PLURALISM

 

NORMAN GEISLER PLURALISM

 

Pluralism, Metaphysical. Pluralism affirms that reality is found in many, as opposed to one. It stands in contrast to monism, which claims that reality is one. Pantheism is a form of monism, and theism is a form of pluralism. Monists hold to a univocal or equivocal notion of being [see Plotinus]. Theists hold an analogical view of being.

 

Pluralism, Religious. To better understand religious pluralism, several terms related to religion need to be distinquished: pluralism, relativism, inclusivism, and exclusivism:

 

 

Christianity is exclusivistic; it claims to be the one and only true religion. This places Christians at odds with the modern movements to study comparative religion and work at interfaith communing. Asks Alister McGrath, "How can Christianity's claims to truth be taken seriously when there are so many rival alternatives and when 'truth' itself has become a devalued notion? No one can lay claim to possession of the truth. It is all a question of perspective. All claims to truth are equally valid. There is no universal or privileged vantage point that allows anyone to decide what is right and what is wrong" [Challenge of Pluralism, 365].

 

Equality among World Religions. Pluralist John Hick argues, "I have not found that the people of the other world religions are, in general, on a different moral and spiritual level from Christians." For "The basic idea of love and concern for others and of treating them as you would wish them to treat you is, in fact, taught by all the great religious tradition" [Hick, A Pluralist's View, 39]. Hick offers as proof the fact that statements similar to the "Golden Rule" of Christianity can be found in other religions [ibid., 39-40].

 

It is debatable whether practitioners in non-Christian religions can really display what Galatians 5:22-23 calls "the fruit of the Spirit" : love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Certainly non-Christians do loving things and feel the heart emotion of attachment that we call love. And others are gentle, good, kind, and self-controlled. But are they able to manifest agape love? One can lead a philanthropic life and even die in a stand for personal beliefs, yet not show God-founded holistic true love [see 1 Cor. 13:3]. Christians are to have a qualitatively different kind of love for one another and especially for God. While God's common grace enables evil people to do good [see Mt. 7:11], only the supernatural love of God can motivate a person to express true agape [cf. Jn. 15:13; Rom 5:6-8; 1 Jn. 4:7].

 

 

 

DO ALL PATHS LEAD
TO THE SAME DESTINATION?

ANSWERING PLURALISM

By Keith E. Johnson

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it." In our pluralistic society an increasing number of people find Shaw's interpretation of religion appealing. Is it possible that Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, etc. represent differing, yet valid, paths to the same destination? Were this the case, there would be no need to argue about which religion is the "true" religion. Such disputes would be pointless. Perhaps viewing religion in this way would eventually lead to less religious bigotry and greater cooperation among people of differing faiths.

On the other hand, what if all paths do not lead to the same destination? Religious traditions such as Islam and Buddhism differ significantly from one another. How does one account for these differences and maintain that all paths lead to the same destination? If all paths do not lead to the same destination then each of us must make an informed choice which may have significant consequences. In this article I will briefly examine arguments for and against the claim that all (religious) paths lead to the same destination.

Option One: All Paths Lead to the Same Destination

Some claim that all religions represent differing, yet equally valid, routes to the same destination. Though each religion may choose its own path, all paths converge at the top of the same mountain. Advocates of this position are aware of the diversity in belief and practice that differentiate Buddhists from Christians, Hindus from Jews, and Muslims from Shintos. Nevertheless, they typically offer the following points in support of their thesis:

(1.) It is intolerant and ethnocentric to assert that one religion is the true religion and others, which disagree, are false. This type of intolerance, it is pointed out, has caused much bloodshed.

(2.) The contrasting claims of different religions do not prove that one religion is true and others are false. Instead it suggests that no religion possesses the entire truth, but only bits and pieces of it. Imagine, for example, that three blind men are touching an elephant. The first blind man is holding on to the elephant's leg. He explains, "I think an elephant is like the trunk of a great tree." The second blind man disagrees. "No, I believe an elephant is like a snake," he says while holding the elephant's trunk. The third blind man responds, "No, you both are wrong, an elephant is like a wall." (He is touching the elephant's side.) Each blind man thinks he is right and that the others are wrong even though all three of them are all touching the same elephant. In a similar way, is it not possible that all religions are in contact with the same ultimate reality and merely describe it in different ways?

