Religious dialogue is never easy.
Agreement evaporates, even among the closest partners in theology and culture, as the failure of the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat last summer proved.
Talks stumble, even when the desire is strong and the timing auspicious, as the recent chill in Orthodox-Catholic relations shows.
So what hope do religious leaders in hopelessly embattled Bosnia-Herzegovina have for their newly launched talks?
“I don’t think religious leaders are magicians,” said Mustafa Ceric, a former leader in the Muslim community of Chicago who has become the 13th Reisu-l-ulema, or religious leader of Muslims in Bosnia.
In the 1980s, Ceric earned his Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of Chicago. For four years he was also the imam at the Islamic Cultural Center in Northbrook, one of the area’s oldest mosques and an important gathering place for Bosnian Muslims in the United States.
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He returned to Bosnia several years ago. Last year he was elected Reisu-l-ulema, a title created during the Ottoman Empire that has since evolved into the combined role of scholar, spiritual leader and informal adviser to secular Muslim political leaders in Bosnia.
Recently, Ceric joined with his counterparts from the Orthodox Church, which serves ethnic Serbs, and the Roman Catholic Church, which is home to ethnic Croats, in launching a new dialogue about the future of their country.
Clearly, the three ethnic factions that have been warring in Bosnia are currently and historically linked to these three faiths.
But during a visit to Chicago last week, Ceric said it is not a religious fight. Indeed, for many Bosnians, religious affiliation has become an important part of their identity only as the conflict forced them onto one side or another.
There is no guarantee, Ceric knows, that if Bosnia’s religious leaders can somehow build bridges among themselves, they will be able to lead their followers any closer together.
But Ceric has adopted the goals of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican leader of South Africa who helped that country avert its own seemingly inevitable disaster.
Tutu called for truth first, about the historic sins of his white and black countrymen, then reconciliation. Ceric has added justice–whether through war crimes tribunals or other means–in mapping his vision for an end to Bosnian bloodshed.
What about forgiveness? In his visit to Sarajevo last spring, Pope John Paul II called forgiveness the key to ending the suffering.
Ceric said that in Islam, forgiveness is first and foremost a gift from God. If a person chooses to forgive another person for wrongdoing, the forgiver is blessed. But such man-to-man forgiveness is not a religious commandment, and Ceric warns that in Bosnia, it carries both practical and moral dangers.
“If somebody knows that his crimes will be forgiven, he will do it again and again,” he said.
Moreover, he said, forgiveness cannot mean forgetting. And perhaps the slaughters that have soaked the countryside in blood are not his to forgive at all, he suggested.
If that sounds like a hard-edged approach to reconciliation, so be it.
“I’m not saying we are going to love each other,” Ceric said. “Love is an emotional thing. I think reconciliation should be rational.”
Perhaps that distinction helps explain how Ceric can proceed with talks that look, from the outside, so utterly empty of promise.
For if hope is a sunny, warm feeling, an emotional inkling that things are going to get better, then Bosnia offers more than enough horror to quench it completely.
But if hope is something more fundamental, a belief that springs from heart and mind, looking well beyond what the eye can see, then what choice do Ceric and his counterparts in faith have but to set their jaws and forge ahead?
Old-timers: One hundred and fifty years may not sound like much among the ancient religions of the world, but it is worth noting that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod found its way to Chicago long before most faiths of antiquity.
More than 400 people from a dozen congregations gathered Sunday at the Jefferson Park Lutheran Church to celebrate the denomination’s sesquicentennial with hymns and prayer. Born in Chicago in 1847, the LCMS has grown to about 2.4 million members nationwide.
Meanwhile, the Chicagoland Lutheran Educational Foundation dines Friday night on the knowledge that Lutheran schools–the city’s third-largest system with 37 schools–have operated continuously for 140 years, beginning with the 1857 founding of the institution that became St. James Lutheran Elementary School in Lincoln Park.
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