In the summer of 1983 my life changed course completely – though I did not realise it at the time. I was 22 years old, studying Protestant theology at Marburg, and I came to the decision that I would live and study in a city which may evoke, for many, the dreams or memories of drugs, stolen car radios and unheard-of liberties: Amsterdam. I wished to live in the Netherlands for a year, acquaint myself with the people and the country, and return to Germany with, in particular, many new theological stimuli. I applied for and received a language bursary from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service), organised by the Dutch Ministry of Culture and Science. For eight hours a day I immersed myself in the Dutch language and culture together with other people from around the world. I could not have wished for a better integrative course. After a short while I was already able to speak fluent Dutch and felt at home in the tolerant and multicultural city of Amsterdam – ignoring the dents my car with its German number plate had to suffer on a regular basis. Two years later I decided not to return to Germany but to build my future in the Netherlands.

The “Integrated Other”

I thus became part of a history of German migrants, which constituted the largest “foreign” group in the Netherlands up until the 1960s.[3] Like it or not, I now belonged to those who had brought to the Netherlands such things as Bratwurst, beer, the Christmas tree, gymnastics and shopping for pleasure – not to mention the Second World War. What concerned me in particular was the confrontation with the German Nazi past from the perspective of a nation that had been besieged and occupied by Nazi Germany. The complexities of the associated judgments and prejudices towards “the Germans, towards the country in which I had grown up, in which my family and friends still lived, troubled me. It hurt when people spoke, in my presence, of the moffen (krauts)", a popular insult directed at Germans. When I then said, half jokingly: “By the way, there’s a mof among you right now”, people would claim in shock that I was an exception, that they did not mean me of course, and that “anyway, you can hardly hear you’re a German. You speak Dutch so well, much better than Prince Bernhard!” A very dubious compliment - since Prince Bernhard spoke Dutch with a heavy German accent.[4] 

During the whole time I lived in Germany, I felt I had an unambiguous identity. Like so many, I was outraged by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Together with many others, I asked critical questions: How could it have happened? Why had it been allowed to happen? The cry “Never again Auschwitz; never again War!” was sounded, and I was deeply convinced that my generation would do all in its power to ban anti-Semitism and war. There was no doubt about it. We would sort everything out. I was on the right side. This self-certainty was abruptly destroyed when I went abroad. To my surprise it made no difference there who I was as a person. Rather, I was judged by the group I belonged to, my nationality. My name, my accent betrayed my “otherness”. I was a German and thus subjected to the experiences and projections that the Dutch automatically connected with “Germans”. I began to see myself and my country through “their” eyes. At first, I did not realise it, but as time went on I increasingly attempted to hide my roots. If I spoke German at all, I spoke it quietly, and I perfected my Dutch so that I spoke hardly any accent. Did I do this because I was ashamed to be known as a German abroad? I cannot answer that question with a clear yes or no. I simply wished to belong and be accepted as the person that I am. However well I adapted to the customs and morals of the Netherlands, I still remained, and remain, the “integrated other” – now perhaps mostly on my own account.

I share this identity of an integrated other and the related insider/outsider position with immigrants from other countries. It contributes to the uncertainty of one’s own identity, but at the same time it encourages one to look at things in a new perspective. The question: “Who am I?” can no longer be given a simple answer. In my case, “I am Dutch” means: I have a Dutch passport; I have lived and worked in the Netherlands for 22 years, but I am German, born and bred, have German parents who lived through the Second World War, and the first 23 years of my life were shaped by the German (national) culture. I am a German Dutch woman. I experience my identity, my “I”, neither as unchanging nor as bound to a national essence. It is a German-Dutch construct, in which many various facets of (life) experiences that equally determine my identity – such as white, economically independent, heterosexual woman – play a role. It is not a person’s unchanging qualities that determine this process of forming an identity but the self-chosen areas of belonging.

