Quotidian hopes: Interfaith in Auckland as a movement for ‘good’

Abstract

Since the 20th Century, interfaith has emerged as a social movement dedicated to addressing religious diversity and the perception of religions as incompatible. Spectres of world disaster prompt popular understandings of religions as causing conflict and tension. Interfaith movements, such as those in Auckland, New Zealand, work with and against these normalised cultural understandings and attempt to re-shape them by promoting dialogue between faiths as well as secular society, and education about religious differences. Although their methods and aims differ, the desires and goals of interfaith groups coalesce around a wish to see religious goodness acknowledged and respected. I provide an ethnographic analysis of the Auckland interfaith movement, engaging literatures on interfaith and religious coexistence and conceptualising interreligious encounters through the lens of an anthropology of the good (Robbins 2013; Ortner 2016). I use Auckland interfaith as a case study to ask what interfaith is and what motivates it. What are people’s intentions with, and hopes and goals for, interfaith? What are its limits and hindrances? How do interfaith actors deal with discourses of religious incompatibility? Do interfaith actors embody “dispositional hope” (Hage 2003) and, if so, what are the social implications? Such questions generate two overlapping spheres of analysis: the contextual elements of Auckland interfaith, and the generalities and practicalities of interfaith itself. Using insight gained from eight months participant observation with interfaith groups, and interviews with leaders and lay members, I found that an ordinary exterior conceals interfaith’s extraordinary complexity. In attempting to reconceptualise their worlds, interfaith actors confront theological, ideological, and socio-political contradictions to form an organised movement of essential difference. The interfaith group identity often involves silencing potentially fragmentary differences to ensure the movement's sustainability. I argue that the social setting of Auckland as “not-yet” (Bloch 1976; Beck 2000) enmeshed in conflict creates an interfaith centred on pre-emptive peace-building, more than conflict resolution. Such pre-emption encourages a hopeful disposition that a peaceful future is attainable, through a potentially directable present. The persistence of interfaith actors despite numerous difficulties is demonstrative of the overall commitment to goodness, to which they aspire.