The Human Side of Interfaith: A Special Role for Humanism

The Human Side of Interfaith

A special role for Humanism in Interfaith Dialogue
because it helps us attend to the Republic of Stories

along with clips from the documentary HUMAN
as resources for humanistic approaches.

Interfaith cooperation makes humanists of us all. Such cooperation is at its best when its participants are sensitive to identities and simultaneously aware that no person is reducible to identities. Listeners come to appreciate an individual as a whole person with a story of his or her own: a story in which many identities intersect but which is much more than all the identities added together. This, then, is a "humanistic" approach to interfaith cooperation. It focuses on the human story. Yan Arthus-Bertrand's documentary HUMAN, and more specifically many of the short clips made available to the public, can be helpful in fostering dialogue interfaith settings. This page includes further amplification of this possibility along with many clips from which to choose, two of which are sampled above. (JMcD)

The Human Side of Interfaith:
A person's story includes but is more than a collection of "identities"

Interfaith cooperation entails people listening to one another's stories in empathic ways. In some instances, as people tell their stories, the storytellers include reference to their identities (chosen or ascribed): religious, sexual, philosophical, racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, chronological (age). But as they tell their stories, I sense that their lives as lived from the inside are always more than their identities. This is the case even if they are strongly identified with a faith tradition. There is something "human" in their living of their lives, and telling their stories, that is missed if I am too preoccupied with identity as a category. I begin to wonder if the tradition of "humanism" might provide a helpful set of glasses by which I might be more mindful of the human side of interfaith. (JMcD)

The Republic of Stories

I am reminded of the perspective of Arlene Goldbard, who proposes that in our time we are in the midst of (or at least needful of) a shift in paradigms, such that we focus less on information and data and more on first-personal stories. (Arlene Goldbard, The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists, and the Future . In her words:

"We are in the midst of seismic cultural change. In the old paradigm, priorities are shaped by a mechanistic worldview that privileges whatever can be numbered, measured, and weighed; human beings are pressured to adapt to the terms set by their own creations. Macroeconomics, geopolitics, and capital are glorified. . . . In the new paradigm, culture is given its true value. The movements of money and armies may receive close attention from politicians and media voices, but at ground-level, we care most about human stories, one life at a time.”

A Special role for Humanism

If Goldbard is right, then perhaps humanism has a special role to play, not only in advocating praiseworthy values such as justice and mercy, respect for life and respect for the environment, but in reminding us of the human side of interfaith work: that is, the side of interfaith that keeps our ears attentive to the republic of stories.

A Resource for Dialogue: Yan Arthus-Bertrand's documentary HUMAN

"An epic document of the struggles and triumphs that unite us all, HUMAN takes viewers on a journey across the globe to uncover the essential truths about what it means to be human. Through a series of more than 2000 interviews conducted throughout 60 countries, director Yann Arthus-Bertrand successfully expresses the collective human experience in all its forms - from deeply personal and wounding stories of poverty, domestic abuse and anguish to tales of love, joy and the euphoria of being alive.

One such subject is love, a phenomenon which has driven and defined the human experience since the beginning of time. "Love is what fills the soul," claims one female subject of the film. "My husband has two wives," confesses another. You witness some subjects as they beam with tear-filled eyes at the love that fills their lives with meaning. Others offer that love must exist in concert with sex in order to thrive, while one elderly gentleman confesses that he gave up on his search to find a lover long ago, and has yet to take one even at his advanced age. Human sexuality is celebrated and explored in all its diversity, and acknowledged as an extension of our basic and universal need to connect. "It's not the gender of the person I love that defines me," one subject states profoundly. "It’s the quality of my loving that defines who I am." (from Top Documentary Films, retrieved April 9, 2018)

Using the Documentary HUMAN in an interfaith context

Yan Arthus-Bertrands’s HUMAN is both beautiful and, for many people, too much. There are so many images, so many short portraits, so many stories, it’s hard to know where to begin.

I offer this page as a resource for educators who want to (1) show the whole film, (2) show the movie in three segments, (3) show the version which consists only of images and music, and/or (4) use particular segments from the movies as found in the stories and portraits below.

As a college professor and leader in a local interfaith setting, I am choosing the fourth the option. More specifically I am focussing on stories and a some of the more substantial portraits that are particularly poignant:

I am sponsoring what I call a Humanistic Approach to Interfaith Dialogue. Humanism is one of the “faiths” we consider interfaith, including both atheistic humanism and theistic humanism, religiously affiliated humanism and religiously-unaffiliated humanism.

My aim in using HUMAN is not to present humanism as a worldview, but rather to focus on human life itself -- in its poignancy, complexity, diversity, and unity – as a springboard for discussions among people of different faiths and no faith.
This approach is akin to Interfaith Scriptural Explorations, except the “scriptures” are the individual stories, not texts. Participants in discussions need not leave their faith behind them; they bring their faith to the table of dialogue.

Each individual story and portrait brings its own questions which can be articulated by the group after viewing the story.

Choose three stories or portraits for a session, making sure the interviewees come from different settings.
Open the session with the Trailer below (2 minutes, thirty seconds) to remind discussants of the overall picture.
Watch the first story or portrait.
Let the person who is presenting himself or herself be the teacher.
Collectively imagine the “three important questions about being human" that the person might want you to consider and discuss, stemming from his or her own story.
Respond to the questions freely and openly as a gift to that person, bringing religious affiliation or non-affiliation into the discussion, but only if relevant.

Do the same with two more stories.