From the editor’s desk

How best to speak the truth

Relations between Christians and Muslims have never been more sensitive nor crucial to the peace and prosperity of the planet. Both have their fundamentalists, to whom outright conversion of the other is the only acceptable goal. The mainstream in each case, meanwhile, finds dealing with its own fundamentalists almost as tricky as dealing with the other faith. The Church of England is to debate a motion at its summer synod suggesting that it should evangelise Muslims, on the basis that Christ is the unique Saviour. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, have almost simultaneously come forth with their own erudite analyses of these dilemmas, characteristically a Catholic and an Evangelical approach (though both of them far too nuanced to be called fundamentalist).

The Anglican bishop has been cited as a supporter of the synod motion. But in a long article in the new magazine Standpoint, he turns his main attention to the role Christianity has played in English history, and the many dangers to the social fabric that he identifies with the country's decline as a Christian nation. This weakens English society at a time when it finds itself confronted by militant Islam. This is far from the triumphalism some critics have seen as implicit in the synod motion. Indeed, its mover, an Anglican ordinand called Paul Eddy, seems merely to be asking that Christians be honest with Muslims about what they really believe, which Muslims, wanting to do likewise, would appreciate. These things are as much a matter of tone as of content, and of a prudential judgement about what is the right thing to say and when. "Prudential" certainly sums up the cardinal's approach.

Since the Second Vatican Council, the traditional Catholic teaching "no salvation outside the Church" has given way to respect and acceptance towards other faiths expressed in Nostra Aetate, which the cardinal quoted in his lecture in London this week: "The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men." This concedes rather more than an Anglican Evangelical would be comfortable with, for it provides the basis for seeking after truth in genuine dialogue with other faiths, Islam in particular, and means that each side has something to learn as well as to teach. Cardinal Tauran sees Nostra Aetate as based on the inclusive doctrine that Jesus is "the true light, which enlightens everyone" (John 1:9), whereas Evangelicals like Dr Nazir-Ali and Mr Eddy usually rely on another, more exclusive, Johannine text (14:6): "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Possibly in dialogue Bishop Nazir-Ali's ideas would converge with the views of Cardinal Tauran. But the strength of Cardinal Tauran's position is that it does not rest on nostalgia for a supposed golden age when England was a Christian country, but starts from the reality of a world where faiths can live side by side on the basis of equality of respect, without privileges. That makes it much easier to speak the truth.