The Dignity of Difference: How to avoid the clash of civilizations
Jonathan Sacks, Continuum, 2nd Edition, London, 2003.
Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom since 1991. He is a well-known philosopher and theologian, writer and broadcaster.
In The Dignity of Difference Sacks reflects on the issue of the rapidly changing world, on globalisation and its impact. He argues that the economics and politics of globalisation have an inescapable moral dimension and that therefore great responsibility now lies with the world’s religious communities. Sacks goes further in that he argues that difference, and in particular religious difference, is God-given. It is God who created and honours the diversity.
The great faiths have, over the centuries, been compasses for humankind. Religion has always been one of the great answers to the question of identity. “Who am I?” “Who are “we”?” “Who are “they”, and how do “we” relate to “them”?” The danger, to quote Jonathan Swift, is that “we have just enough religion to make us hate each other, but not enough to make us love one another”.
Sacks sees the free market as being “the best means we have yet discovered for alleviating poverty and creating a human environment of independence, dignity and creativity”. But the market, is, of itself, neutral, without moral direction. The great challenges for the world’s religious communities are to ensure that within the global context, human dignity is maximised, not compromised, and that our fragile earth is valued and protected.
Much therefore rests on how the various religions view their roles in today’s world and how they view each other. We live in a world which now seems very small. It is not, however, a single machine but a complex interacting ecology in which the various religions play a significant role. To do this effectively, each religion needs to address its theology of commonality - how it perceives the issue of human dignity for all people - and its theology of difference - that which gives it its own uniqueness and identity.
From his own religious tradition - Judaism - Sacks does just that. As a Christian, I find it particularly helpful and refreshing to watch “from the outside” as a great religious thinker ponders these issues drawing on the Hebrew scriptures and the traditions of his faith to find direction.
The challenge he issues, based above all on the history of conflict and oppression between religious factions, is conciliation, forgiveness. “I honour the past” he says “Not by repeating it but by learning from it.. we must answer hatred with love, violence with peace, resentment with generosity of spirit and conflict with reconciliation.”
Reviewed by Heather Griffin
October 2009