Interreligious Diplomacy: Trustworthy Opponents Engaging in Respectful Contestation Yield Peaceful Tension

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Charles Randall Paul

Abstract

Political, commercial and legal forms of non-violent conflict resolution have historically assumed that opponents’ similar desires to avoid painful conflict will bring them to reasonable compromises. However, this assumption of “win-win” diplomatic compromise cannot readily be applied to conflicts over unchanging religious order or truth. For those with cultural or religious fundamental disagreements, this article suggests that, it would be prudent to grant each other the benefit of the doubt with respect to motives and intelligence, by assuming the other to be a trustworthy opponent desiring to help—not a vicious enemy bent on destruction. The way of mutual engagement over religious truth would entail persuasive, transparent diplomacy with the frank purpose of influencing conversion of, not compromise with, the other. The author defines this interaction to be interreligious diplomacy: the sincere sharing of witness and experience and reasoned belief based on the recognition that religious opponents often do not desire to end tensions over differences, but to engage in a respectful persuasion contest over the truth.

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