(3.) There is an ethical core which all religions share in common. Some formulation of the Golden Rule, for example, is found in Judaism, Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity, Taoism, Islam, and Buddhism. In addition, each of these traditions produces a similar ethical/moral transformation in the lives of its followers. Certainly it would be difficult to prove that one religious tradition is more effective than others in transforming the lives of its followers.

These three arguments are typically offered in support of the claim that all paths are valid means to the same destination. Perhaps the most sophisticated formulation of this position is the "pluralistic hypothesis" proposed by philosopher John Hick.[1] Hick's pluralistic hypothesis attempts to explain four phenomena: the fact that people are inherently religious, the diversity of religious belief, the assumption that religious belief is not an illusion, and reality that almost every religious tradition positively changes it followers' lives. Hick claims that there is one ultimate reality (which he calls the "Real"); that each religious tradition, suffering from a Kantian blindness, does not have direct perception of this ultimate reality; and that each religious tradition represents an authentic way in which this reality is conceived and experienced.

Hick is fully aware that different religious traditions hold conflicting beliefs on a number of key points. Nevertheless, he claims that almost every religion brings positive moral change (what he calls "salvation/liberation") in the lives of its followers. In light of this, he believes that it does not make sense to conceive of one religion as true and others as false. Instead, Hick claims that all religions are equally valid means to salvation/liberation.

Pluralistic interpretations of religion like Hick's possess a strong appeal. Nevertheless, I find that they possess two deficiencies which, in the final analysis, render them unacceptable. First, they are unable to properly account for the conflicting truth-claims of different religions. Second, they radically reinterpret the beliefs of specific traditions in order to avoid the first problem.

The Achilles' heel of the claim that all paths lead to the same destination is the problem of internal consistency. Each religious tradition makes truth-claims which contradict the truth-claims of other religious traditions. We will briefly examine three areas of disagreement.

(1.) The first area of contradiction regards the nature of the ultimate reality (such as God). One discovers there is a vast chasm between monotheistic religions (such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and pantheistic religions (such as Hinduism, Buddhism). Muslims claim that there is only one God, Allah, who created the universe from nothing. Some Hindus, on the other hand, believe not in a personal creator, but in Brahman, an impersonal absolute reality which permeates all things. Other Hindus believe that there are millions of deities (such as Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and Krishna) which are manifestations of Brahman.

(2.) A second area of contradiction relates to the fate of individuals at death. According to Islam, each of us will die once and then face judgement by Allah. Depending on Allah's judgement we will spend eternity in heaven or hell. In contrast, many Hindus claim that we will live (and have already lived) many lives on earth. Hindus believe that the conditions of our past and future existence are determined by the cosmic laws of karma. Following death each of us is reincarnated into a different form (human, animal, etc.).

(3.) Each religious tradition also identifies a universal problem that afflicts humanity. This brings us to a third area of disagreement. Hindus, for example, claim that the universal problem is samsara. Samsara is an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth (reincarnation) in which every person is trapped. Only through knowledge of one's relationship to Brahman and religious devotion can this cycle be broken and moksha (release) experienced. Christianity, on the other hand, maintains that the universal problem facing every person is separation from the God. According to Christianity, each person has rebelled against God by violating his commands (what the Bible calls sin). Christianity insists that there is no human solution to this problem. Only through a relationship with Jesus Christ can this problem of separation from God be overcome. Christians believe that Jesus Christ paid our sin-penalty through his death on the cross in order that our relationship with God might be restored.

These conflicting claims about the nature of the Ultimate, the fate of individuals at death, as well as the universal problem facing humanity are only a few of the conflicting assertions made by different religious traditions. These conflicts render implausible the claim that "all paths lead to the same destination." Perhaps the following will help illustrate why this is the case. Consider the following two statements:

It is obvious that both of the these statements cannot be correct at the same time. This self-evident truth is often referred to as the principle of "non-contradiction." This principle has a significant implication for our investigation. Two contradictory assertions cannot both be correct. Thus, if two religions make truth-claims which contradict each other, they cannot both be right. For example, when Hindus claim that there are many Gods and Jews claim that there in only one God, one of them must be wrong . In addition, when Muslims claim that each person lives only once and then faces judgement and Hindus claim that each person lives many lives determined by the law of Karma, one of them must be wrong.

One might agree, in principle, that religious traditions make conflicting claims yet still disagree with my conclusion regarding the significance of these conflicts. Instead, it might be argued that all this talk about conflicting "truth-claims" misunderstands the true nature of religious language. After all, religious language is highly symbolic. The Bible, for example, uses many anthropomorphisms to describe God (like King David's description of God as a shepherd who cares for his sheep). Thus, would it not be better to speak of differing metaphors rather than conflicting truth-claims?

