Emeritus Professor Robert Crotty, Director: ECSA, has been invited to take up the position of Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University. He will leave towards the end of September 2009 and return in early November. Robert has been involved for some time in a research project with Professor Terence Lovat, PVC Humanities and Education at the University of Newcastle (who has also been Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre on two occasions), and hopes to finalise the project while at Oxford. Their research interest has focussed on religious tolerance and particularly examining the possibility of tolerance between the three ‘Abrahamic religions’ (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

For many years Robert’s research interests have been in the development of the religious cultures and writings of both Judaism and Christianity; Professor Lovat has worked in the area of Islam. Their project has been entitled: Recreating Convivencia: Pluralism in the three Abrahamic Religions. What follows is a synopsis as to where the project is leading.

The two researchers maintain, controversially, that religious traditions are options. However, these options tend towards absolutism and there are dangerous sleepers in all religions that can be activated in order to make exclusive claims. The three Abrahamic religions are options of a common type and they each have these sleepers. The three religions are not built on historical absolutes; they are built on variant sacred stories that relate a religious tradition. The Abraham (Ibrahim in the Qur’an)/Isaac/Ishma’il story, as found in the sacred writings of the three religions, has been rightly identified as being a key factor in the religious tradition of the three religions. Hence their identification as the ‘Abrahamic Religions’.

However, this story of Abraham, Isaac and Ishma’il is told in a different form in the three traditions. In Judaism, it began as a foundation story which developed into a myth of martyrdom. Isaac became the symbol of the true Israelite. In Christianity, Isaac became the prototype of Jesus in his sacrificial mode. In Islam, Ibrahim was named as the Friend of God because he was the first of the prophets to apprehend the monotheism of Allah. He and Ishma’il established the foundation shrine of Allah at Mecca.

The research intends to discover in what way the various forms of this sacred story are connected with the relevant religious tradition. The three versions are not accepted prima facie as historical texts. They are treated as sacred stories more akin to poetry and drama than history.

One of the other facets of this research has been reference to Medieval Spanish history. This history shows that, prior to the Enlightenment, it was possible for Abrahamic religious communities to accept a non-historical approach to sacred story. People could live in harmony with the Other who had a different story. Some communities could adapt their own story to ensure co-existence (convivencia). This always required a delicate balance and the co-existence needed to be shored up by political and religious authority. There was an overarching umbrella that protected the religious groups and this umbrella was itself guaranteed by the political power.

Only when political forces wanted to break down any semblance of co-existence, was the sleeper (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) within the Christian tradition re-activated and the religious co-existence came to an end. But there were sleepers within the other two traditions –Islam and Judaism - also.

It should be possible once more to re-find from the historical record the principle of co-existence. The research will show that this would require the three religions, as a first and most important step, to eschew historical arguments and to return to an acknowledgement of the potency of sacred story. It would require the three religions to recognise the dangerous sleepers that each of them carry in their religio-cultural baggage and which they have, in modern times and in different guises, activated.

Only in this way will the first steps towards co-existence between the Abrahamic religions, it will be claimed, be realised in the twenty-first century.