The path to pluralism requires humility. I learned this the old fashioned way: by failing. 

I’m Catholic and my interfaith journey started at a Jewish organization. Amongst other responsibilities, I managed their social media accounts. One day I saw that one of the other people with access to the account posted a memorial post for a community member who had recently passed. Their post included the following: “z’ll.” Assuming someone left a typo, I removed the letters. They made no sense — and that felt disrespectful on a memorial post. 

I later learned that the letters I deleted were a Hebrew honorific for the deceased and not a typo. For context, according to My Jewish Learning, “z”l stands for zikhrono/zikhronah livrakha, meaning ‘May his/her memory be a blessing’ and zt”l stands for zekher tzadik livrakhah, [meaning] ‘May the memory of this righteous one be a blessing.’” 

Entrusted to speak on behalf of a Jewish organization, I unwittingly made the post less-Jewish.

The other person on the social media account was Jewish and they communicated from a place of familiarity by using an honorific meant to comfort and mourn with their co-religionists. I erased this.

The incident bothered me for quite some time and I couldn’t pinpoint why. Not until I shared the story as part of an Interfaith Photovoice workshop. 

A young woman, who herself was Jewish, pointed out to me that perhaps what bothered me was that through my social media responsibilities, I was speaking on behalf of a group I did not strictly belong to — and that my mistake bothered me because I perceived a disconnect. I believed I shouldn’t speak for others but my job, quite reasonably, required it — and this little text deletion amplified the dissonance. I think she was right. 

One of the guiding principles in the work of Interfaith Photovoice is that in our dialogues, we don’t speak for others or ask participants to speak on behalf of others. In one sense, this means I’m a Catholic from the Midwest but I do not speak on behalf of all Catholics nor all Midwesterners. I have profoundly valuable experiences worth sharing as a Christian and from my Christianity, but I can never speak for all Christians. We ask that participants in interfaith settings try their best to speak from a position that centers their own experiences without using those experiences to represent the incredibly diverse groups they belong to. At the same time, I don’t want to ask my friend Micah to speak on behalf of Jews or my friend Sanjeev to speak on behalf of all Hindus. 

The historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith famously said, “There is no data for religion.” He meant to critique his fellow academics for where they draw lines on what’s considered religious or cultural and what isn’t. But it’s also somewhat related to our discussion here in that it elevates the personal experiences of individuals that self-identify with a religious tradition. For example, religions don’t talk, so it would never be helpful to say “Islam says X” or “Christianity says Y.” In almost every case, one will be able to find sub-traditions or individuals within religious traditions who do not believe X or Y and yet still identify as Muslim or Christian. And we should honor how they identify. Instead, it’s better to point to the sources within a tradition or to speak from one’s own beliefs and understandings as a member of that religion. 

What does all of this have to do with that ill-fated Facebook post? We can never speak on behalf of an entire tradition that we belong to, let alone one that we do not. I knew this. I have a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies. But experiencing the consequences of its shortfall highlighted the importance of letting the voices of practitioners speak for themselves and their own experiences within a religious tradition. 

Instead of defaulting to one’s own perspective, we can amplify, nourish, and give space to the perspectives and voices of others. And that sort of exposure to difference is at the heart of Interfaith Photovoice. By learning more about each other and one another’s values, the potential for incidents like this will slowly be diminished. At the very least, it will make sure we have the resources and potential necessary for correction and learning from our mistakes. 

Pluralism, after all, requires humility.