Interpreting all religious language symbolically does avoid the problem of conflicting truth-claims, however, only at a very high price. Claiming that all religious language is symbolic in order to eliminate all conflict is like sawing off one's arm to stop a finger from bleeding. It stops the bleeding, but only by creating a bigger problem. In order to demonstrate why this is the case I will comment briefly on the nature of religious language.

Just as an orchestral composition utilizes a wide array of musical instruments, so religious language utilizes a rich variety of literary genres including poetry, myth, history, and straight-forward prose. Yet the reality that some religious language is highly symbolic, does not negate the fact that religions make truth-claims. Instead, it suggests that religious truths comes packaged in a variety of forms and that proper interpretation of religious language requires careful attention to the particular literary genre one is reading.

The critical question is this: Does religious language intend to describe realities which exist independent of our perception, or are statements such as "God exists" merely statements of a person's subjective emotional state? If religious statements--regardless of their particular genre--intend to describe realities which objectively exist, then they are subject to contradiction. If, on the other hand, all religious language is symbolic in such a way that religious statements cannot contradict one another, then it would seem religious language does not refer to anything which exists independent of us. This makes religious language little more than a commentary on our subjective psychological states.[2] Interestingly, this position is very similar to Sigmund Freud's view of religious language. In Future of an Illusion Freud wrote,

These [religious ideas], which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. . . . Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life. . . .[3]

Freud believed that religious language was completely metaphorical. He claimed that statements--such as "God exists"--merely express certain psychological needs. The point is that one cannot consistently invoke the category of metaphor/symbolism to resolve the conflicting claims of different religions and maintain that Freud was wrong.

It will be helpful at this point to return to the parable of the three blind men and the elephant. Earlier we examined the possibility that religious traditions are like the three blind men who were attempting to describe the same elephant. Each of them described the same elephant differently. Are the religions of the world like the three blind men?

As appealing as this story is, it leaves one important question unanswered: How do we know the blind men were all describing the same elephant? What if the first blind man, while holding an oak tree said, "I think an elephant is like the trunk of a great tree." Imagine the second blind man, while holding a fire hose exclaimed, "No, you're wrong; an elephant is like a snake." What if the third blind man, while touching the side of the Sears Tower asserted, "I think you are both wrong; an elephant is like a great wall." The critical problem with this story is that it assumes the very thing it allegedly proves--that all the blind men are touching an elephant. Yet how do we know the blind men are touching an elephant? Only because the story assumes it.

To take it a step further, what if each of the blind men made assertions about an (alleged) elephant which were not merely different, but contradictory? Would it still be plausible to believe they are all describing the same elephant? How much contradiction would be required in their accounts before it would become obvious that they were not describing the same elephant? A similar question can be asked of the claim that all paths lead to the same destination. How do we know all paths lead to the same destination? In light of the conflicting truth-claims of various religions it does not seem rational to believe that all paths lead to the same destination.

Option Two: All Paths Do Not Lead to the Same Destination

This bring us to our second alternative--all paths do not lead to the same destination. At first glance, this position may seem unreasonable. Isn't this type of claim incredibly intolerant? Second, isn't the real issue the sincerity of one's belief? Finally, even if only one path is "valid," how could it ever be identified? Before discussing these questions it will be helpful to examine the arguments offered in support of this position.

One strength of this position is that it takes the truth-claims of religious traditions seriously. It attempts to understand the beliefs of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Christians in their proper context. This is a critical point. Option one--the claim that all paths lead to the same destination--can be rendered plausible only by radically reinterpreting the teachings of the various religious traditions so they no longer conflict.

Yet, the founders of many religious traditions made claims which they knew contradicted the claims of other religions. The Buddha, for example, rejected Hindu belief regarding the cause of samsara (the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth). Moses, a key figure in Judaism, rejected the polytheism of the Canaanite nations that surrounded the nation of Israel and claimed that only one God, Yahweh, created the world and should be worshiped. In fact, certain portions of Moses' teaching in the Pentateuch are probably best understood as a polemic against the religious beliefs of the surrounding Canaanite nations. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, rejected the polytheism to which he was exposed in sixth century Arabia. Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, claimed, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through me." (John 14:6) In other words, these religious founders knew that certain claims they made contradicted the claims of other religions.

