Called by Our Conflicting Allegiances

Abstract

This chapter examines our allegiances to a variety of communities (including those devoted to differing faith traditions), exploring how tensions and conflicts among these allegiances are narrated. How are such conflicts resolved, and how is vocational judgment affected by these encounters? The author suggests that we should not seek to dissolve the tensions too quickly, since our allegiances typically spring from genuine commitments to communities that we hold dear. Nevertheless, a commitment to interfaith work may offer new insights, encouraging us to tell the stories of our lives and our vocational reflections in ways that acknowledge not only these various commitments but also the potential tensions among them. The chapter includes a detailed engagement with Peter Berger’s The Heretical Imperative and with texts from the Jewish tradition; it also draws on the author’s own experience of religious difference in Israel/Palestine and the interfaith work that grew from that encounter.