Those who have left their original homeland or who have been confronted in a different way with their “otherness” towards a cultural majority have to deal with this uncertainty of identity and the search for an identity that is adapted to their new circumstances. Although identity never has been a static or unambiguous concept, in Europe it has never been as complex as it is at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The reason for this is found in the worldwide emancipation and migration movements that reached Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.

Multiple identities

The unease felt today among the Western European population is not only a consequence of the attacks of 11 September, 2001. It is a reaction to the developments that took place mainly in the second half of the twentieth century. The feminist movement may be regarded as one of the related factors as well as the gender research that it provoked. Patriarchal constructs of masculine and feminine identity were criticised, and the search began for new concepts of identity[5] under the banner of distinction between men and women, but also between women. Traditional hierarchical gender relations are coming under pressure. New, emancipated forms of coexistence between both genders are developing but slowly, however, and often their achievement still requires laborious effort in everyday life. Many women, in particular, are demotivated by these often tiny steps of progress and return to their traditional role patterns.

There is a further development, which is kindling an all but nostalgic desire for certainty and security and the demand for a national identity in western European countries: globalisation and the associated worldwide migration movements. Europe, in the meantime, has become an area of immigration, in which people of various cultures and religions live. The “others” who, fifty years ago, were at a safe distance, have now shifted to within reach. Whether we like it or not, the reality is that a third of Frankfurt’s citizens do not possess a German passport and almost a third of London’s population is of Asian or Afro-Caribbean origin. Paris is the second largest “Portuguese” city and Rotterdam is approaching the Canadian city of Toronto’s levels, where 44% of the population are of foreign origin.[6]

The Human Development Report 2004[7] of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) shows that one of the largest migration movements in human history took place in the last twenty years of the twentieth century. Between 1980 and 2000 the number of immigrants from Asia, Africa and the American continents increased by 75%. The number of foreigners in the United States rose from 14 to 36 million, an increase of 145%. The authors of the report point out that this migration surge accompanied revolutionary developments in the technological sector. Migrants all over the world are now able to develop dual or multiple cultural identities. They form new identities in their new home and simultaneously retain their identity of origin with the aid of the most recent technological methods of communication and transport. According to the report, countries that take in migrants should not expect them to assimilate but should be open to this shaping of new, multiple identities as well as taking political measures to correspond to this development – for example, allowing dual nationalities. The report’s authors argue that multiple identities are a fact in this dynamic world. It is an illusion to assume that these developments can be stopped. They are inherent to globalisation. The only durable path towards stability, peace and democracy is to embrace diversity.

Post-Colonial Religious Identity

The developments described here entail consequences for not only  cultural but also religious identity. Multiple, fluid and hybrid[8] identities have now also become the topic of theological discussion. Since the 1980s, publications by women in so-called Third World countries in particular have made clear that there is no group that can be straightforwardly referred to as “we women”. Even though worldwide gender commonalities among women cannot be disputed, the power and dependence relations between women, differences of ethnicity, religion, class and culture must not be overlooked. Issues concerning the interrelation of women from the north and the south through the history of colonial mission thus came to the fore. Post-colonial studies appeared in which imperialist thought structures and methods of management were highlighted and criticised.[9] The social, cultural, economical, religious and psychological effects of colonialism on the formerly colonised peoples and on the colonisers were critically analysed. Even though colonialism has formally come to an end, postcolonial studies make it plain that its effects still continue.[10]

