Proximity, Vulnerability, and Receptivity
Cultivating An Adaptive Attitude for Interfaith Leadership
by Chris RayAlexander
The landscape of interfaith relationship building has undergone a seismic shift since the Hamas attacks of October 7th, 2023 and the resultant renewal of attention that event has brought to the longstanding conflict between the inhabitants of Israel/Palestine. Those working in this field face questions of identity, history, sovereignty, dignity, and equity which, though long present beneath the surface, can no longer be repressed. These questions derive from two fundamental sets of concerns. People ask: “Why is interfaith work so essential at this moment?”
At the same time, they express their doubts and confusion about the possibility of meaningful interfaith work by asking: “Why are interfaith relations so hard in a moment like this?” These twin inquiries aptly summarize the contradiction that colors the interfaith movement. How, given the overlapping, putatively inextricable, and undeniably tragic conflicts we face today, can we adapt our work to a situation where interfaith cooperation simultaneously seems essential and impossible?
Because of the pressing urgency to do something, our first reaction to conflict or crisis is often to rush headlong into analysis. What is new about the situation? Or better yet, what in history might help us understand what is happening now? What has our approach been missing, and what alternatives might be available? Interfaith relationship building thrives in the rich soil of good questions, and all the queries I’ve mentioned can lead to important discoveries. That said, these can’t be the only or primary questions we ask. Focusing on simply adapting to the situation at hand starts us off on the wrong footing.
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In uncertain times, replete with rapidly evolving events, our adaptability needs to be driven by a considered responsiveness instead of a rushed reactivity. Rather than immediate forward movement, we should take a moment to step back and look inward by shifting our concern to attitude instead of approach.
What is producing our sense of urgency, and what might we gain from more thorough consideration? What details are we still lacking, and how do we determine the validity or salience of new information? What do we value, with whom do we share those values, and what are we willing to risk or sacrifice to uphold what we value most? And crucially, who forms the community that can help us decide on such questions, what is our role in that community, and who is missing from the conversation?
Shaped by Inquiry
Placing attitude before approach requires temporarily shifting our gaze away from the exigencies of the situation at hand and refocusing on what we need in order to prepare for circumstances that are unforeseeable, unrecognizable, or still forthcoming. This shift might seem perilous in a space often parsed—and funded—through appeals to data-driven metrics, impact statistics, and other quantitative reductions of complex interpersonal relationships.
The impetus to act frequently relies upon the assumption that the most basic questions, namely, some iteration of “what is useful?” or “what is productive?” have been definitively asked and answered. Such assumptions can have dire consequences, especially in times of emergent crisis. Unexamined answers impede the formulation of better questions.
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When action dominates inquiry, how we adapt to a situation becomes a matter of application instead of interpretation, often leading to the implementation of methodologies without taking the time to discern whether they are the right fit or – even if they do seem to fit – how they might need to be adjusted to address the situation in a culturally and historically nuanced way. Worse, we can lose touch with the attitude that makes such adjustments possible and desirable, operating instead under the assumption that “our solution is best” regardless of the context in which we’re applying it. When this happens, the value of good questions is sacrificed on the altar of unexamined expediency.
The dominance claimed by quantitative analyses of intra- and inter-communal conflict too often elides a basic fact: our attitudes precede and radically condition how we approach situations. How we attempt to respond to a problem depends on whether we care, how we care, whatever and whomever else we care about, and who has taught us why and how to care. The cultivation of our concern comes before our actions. How we care shapes how we understand and how we act.
The Capacity to Care
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I believe that three factors are essential to developing our capacity to care: proximity, vulnerability, and receptivity. All three of these are fundamentally connected to what we feel, what we are capable of feeling, and our potential to feel differently. They emerge through conversation, critical awareness, exposure, and reflection. Proximity, vulnerability, and receptivity seem inconvenient when our concerns drive us to quick reactions, but they are necessary to construct and maintain relationships that stabilize, strengthen, and sustain an enduring and transformative project of interfaith collaboration and community creation.
How can we transform our attitudes through proximity, vulnerability, and receptivity? Said another way, how can we act, not for the sake of action alone, but to feel differently about our capacity to act? And how does adaptive development of that capacity change what our actions can accomplish? The relationship between proximity, vulnerability, and receptivity is cyclical and interdependent, but there are good reasons to take proximity as a starting point.
Rooted in Relationship
Without proximity to communities, individuals, and their practices, struggles, and preoccupations, we might mistakenly conclude that we understand their vulnerability and that we are fully receptive to what their words and experiences communicate, when in fact we’re missing important pieces of information and the depth of relationship that makes real receptivity possible. For instance, when we hear about the rising tide of Islamophobia in our moment, we might prepare to join our Muslim siblings in street protests and other public manifestations of resistance to injustice.
