When encounters between religious worldviews are a threat: Applying Triune Ethics Theory in a religiously diverse landscape

Abstract

Democratic societies today face increasing diversity, including religious diversity, and are finding that interfaith engagement possesses potential to bring out the worst and the best of human responses and, correlatively, that such engagement can either assist in or undermine the social cohesion of these societies. This article employs Triune Ethics Theory (TET) and Australian Values Education data in order to appraise the impact of interfaith engagement on human behaviour. TET’s notion of imaginative mindsets is utilised to show that interfaith engagement can impel either vicious or communally-orientated imagination, leading in turn to very different results, towards undermining or fostering social cohesion. Observational data drawn from the Australian Values Education Program (AVEP) relating to a situation of interreligious conflict is utilised to show that, even in those sites with a recorded history of ‘vicious imagination’, carefully planned pedagogical interventions to facilitate interfaith engagement can produce positive results that accord with social cohesion.

Keywords:

• triune ethics theory
• multiculturalism
• values education
• moral education
• religious diversity
• interreligious dialogue

Notes

1. There has been an interesting critical discussion between Narvaez and Haidt regarding the adequacy of the former’s moral psychology (Haidt, 2010; Narvaez, 2010b) and one can look to Lewis’ (2010) article for an overall evaluation of her work.