Our second option begins with the observation that every religion makes truth-claims about the nature of an ultimate reality (whether God, Brahman, Nirvana), the origin of humanity, the fate of humanity at death, and the path to salvation or liberation. The fact that religions make such claims has a significant entailment. As we have already seen, when two religions make claims which contradict each other, they cannot both be correct. The laws of logic necessitate this.

Not everyone, however, is persuaded, that religions make truth-claims.[4] To clarify this issue it will be helpful to examine a distinction philosopher Mortimer Adler makes in his book Truth in Religion. Adler distinguishes what he calls "matters of truth" and "matters of taste."[5] It will be easiest to illustrate Adler's distinction through the following statements:

Adler would categorize these statements as matters of taste. Consider, however, the following statements:

Adler would describe these statements as matters of truth. Adler claims that matters of truth require us to make a decision anytime the "mass of evidence or weight of reasons point in one direction rather than another . . ."[6] Adler's helpful distinction raises the following question: What kinds of claims do religious traditions make? Are the claims of religion merely matters of taste, or, are they also matters of truth? Consider the following claims of Christianity:

While one might argue over truthfulness of these assertions, one cannot deny the fact that these claims fall in the category of matters of truth.

Several objections are typically raised against the claim that all paths do not lead to the same destination. First, it is argued that such a position is narrow and intolerant. Second, it is frequently suggested that truth is really not that important and that what really matters is the sincerity of one's belief. Third, even if one path is valid and others are not, it is argued that there is no way to know which path is "true," that is there are no neutral criteria which can be used to evaluate religious traditions. I will examine each of these objections.

(1.) Tolerance is a buzz-word of the nineties. We are frequently reminded that we should be tolerant of those with whom we disagree. Who can argue with this? It is certainly preferable to the other alternatives. World history is replete with the consequences of religious bigotry--holy wars, religious crusades, inquisitions, etc. Activities like these, carried out under the banner of religion, are morally reprehensible. Hence, it is important that we continue to work to create a world where there is greater religious freedom.

Nevertheless, it is important that tolerance not be confused with truthfulness. My alma mater, the University of Michigan, won the NCAA championship in basketball in 1989. Imagine a Duke fan, who heard me claim that Michigan won the championship in 1989, replied, "Well that is an incredibly intolerant thing to say!" This response is, at best, confusing and blurs an important distinction. Does this statement mean that my communication style is kindness impaired or that my assertion is false? Being a zealous Michigan fan it is possible I was obnoxious, however, the way in which I communicate a statement must be carefully distinguished from its truthfulness.

Similarly, when examining the claims of religious traditions we must be careful not to confuse tolerance and truthfulness. Claiming that it is intolerant to say that "all paths do not lead to the same destination" misses the point. The important issue is the truth or falsity of this assertion.

(2.) A second objection relates to the matter of sincerity. Someone may say, "What a person believes really is not that important. What really matters is the sincerity of their belief." Certainly sincerity is important. However, the sincerity with which one holds a particular belief must be carefully distinguished from its truthfulness. To illustrate this distinction, imagine that you are in a chemistry lab. Your professor announces that your first experiment will involve studying the properties of acids. She places a 500ml Pyrex beaker containing clear liquid on the lab table and says, "This is sulfuric acid." In response to her explanation, imagine that your lab partner, Jim, blurts out, "I don't believe that is sulfuric acid. It looks like water to me." Jim, you discover, is so sincere about his belief that the Pyrex beaker contains water, that he decides to drink it.

What will happen to Jim? Obviously, he will be lucky if he lives long enough to participate in next week's lab once the sulfuric acid finishes off his digestive track. Despite his sincerity, Jim's belief that the beaker contained water did not change the nature of its contents. He may believe with all of his heart that the beaker only contains water but the acid will still kill him. One's belief about an object (or state of affairs) must be carefully distinguished from the actual object or state of affairs. One may be sincere and yet sincerely wrong.

(3.) A third objection relates to the problem of objectivity. Even if one religion is true, and others are false, it is suggested there are no neutral criteria by which one can evaluate religious traditions. If, for example, you ask a Muslim why he rejects Hinduism he will say that it does not agree with the teachings of the Koran. Similarly, if a Buddhist is asked why he rejects Christianity, he will say that it does not square with the teachings of the Buddha.

