More on Managing Fear through Faith
In our last post, we reflected on the role of faith leaders in helping to manage public fears, bridge fear-based social divides, and promote a more constructive public conversation about responses to terrorism, including on the day after the next major terrorist attack. We drew on lessons learned from a conference that U.S. in the World co-hosted in late March, with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, MD, on Managing Fear Through Faith (a PowerPoint presentation based on the conference is available here). This conference was part of USITW’s multi-year initiative on Managing the Fear Factor, which is helping advocates of responsible global engagement address the unique communications challenges they face in fearful times.
That earlier post commented on some of the opportunities that the Abrahamic faith traditions seem to offer for encouraging the kind of “affiliative action” that counters fear and fear-based thinking. In this post, we focus on some of the obstacles that seem to be raised by those same religious traditions.
As one conference participant put it, each of the three faith traditions has both “tribal” and “covenantal” ways of promoting connections among its congregants. The covenantal strand of these traditions stresses the shared beliefs and principles that bind members of the group; some (though perhaps not all) of those principles resonate across different faith traditions. The tribal strand stresses historical and cultural similarities – and it can overtly or implicitly discourage relationships of mutual respect and trust with the followers of other religious traditions.
Within each tradition, there also seem to be strands of fear-based teaching, which could undermine efforts to promote reasonable, inclusive conversation in the aftermath of a fear-inducing event. And within each tradition, there tends to be a divide between left-leaning and secular sects (whose representatives participate more readily and frequently in interfaith dialogues) and right-leaning, orthodox sects. It has proved much more difficult to engage orthodox religious communities in interfaith activities – but their participation would seem to be essential, at some level, if faith leaders are to play a major role in countering fear’s negative impacts on public thinking, including the way in which fear heightens fidelity to ones own group and increases stereotyping and suspicion of other groups.
It seemed clear from the conference that (as others have said in other contexts) the divisions within faith traditions are likely to be as critical in shaping faith leaders’ responses to public fears as the divisions between faiths.