From a feminist-theological perspective, the Chinese-American theologian Kwok Pui-lan and Botswanan theologian Musa W. Dube have presented the beginnings of a feminist-theological post-colonial critique.[11] Both have criticised Christianity’s exclusive claim to universality and the concomitant imperialist spread of Christian religion and Western culture. Dube highlights this within the biblical tradition, starting with the Exodus up to the Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel. According to both Kwok and Dube, the accounts of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mk 7:24-30) and the Canaanite woman (Matt 15:21-28) serve as a Christian legitimation for the liberating character of mission among the heathens.[12] In her post-colonial reading Kwok underlines the multiple identity of the Syro-Phoenician woman. As a foreigner, she is oppressed by a patriarchal society, but as a Greek-speaking woman she comes from a higher social class. It can, therefore, be assumed that she would marginalise others because of her social position. Kwok concludes from this that marginalisation is not one-dimensional but must be analysed in its many forms. There is always “an other in the other”. In this way, post-colonial thinkers expose a dualistic division into ruler/oppressed, powerful/powerless, coloniser/colonised as an over-simplified analysis of power relations. From a post-colonial viewpoint, the identity of the Syro-Phoenician woman is not only determined by her gender, but also by her class, language, ethnicity and so forth.[13]

This post-colonial method of observation demands that static assumptions of identity be broken up and that differences be no longer thought of in terms of hierarchy. A mode of thinking is sought after that no longer forces the “self” and the “other” into a standard concept or divides it into an us/them scheme, but enables the “other” to be understood, in fact, as other and allows the positive challenge of cultural and religious differences to be taken seriously. In order to achieve this, a process of decolonising our own thinking and its epistemological foundations is needed. A thorough analysis of mutual power relations and privileges must take place – building on the realisation that we are both “coloniser” and “colonised” in an unjust world. In this context US-American theologian Letty Russell talks of “post-colonial subjects” who must work together.[14] She supports  Dube’s proposal of developing “a strategy of postcolonial subjects, which calls upon both the dominator and the dominated to examine the matrix of past and present imperialism and to map ways in which they can speak as equal subjects who meet to exchange words of wisdom and life”.[15] 

Transformation of Christian Identity

I endorse Musa W. Dube’s plea. I am convinced that a hermeneutics of difference must be developed with the aim of an ethical practice of solidarity and responsibility, that extends across the boundaries of Europe and those of our own religion. The latter is now referred to as multiple religious belonging.[16] This relates to people who feel a connection with more than one religious tradition. Besides the moments of crisis that such a transformation of religious identity may produce, it is a “feeling of a spiritual transformation, profoundly enriching and existentially decisive, accompanied by a feeling of deep-felt gratitude”[17] that finally prevails. In Asia this phenomenon of dual or even triple religious belonging is nothing new, but in the West it is cause for intense philosophical, theological and dogmatic debate and discussions. What are the consequences if one wishes to remain loyal to one’s own religious tradition but at the same time discovers the truth of God in another religious tradition? Is this just a problem for the Christian self-conception or rather also an opportunity to expand one’s own horizons, if one believes in a truth that lies beyond the boundaries of a fixed (Christian) identity?[18]

Despite the dismissive attitude of many Western theologians, the transformation of a Christian identity that is understood as fixed seems to be a mere question of time - in Europe as well. In a society increasingly shaped by different cultures and religions, hybrid and multiple religious identities are unavoidable. They emerge quite simply from daily living and dealing with one other. This requires a rethinking on the part of churches and all religious authorities, which to date have not made life but dogmatic concepts and the associated absolute truth in Jesus Christ the basis for their dealings with other religions. The document put forth by the Evangelical Church in Germany to the inter-religious dialogue, Christlicher Glaube und nichtchristliche Religionen,[19] is an example of this. I am of the opinion that the authors have allowed themselves to be led too strongly by dogmatic premises rather than intersubjective relations, so that an oppositional “us and them” thinking determines the tone of the document. Differences are determined “in the light of the Gospel” and not via the personal encounter with “the other”. I believe that beneficial interreligious discourse does not start from one’s own dogmatic Christian convictions but from everyday life and the ethical dealings there.[20]

Room for Encounters

The US-American Buddhist Rita M. Gross, who has participated in interreligious dialogue for many years, is of the same opinion. She argues in support of a theology of religions and believes that every religion has something valuable and interesting to contribute to the great mosaic of the mystery of the world. She wishes to learn from other religions through study and dialogue. The aim is to live together peacefully without competition. This pluralist position does not, however, mean that she is preaching relativism: “Pluralists are not saying that religious phenomena cannot be judged; we are saying that one cannot evaluate religious phenomena; we are saying that no religion has a monopoly on either truth or falsity, relevant or harmful teachings and practices”.[21] Her opinion is that one can recognize a tree by its fruit. Religions are judged by the ethical consequences that arise from their theological ideas.

