Living—and Learning—across Deep Difference

Before I met Matthew, I understood that some differences were deep, in the sense that they weren’t based on mere differences of interpretation but rather on fundamentally divergent ways of perceiving the world. Like many Americans, however, I tended to think that there was enough in the American story that unified us. We wouldn’t find ourselves tearing apart, since there was still much that held us together. There was a shared history and a shared pride. Most of all, there was a belief in the American idea—akin, as some would have it, to a “civil religion.” 

I was wrong. And so the question of how to live with deep difference became more urgent right here at home. I started to wonder if the Middle East’s convulsions over Islam had presaged a universal condition—that, across even the most advanced democracies, the nature of politics would enter onto an existential plane. Where elections were once about rotating power between opponents, now the very future of the republic hung in the balance every four years (or even two). 

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When conservatives and liberals fight over politics, it can be easy to hunch your shoulders in consternation and lament the unreasonableness of either side, or both. What is less easy to appreciate is that, often, these fights are based on foundational divides that can’t necessarily be bridged through rational deliberation. On issues that are felt existentially, there may not in fact be a middle ground. It is one thing to split the middle on economic issues, which are tangible and measurable, but how do you split the middle of matters of faith and conviction—or when compromising politically might mean compromising your own relationship to God? 

In such contexts, political divides are no longer merely political; they might as well be theological. Even if they have nothing to do with religion, they feel religious. But this almost gives religion a bad name, implying that religious passions are precisely the ones that are beyond reason. As some have argued, an attack on religion can constitute an attack on the “inner soul" (see endnote 1) of believers. Similarly, political scientist Nathan Brown notes that “religious differences can be politically frightening because they seem so deep and so unfriendly to discussion and compromise….Behind this nervousness about religion is a worry that ultimate truths are not open to argument, that religion breeds absolute thinking and even intolerance" (see endnote 2).

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Indeed, religious divides can seem like this, absolute and intractable. Centuries ago, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau captured the sense of salvific irreconcilability when he said that it was “impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned” (see endnote 3). This sounds logical and intuitive enough, but is it right? When you consider it more carefully, the link between believing people damned and fighting or subjugating them because of their theological error is unclear at best. There is no religion that I’m familiar with that expects everyone to be a particular religion. This would undermine the diversity and plurality that God made possible through the vastness and mystery of his creation. It would also render the question of salvation irrelevant. If everyone knew God’s truth, then there would be no cause for either reward or punishment. If everyone had concluded that the Truth was true, then there would be no room for error or falsity—and without the possibility of error, the truth would have nothing against which to make itself apparent.

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For all their very real differences, both Christianity and Islam allow for the space and freedom to choose between competing conceptions of the good—that to be human is to use your intellectual faculties to search for what is true and to reach different conclusions accordingly. Without some semblance of free will, the structure of divine accountability collapses. If humans are not free to decide, then it would contravene logic to say they should be punished or rewarded for something they had no control over in the first place. Virtue only becomes virtuous if you choose it over the wages of temptation and sin.

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Of course, these questions—and their answers—are speculative and debatable, and readers may disagree with aspects of my own assessment. After all, you could argue that God is not “rational” in the sense I have described above and that he can punish whomever he so chooses even if it contravenes what we mere mortals call “logic.” We can, however, approach Rousseau’s claim from a different and perhaps more fruitful angle. As a matter of historical record, we know that those for whom the adherents of other faiths are damned have lived in peace throughout history. Clearly, this is possible, as it was, for example, during the Abbasid Era in the Arab world or in Andalusia before the arrival of Ferdinand and Isabella. Not only was it possible, but, in many ways, it was more the norm than the exception. In their conservative and orthodox forms, adherents of both Christianity and Islam have tended to view those of other faiths as, if not damned outright, then at least less likely to be granted salvation. Before the modern era, exclusivist positions on salvation were not at all controversial. It was orthodoxy. But this orthodoxy, on its own, did not inexorably lead to religious suppression or violence. 

Rather than something to dodge out of a desire to avoid unpleasantness, I think it is better to think of Rousseau’s warning as a kind of unlikely invitation. The question of damnation is a test—and a clarifying one—of how we can live and learn across even the deepest of differences. Presumably, there are few things more ultimate than eternity itself. What could be deeper than that?

