interest in inter-faith relations, including religious leaders and those training for positions of religious leadership. This will include some members and leaders of religious communities who are concerned about inter-faith relations, but who are suspicious of those existing modes of inter-faith engagement that appear to require some degree of watering down of commitment to one's own religious community, or that appear to brush real differences under the carpet for the sake of a focus on what is shared. This Research in the Wild project will enable such people to participate in a carefully designed process of inter-faith discussion with a proven capacity to increase inter-faith understanding, and allow inter-faith argument, without requiring the compromising of deeply held religious commitments. The online implementation will deepen this impact by allowing this inter-faith encounter to take place across geographical and linguistic barriers. The simple fact of being able to enter into discussion with members of another faith community (rather than relying on stereotypes and hearsay) can itself have a transformative impact, and promote social cohesion. But the SR method enhances that impact by (a) ensuring that the engagement includes detailed and sensitive engagement with the central scriptural resources of the differing traditions, and so promotes understandings of the deep patterns of commitment and reasoning that shape each participant's community; and by (b) ensuring that participants discover that real discussion between them is possible, even when they are beholden to very different authorities and traditions of religious reasoning. As the Pathways to Impact document and accompanying Statements of Support set out in detail, we intend to draw on a wide range of different Christian and Islamic communities to provide the test users for this project, and to build interest amongst those communities so that the mature platform can be deployed widely once the project is finished. The potential impact of this project is not, however, limited to the people from these various religious communities who actually become users. We expect a wider impact upon the communities themselves, generated by the presence in them of increased numbers of individuals who have had this experience of inter-faith encounter, and who have been brought at least briefly into friendly relation with members of other faiths, and who can therefore go some way to countering stereotypes and misapprehensions about other faiths that circulate in their communities. We also hope for an even wider impact upon the religiously plural societies within which these religious communities sit, by chipping away at the inter-religious misunderstandings and antagonisms that generate tensions on local, national and global scales.