Online Inter-faith Dialogue Platform

“野外研究”项目将开发一个在线平台，以建立一种行之有效的宗教间对话形式，并证明其具有为世俗和宗教多元化的全球社会带来变革的潜力。在一个世俗和多种宗教复杂混合的世界里，出现了宗教团体成员如何充分参与公共辩论的问题。对这些问题的一个主要回答是，只有在宗教参与者对宗教思想和实践的特定传统保密的情况下，公开辩论才有可能。然而，其他的答案是可能的——这些答案集中在每个宗教传统内部的推理实践上，以及当这些不同的实践相互作用时可能出现的共同推理模式上。探索这种可能性的一个突出例子是一种名为“圣经推理”（SR）的跨信仰讨论实践的发展。在SR中，不同宗教传统的成员组成小组，一起讨论他们的神圣或权威文本的摘录。在这个过程中，一个传统的成员学会向那些不分享她的传统的人解释她的判断（包括对公共问题的判断）形成的阅读和推理实践。她还学会了回答关于这些实践的问题，理解不同的阅读和推理实践，这些实践塑造了其他参与者的判断，并作为其他参与者文本的读者进行实验。这一过程的正常结果不是达成共识，而是对他人判断根源的更深刻理解，对自身传统和他人传统中所固有的灵活性和响应性的理解，以及对那些与自己的权威和推理传统不同的人可能有意义的各种论点的理解。因此，这种跨信仰推理的实践加深了传统内部和传统之间的理解，并使跨传统理性辩论的实践得以发展。在学者、宗教领袖、学生、学童、公民领袖和普通公民之间现有的面对面的SR模型实施已经被证明是令人鼓舞的，并且已经证明，在一个宗教承诺和对公共话语的承诺通常被认为是对立的社会中，这是一种具有变革性影响的实践。然而，面对面的实施不可避免地受到限制：召集多信仰团体进行讨论是昂贵的；数量有限；地理限制意味着参与者往往来自相似的文化背景；讨论的单一语言性质既减少了可能参与者的范围，也给一些穆斯林参与者带来了特殊的限制，对他们来说，依赖尚未翻译的阿拉伯文本权威和推理传统是必不可少的。为了确保实现SR的潜在变革影响，需要克服这些限制。这个项目提供了一种创新的方式，通过将SR实践带到网络和跨语言。我们将建立一个现有的在线跨信仰平台（由剑桥跨信仰项目和非营利性技术公司Meedan开发），其中包括机器辅助人工翻译阿拉伯语和英语之间的内容和讨论的设施。通过对来自英国和中东的基督教和伊斯兰社区的各种非学术用户群体进行广泛的用户测试，我们将为基督教-穆斯林SR的特定使用量身定制此平台，在此过程中跨越地理和语言障碍扩展SR。

This Research in the Wild project will lead to the development of an online platform for a well-established form of inter-faith dialogue, with proven transformational potential for a secular and religiously plural global society.In a world that is a complex mix of secularity and multiple religions, questions arise about how members of religious communities can participate fully in public debate. One dominant answer to those questions says that public argument is only possible to the extent that religious participants keep private their commitment to particular traditions of religious thought and practice. However, other answers are possible - answers that focus upon the practices of reasoning internal to each religious traditions, and upon the patterns of shared reasoning that are possible when those differing practices are brought into interaction.One prominent example of work that explores this possibility has been the development of a practice of inter-faith discussion called 'Scriptural Reasoning' (SR). In SR members of different religious traditions meet in small groups to discuss extracts from their sacred or authoritative texts together. In the process, a member of one tradition learns to explain to those who do not share her tradition the reading and reasoning practices by which her judgments (including judgments about public issues) are shaped. She also learns to respond to questions about those practices, to understand the different reading and reasoning practices by which the judgments of other participants are shaped, and to experiment as a reader of the other participants' texts. The normal outcome of the process is not consensus but a deeper understanding of the roots of others' judgments, an understanding of the kinds of flexibility and responsiveness built in to one's own tradition and the traditions of others, and an understanding of the kinds of arguments that might make sense to those whose authorities and traditions of reasoning differ from one's own. This practice of inter-faith reasoning therefore deepens understanding both within and between traditions, and enables the development of practices of reasoned debate across traditions.Existing face-to-face implementations of the SR model amongst scholars, religious leaders, students, school children, civic leaders and ordinary citizens have proved encouraging, and have demonstrated that this is a practice with a potential for transformational impact in a society where religious commitment and commitment to shared public discourse are often assumed to be opposed. Face-to-face implementation is, however, unavoidably limited: gathering multi-faith groups for discussion is expensive; numbers are limited; geographical constrains mean that participants tend to be from similar cultural backgrounds; and the mono-lingual nature of the discussions both reduces the range of possible participants, and presents particular constraints for some Muslim participants for whom reliance on as-yet-untranslated Arabic textual authorities and traditions of reasoning is essential.To ensure that the potential transformational impact of SR is realised, these limitations need to be overcome. This project offers an innovative way to do so by taking SR practice onto the web and across languages. We will build on an existing online inter-faith platform (developed by the Cambridge Inter-faith Program and the non-profit technology company Meedan) which includes a facility for machine-assisted human translation of content and discussions between Arabic and English. By means of extensive user testing with a variety of non-academic user groups drawn from Christian and Islamic communities in the UK and the Middle East, we will tailor this platform for specific use in Christian-Muslim SR, extending SR across geographical and linguistic barriers in the process.