The first step towards a successful interreligious dialogue should be to gain knowledge of the respective religion. This information should then be dealt with in a second step, where Gross introduces the tool of the “comparative mirror,” which reflects both one’s “self” and “the other”: “In the ‘comparative mirror’, we see ourselves in the context and perspective of many other religious phenomena, inviting, even necessitating self-reflection about our own religious and cultural systems”.[22]

In this way each individual becomes a phenomenon for him- or herself, so that we learn to understand ourselves better. While looking in the mirror at the diversity of religions, we reflect on our own belief. Alternatives appear, new symbols and approaches to which we are not accustomed. In this way, for example, a study of non-theistic religions such as Buddhism may clarify the advantages and limits of theistic beliefs. The question can then also be raised as to what it means to be confronted by all the patriarchal elements in religions and cultures that are unacceptable from a feminist viewpoint. We must learn, Gross says, to discuss the things we see in the comparative mirror. The passing of initial judgment must be delayed. The first step is the attempt to understand with empathy why this or that practice exists, in order to avoid mutual distance and disdain.

Viewed in this way, interreligious dialogue is not a disguised missionary activity or a debate that one intends to win. To enter into dialogue means to listen carefully to others and to be prepared to change oneself on the basis of what one has heard. This change is in relation to oneself, not the other. The Jewish-Christian dialogue should, therefore, not be aimed at convincing the Jews to recognise Jesus’ significance for their religion. Rather, as the US-American theologian John Cobb writes, it is more the case that the “Christian efforts in their dialogue with the Jews should be to transform Christianity”.[23] The practice of interreligious dialogue offers the chance to see ourselves and our religion through the eyes of others and so make the wide variety of religious experiences of the divine beneficial to our own Christian identity. [24]

The American theologian Paul Knitter, who has been active in interreligious dialogue for many years, has come to the conclusion that dialogue with other religions works best in interreligious collaboration. As an example for such interreligious practice he mentions the International Peace Council which was formed within the framework of the “World Parliament of Religions”. The Council calls together renowned theologians, including Knitter, who are prepared to travel on invitation to crisis areas to make an interreligious contribution to a peaceful and fair resolution of conflict. The members of this Council do not, in the first instance, convene for religious reasons but because they observe an ethical responsibility to devote their efforts to the resolution of conflict. It is not faith that is the basis of the collaboration, Knitter writes, but rather the actions that arise from this faith. Bonds of friendship between Hindus, Buddhists and Christians develop from this joint action which, in Knitter’s experience, are more intensive than when they discuss or meditate in a traditional way with each other on the message of Jesus or Buddha: “Acting, struggling, and suffering together for the cause of peace or justice make for special friendships. But such friendships, because they were between religious people, also bear their religious, dialogic fruits”.[25] Knitter encourages us to engage in an ethical dialogue with “the others” that is based on action. Religious dialogue emerges from this ethical action, which in its turn feeds into theology.

Eschatological Identity

For Rita Gross and Paul Knitter ethical action in an interreligious context has precedence over theological reflection. The interaction based on mutual trust makes an empathic and simultaneously critical view of one’s own religion possible. The “comparative mirror”, with which we learn to look through the eyes of others, allows us to recognise the insufficiencies and the wealth of our own tradition. And the interreligious friendships developed from joint action make it possible to understand the significance of the respective religions from concrete life experience. In this way space is created for encountering the histories of people from a variety of cultures and religions, who together are searching for answers to the question of what oppression and liberation mean today, from the perspective of people in all their diversity. It is my opinion that interreligious dialogue should be concerned with such a soteriologically formed concept of searching, which considers religious identity in a flexible and relational way and does not regard differences as threatening but as enriching. Moments of divine truth are then no longer sought in predetermined claims to truth by the respective religion but in the interaction, in the encounter with people who have other religious experiences of divine presence.

