INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND THE VALUE OF OPENNESS; TAKING THE VULNERABILITY OF RELIGIOUS ATTACHMENTS INTO ACCOUNT MARIANNE MOYAERT Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium INTRODUCTION This article proceeds from dissatisfaction with the way the term openness functions within the pluralist discourse on interreligious dialogue. According to pluralism, the religious other deserves our appreciation and admiration, for s/he liberates us from our parochialism and provincialism and enriches our religious identity. The religious other is not an enemy, but rather a friend, for s/he can fill in the gaps in my truth. A prerequisite for interreligious dialogue is the readiness to accept the contingency and thus relativity of one’s own perspective. 1 As such, the term openness is often associated with a dynamic attitude that brings about change. Therefore, there seems to be a correlation between interreligious dialogue and transformation. My dissatisfaction particularly springs from the fact that such appeals to openness are ‘rhetorically misleading’. 2 The assumption that religious diversity can be primarily understood in terms of richness not infrequently leads to the condemnation of feelings of discomfort as the outcome of homogenizing ideologies. 3 Though the development of the pluralist theory of religion has been a boon to reflections on interreligious dialogue, it has also constrained the way in which the reflection on interreligious dialogue has been pursued. Specifically, the pluralist approach to religious diversity all too easily reasons away the resistance that may be provoked by an encounter with the religious stranger without delving into what may be more complex dynamics underlying such resistance. In this article I want to elaborate on this complexity, thereby simultaneously highlighting some of the flaws within the pluralist approach. I will begin by analysing the pluralist interpretation of the relation between openness and identity. I next argue that pluralism is so concerned with the value of openness that it overlooks the ways in which religious attachments function in the lives of believers. 4 Hence pluralists miss ‘one of the defining characteristics of the very religion it is trying to explain, namely its concrete engagement or commitment.’ 5 I will show how this shortcoming is connected to the expressivist nature of the pluralist theory of religion. As an alternative to pluralist expressivism, I propose a theory of religion that focuses on the embodiment of meaning. 6 Starting from the idea of meaning embodiment, I will then take a fresh look at the value of openness; here I will use the phenomenologist Rudi Visker as my guide. 7 Visker questions r The author 2010. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2010. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. HeyJ LI (2010), pp. 730–740