And yet, without being educated through relationships with that community, we might fail to understand the feeling of isolation, fear, and imposed silence that permeates many of those communities beyond those vocal moments of demonstration. Similarly, if we attempt to comprehend concerns about acts of anti-Semitism without immersing ourselves in the communities that experience them, we risk an interpretation of their actions that fails to account for the intergenerational trauma with which many Jewish people continue to contend.
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True vulnerability is born of mutuality. To understand the vulnerability of another, I must first open myself and be vulnerable to them. This kind of vulnerability does not arise through the simulated proximity and faux parasocial intimacy of news reports, academic studies, expert analyses, or social media posturing. It requires us to engage wholeheartedly and sincerely with those we are seeking to know and with whom we want to collaborate.
Strong interfaith relationships are cultivated through exposure to different ideas, ways of doing and living, and spaces for gathering, worship, and solidarity. Vulnerability in this context manifests as an openness that asks for invitation, a courage that persists in discomfort, and a humility that acknowledges our limitations in the face of missteps, misunderstandings, and miscommunications. It insists on standing firm in allyship and goodwill even when the terrain is uncertain. It dares us to learn from rejection without falling prey to defensive resentment.
Shifting our Perception
The same is true of receptivity. Proximity is spatial. There is always more than one space that we can occupy. How we situate ourselves in different contexts plays a determinative role in our ability to be receptive. It is easy to mistakenly treat the clarity or intensity of a particular perspective or the unanimity of a specific community as if they exhaustively represent a situation and which feelings and interpretations are rational or legitimate within it.
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Social media is a great example of this. We only need to momentarily borrow another person’s device to see just how wildly disparate our respective corners of Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube can be. Social media algorithms function like an attitude: they determine what becomes visible and what remains out of sight through a calculation that is—or is supposed to be—representative of what we find desirable or useful. The exclusion of other views that these algorithms consider “undesirable” can lead to confirmation bias and signal jam our ability to tune in to other perspectives. Breaking the illusion that what we see is all that there is to see is possible, but doing so requires movement.
Remembering that we can—and often must—move between perspectives is the first step toward authentic receptivity. Even when we listen, it is far too easy to only hear what we want to hear. Robust receptivity calls for an openness to hear what is really being said – and what is not being said – even if it pushes us out of our comfort zone. It necessitates an effort to amplify voices that might otherwise fail to be perceptible, to shed light on what remains hidden by our presuppositions, and to reach out to touch harsh realities to which we would otherwise remain numb. And like vulnerability, receptivity also requires us to explore contrasting positions because nothing is audible, visible, or tangible from everywhere or in every moment.
The Art of Adaptivity
Prioritizing attitude does not mean abandoning the question of approach. On the contrary, stepping back to considering proximity, vulnerability, and receptivity makes an approach adaptable. It enables an approach that moves beyond reactivity to responsibility and makes it possible to cultivate a stance that is strong enough to be principled while also remaining flexible in the face of difference, newness, and the unknown. Such a responsive stance should reinforce and recognize the possibilities of change that can and must occur in ourselves, our communities, our circumstances, and the global context that shapes us all.
Responsive adaptivity surpasses the immediacy of reactivity by accommodating the kind of rich contextualization that broadens perspectives and increases our tolerance for risk, exposure, and change. It gives rise to a deeper understanding of the limitations of our unique perspectives and those of the communities in which we are embedded. It generates a more nuanced awareness of our motivations and goals while creating space for new approaches and diagonal movement between previously insoluble binaries. Responsive adaptivity can facilitate the reorientation, renewal, and reinvigoration of our current interfaith engagements, no matter what form those engagements might take.
Leading the Way Back
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We commonly think of leaders as trailblazers who are able to see what must be done, decipher the future, and chart a course to move things in the right direction. It is not coincidental that these leadership features share a forward direction that mirrors how we often think of adaptation. In both cases, the emphasis is placed on what lies ahead, often to the detriment of what is already here, invisibly shaping what can be seen because of our negligence, tacit acceptance, unfortunate adjustment to injustice, or unwillingness to return to core questions regarding how our attitudes shape our worldviews and imaginations. But here again, the responsiveness made possible by reconsidering attitude offers another way forward by starting with a step back.
Interfaith leaders who prioritize attitude will see more value in recognizing what and who is present in the moment instead of placing exclusive emphasis or undue importance on what lies ahead. Their proximity to their communities and their intentional presence in relationships with others will help ensure that their decisions and approaches are dynamic and enriched by contextualization rather than being diluted by the myopia of fixed ideas, unexamined answers, and fossilized methodologies.
To retain their ability to be adaptive and responsive, interfaith leaders must foster a vulnerability that prevents them from claiming to be “above the fray” and keeps them within the reach of those who need their compassion. This wedding of proximity and vulnerability will then hone and sustain a continuing state of receptivity in which openness to new approaches is inseparable from openness to each other and to those who have been made into the “other.” By combining proximity, vulnerability, and receptivity, interfaith leaders can adapt to a world riven by conflict while deepening their connection to the unifying sources of community, compassion, and comprehension that keep adaptation from devolving into reaction.
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