From a Christian viewpoint this would mean that Christian identity should not seek a historical foundation in the figure of Jesus but should be inspired in ethical action by Jesus’ life story which tells of the Kingdom of God. Then it is not belief in Jesus and the uniqueness of his person that determine Christian identity. Rather, it is the belief we share with him in a Kingdom of peace and justice, the aim of which is the good life for all people.[26] Viewed in this way, it would be better to speak of a Christian process of identity that was initiated by the life of Jesus and during the course of history has been and is transformed again and again by life itself – a continually changing eschatological identity, oriented towards relationship and communication.[27]

An Interreligious Community of Post-colonial Subjects

What we need in Europe are interreligious communities of post-colonial subjects, who obtain new insights into the good life for all, with the help of interdisciplinary context analyses – cultural, religious, social, economical, gender specific – and through the exchange of daily stories of weal and woe. It is a matter of narrative and interpretative communities which allow cultural and religious diversity to benefit on a local level, not just by tolerating the peculiarity of each “other” but by regarding it also as an enrichment. We need plural communities in which people’s voices and freedom of thought are linked with mutual respect, astonishment, empathy and sympathy and with the willingness to open one’s heart and understanding to the other – without wishing to find oneself and one’s own concepts of salvation reflected in the other. Such communities of post-colonial subjects are curious, in the positive sense of the word, to find an alien world (of thought). They wish to learn to see through the eyes of others in order to break through either/or type thinking that is trapped in hierarchical oppositions. This search for the good life for all is not always easy and feeds off an interreligious spirituality[28] that does not avoid confrontation with the ambivalence of daily reality, that does not capitulate out of fear of terror and violence, but “in spite of it all”, embraces life in all its diversity – trusting in the promise of justice for all.

