Joseph Paillé: Why I am committed to building relationships with those from different religious and ethical traditions

By Joseph Paillé

Dialogsenteret Emmaus sits near across the street from an urban park in Oslo’s hip Grünerløkka neighborhood. It was the first center dedicated to inter-religious dialogue in Oslo, a city deeply changed by immigration since the 1960’s. Because of Norway’s generous welfare programs and a civic religion that leans towards secular Lutheranism, many conflicts about immigration and the welfare state take the form of religious conflict. When Dialogsenteret Emmaus held its first meetings in 1991, there was no talking, only silence. But this silence was by design, a belief that before there could be any engagement with the “other,” people needed to have a common experience. In this case, that shared experience was silent meditation. Dialogsenteret Emmaus’s approach to inter-religious dialogue succeeded because it recognized that we all value shared experience as a sign of trustworthiness. Before there can be meaningful engagement, there needs to be a foundation for it to be built upon.

We are now living in communities that look drastically different than they did a few decades or even years ago. On my way to the farmers’ market in my adopted home of Minneapolis, I pass by predominantly Hispanic, Somali, and Native American neighborhoods. Every day we live side-by-side with people who budget pay checks the way we do, worry about their kids’ future the way we do, and put on their best clothes for a job interview the way we do. But we are often blind to our commonality because we cannot see past our different languages, clothing, and scriptures. And unless we can see those commonalities, our relationships will remain skeptical and our engagement will stay tangential.