The Inescapable Role
From the Covalence Archives
by David M. Foxe
We are in a world confronted by the furiousness of religion in many forms and places. In a 2004 lecture at Clare College, Cambridge University (UK), Dr. Duncan Forrester posited that for every intellectual, moderate, thoughtful person in an interfaith discussion there are dozens with an uninhibited, unquestioning intensity towards extremist ideas. Yet people with these beliefs are not extremists in all regards and often appear quite normative, normal and ordinary; they are potentially our neighbors and co-workers and friends.
Yet rather than these interactions and thoughtful discussions emphasizing how aspects of everyday circumstances are distant from places that are “real’’ battlegrounds of cultural and religious difference, the proximity of people and locations is not of small importance. I believe that the question of place is quite central. It is the ways people interact on a personal level, through work, friendship and community camaraderie, that many people identify the healthy relationships that build humility and dialogue between people with varying religious backgrounds. Whether these relationships have been built through formal dialogue with Hindu students from India in interfaith meetings, or through casual conversation with Palestinian colleagues and co-workers, all of these could not be separated from actual places – places of dwelling, working, coexisting. The barrier walls in Israel and other such interventions have many goals but they attempt to thwart the closeness of places through human artifice. Moreover, all of these issues of violence and fury seem to have such distance because they are not part of our insulated places in academia, in the West generally. Furthermore, the chivalrous practice of warfare between combatants at a place is fundamentally different from bombing with an aerial distance of thousands of meters, without any connection to the place of attack identifiable in past wars and battles.
What a difficult and yet simple lesson, that place does still matter. After all of the technical innovations of email and connections to the worldwide web that make communication, the exchange of ideas and opinions, the coordination of academic research and meetings, and so much more possible, the real places still matter. We still have our most gripping moments when we interact in shared places or when we open ourselves to interaction in our own private spaces. For as much as we can seem to share with people different from ourselves in a structured religious debate or constructed setting for dialogue, it is through everyday places and interactions that one accumulates the background of experiences that build comfort into the ability to share deeper issues of ideology and belief.
For a decade pundits and technological enthusiasts have wondered if all of the virtual presences would eclipse the significance of real places and their symbolism or meaning, but over the past five years we have seen physical places of symbolic value attacked with vigor. From towering skyscrapers to palaces, mosques, and statues of military leaders, the real places still matter and are where the devastation of the fury, religious or otherwise, is manifested. As Westerners we are conditioned to see the places of such fury as elsewhere, in distant lands. As long as those places of devastation retain that mental distance, the distance of exoticism and foreign customs and unfamiliar people, all of the intentions of well-meaning reflective dialogue are difficult to achieve. And while all of the technologies of the world cannot replace the power of real presence in human interaction, in the reciprocal situation they have made the distance evaporate to the point that “close to home” is not too far away to feel the fury and violence. The world has shrunk yet the localities remain. Whether the journey is personal or vicarious through those we interact with, it takes some form of immediate personal interaction in a community, rooted in a place rather than in a decentralized or placeless belief structure. The immediacy of place makes all of the universalities of faith become specific and particular in dialogue. We call shared ideological values “common ground” with good reason.
Considering its diversity of locations and traditions, it remains significant how rooted Christianity is in place and community. Jesus speaks of situations when and where “two or three are gathered,” not just when two or three happen to know that they share a belief structure. Jesus did not proceed directly from heaven to a revelatory role, announcing to the entire earth as with a giant megaphone. He chose to grow up in a particular place, with a trade and with a family, within a culture and a time from which he drew elements to illustrate the values and love he came to share. And that part of our response to receiving that love is to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Jesus starts with an interaction rooted in a place, a neighborhood, a community,. choosing language which emphasizes close proximity and particularity rather than abstract notions of first loving “everyone imaginable everywhere,” though this is eventually what being a neighbor implies as it extends further and further from one neighbor to the next.
Each of the three major monotheistic religions shares a commitment to the significance of place, but articulates it in vastly different ways. Throughout their history, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have partaken in the encouragement – even the imperative – to visit holy sites and lands which now overlap, ancient sites of pilgrimage and reverence, places with vast accumulations of traditions. But perhaps one route towards humility and reconciliation is to recognize the inescapability of place. For as much as we might like to use our intellect and our geography to impose or assert distance, we have to share places together. This is true at a global scale but it is increasingly apparent at the scale of cities and neighborhoods.
We cannot escape our places, we cannot build infinite walls to keep the world out or to keep ourselves in, and no place is really too far away to lose relevance. We can only work to make our places link us with our ever-widening circle of neighbors in creative, caring ways rather than tear us apart from each other in a fury of destruction.
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Portions of this writing are reflections after an evening discussion on “Furious Religion” with
Duncan Forrester and members of Clare College Chapel, Cambridge University, on 23 February 2004. More information on Duncan Forrester’s new book Apocalypse Now? (2005) can be found at https://www.ashgate.com/shopping/title.asp?key1=&key2=&orig=results&isbn=0%207546%205273%204
David M. Foxe is a Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) candidate at MIT. He studied and was a chapel pianist at Clare College while a Marshall Scholar, earning a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) degree in the History and Philosophy of Architecture at Cambridge University. He previously graduated with undergraduate degrees in architecture and music from MIT, where he served as chapel pianist and student president of the Lutheran-Episcopal Ministry.