Religion, State And Civil Society
In it journey the idea of state has developed from time to time, from orthodoxy to democracy. Nowadays Democracy is still believed as the best way of live for everybody within the country. The idea of Democracy was firstly used by Socrates who has been hanged to death because of his idea was againts the monarchy system that was ruling in that era.
Democracy is based on freedom that is the purpose of the democracy itself. One of the principle of the democracy is that every citizen has obligatory to lead and to be led alternately, and democratic justice is about the amount of the people rather than the proportion. From that point, in democratic country, the majority have the highest power. In general the highest amount of the citizen of the country is the poor.
The principle of freedom of democratic country is freedom itself. People should live freely. If people do not live freely mean that they are slaves. Include in this freedom is choosing religion and doing whatever people’s believe, of course in the corridor of respect each other. In this democratic atmosphere people could live in pluralistic way. Pluralistic in culture, in nature, in religion, in races and so forth. Even in doing their liturgy.
Most of the religious thinker suggested that religion was not supposed to be exposed, but let it become a personal matter, as it happened in America. There, people could live in the same neighborhood for such a long time without knowing what other people’s religion is. In my opinion this condition is not totally correct. There is nothing wrong to know about other people’s religion, since by then we know what they like and they don’t. for example when we invite other for having dinner, if we know that our neighbor is Moslem we could avoid to serve pork or any kind of meat from a pig, that is considered forbidden for Moslem to eat. According to Paul F, Knitter and Hanskung, what we supposed to develop is correlational and responsible interfaith dialog globally. He explained that people should accept the plurality of the religion honestly and more serious rather than like what we have done in the past.
From the perspective of relativist, Human being is the overcome of his or her history. Social construction theory also has become part of understanding human itself. So why don’t we start to construct a new understanding of interfaith dialogue that is more responsibly acceptable in the name of plurality. in my opinion from what I could understand so far, relativist approach perspective is still relevant to be used. For me the righteous is my religion and at the same time giving the same freedom to other to think the same way. Just like seeing our self in the mirror, what we like could also be what others like. Respect each other is something to be developed and not taken for granted. Rome was not built in one night, so that interfaith dialogue. God know which is better or worst, let Him decide.
