We need an exclusiveness to our religious beliefs if it is religious violence that we seek. If we believe God has chosen our group above all others, we can go out and kill with His blessing.

If, on the other hand, we believe that the same God is present in each and every human being that we meet, then how can we abuse or kill them?

The world is looking on in fascinated horror as three fundamentalisms battle it out in the Middle East. Jewish fundamentalism claims the land of Israel for the children of Israel exclusively from Dan even unto Beer Sheba. Fundamentalist Islam claims the land of Palestine for the Palestinians exclusively so that the Israelis are to be driven into the sea. And fundamentalist Christians ponder the book of Revelation that foresees an almighty battle in the Vale of Megiddo that will presage the return of the Anointed One. Each of these fundamentalisms claims the exclusive backing of God.

So there is a theological question to be addressed. Are there three different gods at war here, or is there perhaps one True God and two false gods, or are the names JHVH, Allah, and God just three different terms applied by three different cultures to one and the same great transcendent Entity?

Clearly, to the warring parties, there is one true God and two false gods. However, fundamentalists form a small and fissiparous section of the three great Abrahamic religions. There is a great popular mainstream to each of these religions, all in possession of learned theologians who think and write and speak for that mainstream. Their relative silence during the so–called War on Terror has, for the most part, been deafening. Maybe they have been speaking about the differences and links between their faiths, but they have not been given space and time by the media, or then again, maybe they have not had anything to say. Either way, it is time for this silence to end.

Of course, there are many multifaith initiatives already in existence. Tikkun is one. The Elijah Interfaith Institute, a multinational organization dedicated to fostering peace between the world's diverse faith communities through interfaith dialogue, education, research and dissemination, is another. In the UK we have the mighty Sir Sigmund Sternberg, founder of the Three Faiths Forum, and a papal knight to boot— the only Jewish papal knight in history. There are any number of other groups who aim to cross the divide—small groups of people who are developing personal links with each other. This is vital work, but it is quiet and goes unnoticed while the fundamentalists are grabbing the headlines by throwing bombs at each other.

If we discount the miracle, theology has no equivalent of the bombshell

Discounting the miracle is to discount all theology. It is to say that the real purpose of theology is to provide theologians with a lifestyle of sorts, for them to wallow in words, to linger in libraries and to write books for one another. That is one view.

If, on the other hand, theology is the systematic attempt to know about the Origin of Being, it might be helpful to some extent if theologians of the Abrahamic faiths met together and meditated on the question of whether or not the God of Abraham is one great Being with three different culturally assigned names. They should meet in fasting, because this is appropriate when so many are starving and dying because of religion, and they should meet in silence, because words can cause disagreement, but silence can only cause thought. At the end of the silence they should try to come up with a brief statement to set out their understanding. There should be a limited number of words so that they could be memorized.

The result? That we cannot know until the deed is done. The outcome might be that there are three incompatible gods and that war should continue until the death of all civilization in the name of these gods. In that case, at least we would all know where we stood. It might, on the other hand, emerge that the religions gain a little insight on the nature of the Absolute, and the nature of human existence, and religious people might wish to repeat the exercise together in their local communities.

Of course, whatever happened would not in any way affect the views of the fundamentalist wings of their respective religions, since they are immune to anything except that which is beaten out on their own anvils, but it might give a lead to the mainstream body of followers of the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths to look at the human family in a different way. It might be that religion itself could be seen to be playing a positive and constructive role in our messed–up history. Now that would be a miracle.