This past week I was privileged to lecture again at the University of San Diego for a small group of graduate students in the Master of Arts program in Pastoral Counseling. The topic was the psychological implications of a fundamentalist perspective. I was not concerned with any particular religious faith as much as I was with the phenomenon common to all religious fundamentalism – an angry “faith” that is not about a healthy relationship with others, with the ecology, with oneself, and with the divine. Rather it is all about identifying who one is by those one opposes. It is angry, and it makes itself known in the fearful phenomena of fight or flight.

It would be easy to point at religious fundamentalism as if this were the only place where this happens. But each one of us is capable of protecting the most vulnerable portions of our psyches with rigid thinking that excludes outside perspective, shouting others into submission, and the fear that unless we keep others “in their place” we will loose our place.

A more integrated approach would be to listen to the heart of other’s concerns by adopting an attitude of curiosity rather than immediate condemnation. Listening is the first step in inviting dialogue. It gets to the key “words” behind the words that are spoken, if we listen from heart to heart.

And where the heart of another is heard, fear is banished. Faith, whether in the deity or in others, then becomes not a set of propositions but the experience of an authentic relationship.