While it is true that adherents of one tradition may reject the teachings of other religions because they fail to cohere with their own teachings, it does not follow from this that there are no criteria which can be used to evaluate religious traditions. I believe that there are at least five" tradition independent" criteria.[7] These include (1) logical consistency, (2) adequate factual support, (3) experiential relevance, (4) consistency with other fields of knowledge, and (5) moral factors.[8] These criteria are relevant to the evaluation of any theory--whether it be historical, scientific or religious.

At the beginning of this essay I raised the question, "Do all paths lead to same destination?" Our brief examination of the truth-claims of religions traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism has produced no evidence to suggest that all paths lead to the same destination. On the contrary, the mutually exclusive truth-claims different religions suggests precisely the opposite. Hence, if I am to be intellectually honest, I believe the answer to the question I raised at the beginning of the essay is no--all paths do not lead to the same destination. Consequently it is our responsibility to examine the paths before us and make an informed choice.

A Postscript . . .

Some will find my conclusion unsettling. Faced with a myriad of religions, where does one begin? Perhaps I can offer my own experience. From my study of the Christian faith I am persuaded of the truthfulness of its claims. Although I grew up in a Christian family, my personal study began as a freshman at the University of Michigan. I found myself asking a lot of questions such as "How do I know God exists?" "Can I trust the Bible?" Over the course of that year I carefully read much of the New Testament. I was surprised to discover that Christianity provides criteria by which its truth-claims can be evaluated. Permit me to explain.

The central claim of Christianity is that God entered human history 2000 years ago through a man named Jesus Christ who died on a cross between two thieves and rose from the dead three days later. The truthfulness of Christianity depends upon a critical historical event--the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In a first-century letter to a group of Christians the apostle Paul wrote the following about the significance of Christ's resurrection: "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." (I Cor. 15:14) In other words, if Christ did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is false.

Thus, to disprove Christianity one would only need to show Christ was never raised from the dead. Some years ago a skeptic of Christianity named Josh McDowell set out to do precisely this. He wanted to write a book that would refute Christianity. In his book Evidence that Demands a Verdict he writes,

After more than 700 hrs of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history.[9]

As a skeptic of Christianity Josh McDowell not only found the evidence for Christ's resurrection from the dead compelling, but himself became a follower of Jesus Christ. Because Christianity offers criteria by which its truth-claims can be evaluated, this makes it a great place to start one's investigation. Perhaps the best way to begin examining Christianity is to carefully study the four biographical accounts of Christ's life found in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

Copyright (c) 1997 Keith E. Johnson

Keith E. Johnson is a graduate of the University of Michigan (B.S. in Chemical Engineering) and Trinity International University (M.A. in Christian Thought). Keith speaks frequently on religious pluralism and comparative religions on university campuses. He currently serves as the Regional Coordinator on Ongoing Theological Education with the Campus Ministry of CCC and lives in Indianapolis.

ENDNOTES

1 See John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale, 1989). Space considerations do not permit me to interact with Hick's pluralistic hypothesis. For an evaluation of Hick's hypothesis see Harold A. Netland, Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1991), 196-233.

2 It is also worth noting that viewing religious language in this way involves a radical reinterpretation of religious language that the adherents of most religious traditions would find unacceptable. Even if some adherents hold that religious beliefs express, in a metaphorical way, their subjective emotional states certainly not all adherents do. Many, I suspect, believe that their religious doctrines intend to describe objective realities.

3 Sigmund Freud. The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott, rev. James Strachey (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 47-48.

4 Oxford scholar Don Cupitt, for example, claims that the truth of religion is like the truth of art. See Don Cupitt, "The Death of Truth," New Statesman, April 5, 1991, 23-24.

5 Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth (New York: MacMillan, 1990), 2-5.

6 Ibid., 3.

7 This is not to suggest the evaluation of religious truth-claims is an easy task. Many complicated epistemological issues arise when one attempts to demonstrate the truthfulness of religious beliefs. Nevertheless, I do believe it is possible to provide warrant for religious truth-claims. For a helpful discussion of issues related to providing warrant for truth-claims in religion see Basil Mitchell, The Justification of Religious Belief. New York: Seabury, 1973.

8 A discussion of these criteria is outside the scope of this article, however, others have discussed them in detail as they relate to the evaluation of religious traditions. See Harold A. Netland, Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1991), 151- 95.