[1]  Dr. Manuela Kalsky is director of the Dominican Study Centre for Theology and Society in Nijmegen (the Netherlands). She received her PhD at the University of Amsterdam with her thesis on Christology from the perspective of women in different cultures. For another her paper, see Open Theology no 5, December 2008.
[2] This article was originally published in German as “Vielfalt umarmen. Überlegungen zur Transformation christlicher Identität, in: Doris Strahm, Manuela Kalsky (eds.), Damit es anders wird zwischen uns. Interreligiöser Dialog aus der Sicht von Frauen, Ostfildern 2006, 57-69. It has been translated by Joanne E. Orton.
[3] In the second half of the nineteenth century 60% of foreign inhabitants of the  Netherlands were German. See Marlou Schrover, Een ko­lonie van Duitsers. Groepsvorming onder Duitse immigranten in Utrecht in de negentiende eeuw, Amsterdam 2002.
[4] See on the topic “German migrants in the Netherlands” the disser­ta­tion by Mira Peeters-Bijlsma, Duiters in Nederland, Ubbergen 2005.
[5] See on the topic of identity and gender Claudia Breger, “Identität”, in: Christina von Braun / Inge Stephan (eds.), Gender@Wissen. Handbuch der Gender-Theo­rien, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2005, 47–65.
[6] Manuela Kalsky, Die Suche nach einem multikulturellen »Wir« unter Be­rück­sichtigung der Unterschiede. Gedanken zur Entwicklung einer cross-kul­turellen Theologie im Kontext Europas, in: Christian Bauer / Stephan van Erp (eds.), Heil in Differenz. Dominikanische Beiträge zu einer kontextuellen Theo­logie in Europa, Münster 2004, 106–117.
[7] Human Development Report 2004. Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World, United Nations Development Programme, New York 2004.
[8] “Hybrid” here means: mixed, of dual descent, compiled of various elements, crossed origin.
[9] Bill Ashcroft / Gareth Griffiths / Helen Tiffin (eds.), The Post-Colonial Stu­d­ies Reader, London 1995; Peter Childs / Patrick Williams, An Introduction to PosColonial Theory, London/New York 1997.
[10] On the term ‘Postcolonialism’: Hendrik Pranger, Redeeming Tradition. Inculturation, Contextualization, and Tra­dition in a Postcolonial Perspective, Groningen 2003, 313–316; Gaby Dietze, “Postcolonial Theory”, in: Von Braun et al., Gender@Wissen, 304ff.
[11] Pui-lan Kwok, The Sources and Resources of Feminist Theologies. A Post-Colo­nial Perspective, in: Elisabeth Hartlieb / Charlotte Methuen (eds.), Quellen fe­mi­nistischer Theologien, Jahrbuch der ESWTR 5, Mainz/Kampen 1997, 5–23; Laura E. Donaldson & Pui-lan Kwok (eds.), Postcolonialism, Feminism & Reli­gious Discourse, New York/London 2002; Musa W. Dube, Postcolonial Femi­nist Interpretation of the Bible, St. Louis 2000.
[12] Pui-lan Kwok, Introducing Asian Feminist Theology, Cleveland 2000, 59–62.
[13] See Pui-lan Kwok, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology, Louis­­ville, Kentucky 2005, 77–85.
[14] See Letty M. Russell, Postkoloniale Subjekte und eine feministische Herme­neu­­tik der Gastfreundschaft, in: Heike Walz / Christine Lienemann-Perrin / Doris Strahm (eds.), Als hätten sie uns neu erfunden. Beobachtungen zu Fremd­heit und Geschlecht, Lucerne 2003, 99–112. See also the contributions by Heike Walz and Katja Heidemanns on postcolonial approaches and issues.
[15] Musa W. Dube, Go Therefore and Make Disciples of All Nations”, in: Fernando Segovia / Mary Ann Tolbert (eds.), Teaching the Bible. The Discourses and Po­li­tics of Biblical Pedagogy, New York 1998, 233.
[16] See Catherine Cornille (ed.), Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity, Maryknoll, New York 2002.
[17] Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Gott ohne Grenzen. Eine christliche und pluralistische Theologie der Religionen, Gütersloh 2005, 495.
[18] See Raimundo Panikkar, On Christian Identity. Who is a Christian?, in: Cor­nille, Many Mansions?, 121–144. Panikkar himself is a Christian-Hindu-Buddhist.
[19] Christlicher Glaube und nichtchristliche Religionen. Theologische Leitlinien. Ein Beitrag der Kammer für Theologie der EKD, EKD Texte 77, August 2003.
[20] For more extensive treatment see: Manuela Kalsky, Een veelgelovig bestaan. Ethisch handelen en interreligieuze dialoog, in: Manuela Kalsky / André Lascaris / Leo Oosterveen / Inez van der Spek (eds.), Ons rakelings nabij. Gedaanteverande­ring van God en geloof, Nijmegen/Zoetermeer 2005, 94–109 [94–103].
[21] Rita M. Gross, Feminist Theology as Theology of Religions, in: Susan Frank Par­sons (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, Cambridge 2002, 66.
[22] Gross, Feminist Theology as Theology of Religions, 67.
[23] John B. Cobb, Beyond Dialogue. Towards a Mutual Transformation of Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism, Philadelphia 1982, 49.
[24] See my search for an interactive universality: Manuela Kalsky, Christaphanien. Die Re-Vision der Christologie aus der Sicht von Frauen in un­terschiedlichen Kulturen, Gütersloh 2000, 326–329.
[25] Paul Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions, Maryknoll, New York 22003, 244.
[26] See Kalsky, Christaphanien, 303–329.
[27] Kalsky, Christaphanien, 311ff. On the theme of eschatological identity see also Pranger, Redeeming Tradition, 78–80.
[28] For the theme of interreligious spirituality, see Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Gott ohne Grenzen, 490–496.