Interreligious dialogue under conditions of deep difference: Comparing CEDAR and EMUNA

This article offers a critical reflection on the model of interreligious interaction developed by Adam B. Seligman in his paper The Collective, Consciousness and the Person, by comparing it with the EMUNA program currently implemented at Luiss University in Rome. The starting point is the problem of coexistence under conditions of deep difference: how trust and cooperation can be sustained among actors belonging to divergent communities of meaning without presupposing normative convergence or agreement on values. The article develops two main arguments. First, it situates Seligman’s approach at a micro–sociological level, focused on interaction and the social construction of knowledge, and distinguishes it from meso–sociological models of interreligious dialogue oriented toward competence–building, institutional mediation, and the transmission of knowledge. This distinction is examined through a comparison between the CEDAR program and the EMUNA model, highlighting their differences in terms of temporality, modes of learning, forms of epistemic authority, and orientation toward the production of outputs. Second, the article argues that both models presuppose a willingness to engage across difference that cannot be taken for granted. In contexts shaped by polarization and the political mobilization of moral conflict, such willingness appears fragile and unevenly distributed. This raises the question of how practices of dialogue relate to political arenas in which conflict is not merely managed, but actively produced and instrumentalized. By placing CEDAR and EMUNA side by side, the article identifies a broader theoretical tension between consensus–oriented models and pragmatic approaches focused on sustaining relations in the absence of agreement, and emphasizes the need to integrate the political dimension into the analysis of interreligious engagement.