Dialogue Skills and Practice

Today when we speak of dialogue between religions or ideologies we mean something quite definite; namely, a two-way communication between persons. One-way lecturing or speaking is obviously not meant by it. However, there are many different kinds of two-way communication: e.g., fighting, wrangling, debating, etc. Clearly none of these are meant by dialogue. On the other extreme is the communication between persons who hold precisely the same views on a particular subject. We also do not mean this when we use the term dialogue; rather, we might call that something like encouragement, reinforcement—but certainly not dialogue. Now, if we look at these two opposite kinds of two-way communication which are not meant by the word dialogue, we can learn quite precisely what we do in fact mean when we use the term dialogue.

Dialogue is a two-way communication between persons who hold significantly differing views on a subject, with the purpose of learning more truth about the subject from the other.