Orthodox Perspectives on Globalization: The Imperative of Interfaith Dialogue

This paper represents an Orthodox Christian perspective on globalization and also claims that interfaith dialogue is a missionary imperative. Globalization, the fundamental trait of our time, requires a rising to the opportunity offered by the ever larger and increasingly dense network of interconnections and interdependences of the social life—a new view of the world, of man, of life and faith. In other words, between globalization—perceived as a socially determined substrate for post–modernity—and the manifest subjectivity of the religious beliefs and practices (by means of a spiritual superstructure), an inseparable two–way relationship will be generated, which may prove stimulating for the interaction of ideas, religious beliefs and practices that, inevitably, will integrate into the multitude of connections feeding the ever more open character of the society. This paper attempts to answer several general questions on the relationship between globalization and dialogue. Therefore, under the circumstances, what particular trait of globalization may come to (re)define and (re)calibrate the dialogue among the great religions of the world? In other words, why does globalization—which reduces the contemporary man to the temporal flow of production and consumption—make a dialogue inevitable and socially necessary? And why such dialogue meets the significant challenges brought about by the global interconnection?