Interfaith work is generally done at the level of values and ideals: we all agree on compassion, peace, care for the poor. And this is true and important. But value agreement hasn’t produced religious unity anywhere.
Hendricks identifies why: religions don’t actually divide at values. They divide at worship. Different scriptures, different music, different rituals, different sacred languages, different physical postures before God. These are not decorative differences — they’re the actual practice of encounter with the sacred, and they’re where identities are most deeply formed.
You can agree with a Buddhist that suffering is real and compassion is the response, then go home to your completely different worship practice and remain entirely separate.
True interfaith unity — the kind Moon envisioned — requires merging at the level of practice, not just affirming shared ideals. This is far harder. It requires giving up forms that feel essential because they’ve been part of how you met God.
The implication: interfaith dialogue that stays at the values level produces nice relationships but not religious unity. The only path to unity is communities of practice that merge at the level of actual worship — which is what the populist church model makes possible, because it’s not bound to inherited forms.