The Strange Question of Religious Conversion

There is a story I often tell Christian and Muslim audiences. As mentioned earlier, my book Islamic Exceptionalism was my attempt to come to terms with Islam’s inherent difference, a difference that seemed to me most stark relative to Christianity. I highlighted Islam’s distinctive attributes—its resistance to secularization, its outsized role in public life, and its provision of a legal order—as features rather than bugs. Muslims, themselves, took pride and pleasure in the fact that their religion offered up a contrast. To my pleasant surprise, Christians also by and large appreciated this point, since they took pride and pleasure in their distinctiveness relative to Islam, including Christianity’s emphasis on grace over law. (In Galatians 3:13, Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” This was something that both Muslims and Christians could appreciate, but for nearly opposite reasons.) Because of these interventions into the fraught world of comparative theology, various evangelical groups wanted to hear what I had to say. Soon enough, I found myself speaking to a massive conference hall of around 1,800 evangelicals in Nashville as part of a conference hosted by Q Ideas. I was, as far as I could tell, the only Muslim there, which was somewhat intimidating.

After I had spoken on a smaller panel, an older man approached me and asked if he could shake my hand. I said, yes, of course. He then said that this was the first time in his over eighty years on this earth that he had shaken hands with a Muslim. I was amazed, and I was grateful. I smiled and thanked him. I must have been beaming just a bit too much, because he quickly cautioned me. I appreciate what you had to say, he told me, but that doesn’t mean I think you can be saved without Christ. His meaning, however gingerly put, was clear enough: I would most likely face eternal damnation if I failed to convert. I remember feeling a tinge of irritation and even offense. For whatever reason, though, I made a decision in the moment to push my frustration to the side and reply with the same openness that he had extended me. What ensued was an illuminating conversation, running the gamut from our respective theologies to my familial background and where I had grown up. It may sound odd, but there was something liberating about the encounter. He had his views, and I had mine. And that was fine.

On a personal level, each of us probably has examples of familial relationships and friendships that illustrate the point even more powerfully. One of those friendships is my own with Matthew Kaemingk. In one of our Christian-Muslim dialogues before a predominantly evangelical audience at Wheaton College, a student asked how I felt about the fact that many evangelicals—including Matthew—want me to know Christ, embrace him as my savior, and anchor my life in his grace. I had no particular interest in converting Matthew to Islam, so I couldn’t entirely relate to the impulse. I was a bit stumped about how to appropriately respond, since I was well aware of the imbalance in my and Matthew’s perspectives. He was a small-e evangelical, and I wasn’t. 

Frankly, I was uncomfortable with the idea that a dear friend, someone who knows me far better than the old man in Nashville, might wish for me to replace one set of foundational beliefs with another—to, in effect, become something other than what I am. Even if I’m still not entirely comfortable with it, I understand it better now. But to understand, I had to suppress my own skepticism and open myself up to a different way of thinking. Matthew helped me. He joked that he was disappointed that I didn’t want to convert him to Islam: after all, if I believed Islam was true, why wouldn’t I want to share that truth with someone I cared about? I remember laughing at this. The disarming nature of humor aside, I had to concede that it was a good point. Regardless, my friendship with Matthew was premised on trying our best to understand each other. And if this is what Matthew believes, then I couldn’t expect him to suppress his own conviction and commitment as an evangelical who, by definition, has an interest in evangelizing.

Two Ways to Deal with Deep Difference

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I think the lesson here is broader and much more consequential than what any individual relationship or conversation might suggest. There are two basic ways to deal with the fact of deep difference, a fact that can’t be undone in heterogeneous societies like our own, where diversity and plurality are baked into the fabric of everyday life. We might wish it were otherwise—because homogeneity seems easier—but that option is simply not available to us.

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The first option, and the one that reflects the prevailing liberal consensus, is to constrain, limit, or otherwise privatize seemingly irreconcilable religious claims. Across Western democracies, this was the road well-traveled. To varying degrees, secular-liberal governments sought to empty public space of God. While secularism is often defined in institutional terms as the separation of church and state, secularism, in ideological terms, offers the more sweeping possibility of a life lived without the presence of God in our everyday social, political, and economic interactions. 

The second option is to come to terms with religion’s role in public life, by letting it unspool without artificial restraints and by creating space for believers to express the fullest articulation of their religious conviction. This latter option, as my dialogues with Matthew have underscored time and time again, is preferable for any number of reasons. Sameness is not the same as goodness, and difference isn’t something to be papered over or transcended. Americans often emphasize consensus and unity, as if foundational disagreements are, themselves, a threat to social peace. But what if it was the other way around—that, in asking Americans to compartmentalize their beliefs, our ability to learn and live across difference slowly atrophies? These are skills, talents, and habits that must be nurtured.