In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller published the first global map incorporating newly discovered territories, calling this new world “America.” Five hundred years later, “the new world” encompasses complex realities, in America and beyond. At the beginning of this century America seems to be the sole hyperpower. Our global reality is characterized by religious and ethnic violence, tensions between religion and secularism, globalization and fragmentation.

From the “old world” of medieval Spain comes the notion of convivencia or shared existence. During this golden age of mutual respect Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived out diversity and avoided sectarianism; cultural and religious identities were reshaped by encounter with each other. To a modern world prey to fundamentalism and violence, that period is both a reproach and inspiration, as we seek practical answers to the questions of how we live together – as people of different religious beliefs and practices, different ethnicities, different social classes.

Religious practices and beliefs - or the absence of them - form an important part of how much of the world’s population perceives itself and others. Religion dramatically impacts the world’s difficulties or successes in living out differences together. The question of identity – who and what am I? who and what are we? – lies at the heart of both secular and religious worldviews. Yet the very concept of ‘identity’ is complex. Many ethnic and religious communities hold passionate views about what defines them as a group. Yet we also live in a multicultural world, where both our individual and group identities are constantly shifting, shaped by our encounters with worlds which are different from our own.

The context of Convivencia is Los Angeles, the most religiously diverse city in America, and perhaps in the history of the world. Here, vibrant communities live out simultaneous identities – religious and secular, ethnic and national – identities which are sometimes in harmony, sometimes conflicting, but always in flux. Depending on context, someone may be perceived as being an American, an immigrant, a member of a particular family or team, a Latina, a Spanish-speaker or a Catholic. Los Angeles is also home to large and diverse Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as the most diverse collection of Buddhist communities in the world. In another important sense too, Los Angeles shapes the “new world,” as the city’s global influence far outreaches its already vast population. As the centre of the nation’s motion picture and television industry, it is the place where America imagines itself and others.

Convivencia can mean many things, for there are many kinds of shared existence. Does “shared life” mean that we just exist side-by-side, in our different religious, ethnic or economic social groups without being affected by each other? If we truly share life with others, does that mean that “we” have to become like “them”? Or are there things which we simply cannot give up if we are to remain ourselves? Here at LMU, how do we balance our Catholic, Jesuit, and Marymount identities with openness to people of other faiths and no faith at all? In Los Angeles, how do we respect different kinds of diversity – religious, ethnic, economic – without deteriorating into fragmentation? Is ethnic diversity the only, or the most important kind of diversity?

In the convivencia of all our worlds, what do we in fact share? What don’t we share?

Send all email inquiries to bellarmineforum@lmu.edu.