9 Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith, rev. ed. (San Bernardino: Here's Life, 1979), 179. -Email this to a friend

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A Three-Pronged Defense
of Salvific Exclusivism
in a Pluralistic World

by Brad Johnson

Brad Johnson is a Teaching / Research Assistant in the Theology and Philosophy Departments of Cincinnati Bible College & Seminary. Much of his research revolves around inter-religious dialog, philosophical apologetics, and the interplay of Christology upon both. He can be reached through electronic mail at BAJ75@aol.com

The author defines and examines the basic arguments behind the classical approaches to other religions, exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Of primary interest are the validity of inherent "truth claims" in each religion. He concludes that, within a Christian paradigm, a re-defined exclusivisism meets an established philosophical, biblical, and ethical criteria, thus providing reasonability and warrant.

Religious diversity is nothing new. For example, while the ancient Assyrians were bowing before the war god Ashur, the Indian Brahmin priests were worshiping Agni, the fire god. While Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah thundered warnings of impendingjudgment upon Judah, Confucius was teaching the virtues of chun-tzu.{1} Twentieth-century globalization has, however, prompted a veritable renaissance of cultural knowledge and adaptation, particularly, but not exclusively{2}, in the West. Today there is an unprecedented accessibility to different religious traditions and cultures. Religious plurality is no longer a theory or a distant phenomenon; in fact, it is virtually impossible to live in a major Western city without coming into contact withsome aspect of a non-Western religion. With the radical flux of immigration, communication and transportation, the world is, in essence, much smaller than it was a century previous ago.

Even more, non-Western religions are not simply surviving in the West; they are, indeed, thriving. Dr. Yvonne Haddad, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, has noted that the current rate of birth, conversion, and immigration of about twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand Muslims a year"make it possible to predict that by the first decade of the twenty-first century Islam will be the second largest religious community in the United States."{3}

This trend is not confined solely to North America. In France, for example, Islam is second only to Roman Catholicism, with Protestantism in third.

The consequence of this religious and cultural meshing is not lost, nor is something new, to Christianity. Born into a hybrid world of first-century Hellenism and Judaism, Christianity has, from its onset, adapted and contextualized in regard to its particular cultural or historical circumstance and setting. Contemporary religious plurality, though, has forced a renewed fervor of questions concerning the "key" tenet of the Christian faith, namely the role and/or necessity of Jesus Christ in salvation.

The questions are age-old, and yet they are alive as ever. For example, it is not at all uncommon to hear questions such as: "In the context of religious plurality, how can I say that Christ is the definitive self-revelation of God? If Christ is so crucial, why have not more followers of the world's religions been attracted to him? If only one-third of the world's population professes faith in Christ, what is Christ's relationship to the other two-thirds? Will the majority be excluded from salvation? Is Jesus a savior, one among many, or is he the unique Savior of the world?"{4} Clearly, one's Christology is the key component of one's theology of religions.

What follows is a summary and critique of the three major positions developed in response to religious plurality -- exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. As is the case with any summary, only certain pillars of each (most notably, Christology) will be showcased and discussed. This is not,however, to negate the importance of unmentioned nuances. As it will become clear, this emphasis necessitates the primary focus upon the two polar positions, exclusivism and pluralism. When the dust settles, so to speak, this writer's contention is that an exclusive understanding of Christian salvation is explicitly biblical, morally and philosophically sound, and thus conducive to the inter-religious dialog key to sustaining any sort of cultural viability in the twenty-first century and beyond.

A definition of terms, however, is of primary importance. More to the point, an identification of the three positions is apropos. Classifications within religion are rooted in history. Prior to the 1980s, the three primary positions concerning other religionswere "discontinuity" (Hendrick Kraemer), fulfillment (John Farquhar), and mutual appreciation (William Hocking).{5} However, the respective works of Alan Race and Gavin D'Costa have since laid the foundation for the current three-fold classification typicalof the current nature of the debate.{6}

The following is a succinct explanation of the central characters and ideas behind each position. The exclusivist position has been the dominant position of the church as a whole through much of its history until the Enlightenment. Major representatives include Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Hendrick Kraemer, D.A. Carson, William Lane Craig, and R. Douglas Geivett.

Key to this position is the understanding of God's general and special revelations. God is manifested through creation (general revelation), but Man has responded by freely going against this revelation and, thus, stands guilty before a holy God. However, God has demonstrated a reconciliatory mercy through His word and deed, fulfilled completely in Jesus Christ. The historical person of Jesus, then, is the unique, final, decisive, and normative self-revelation of God to Man (special revelation). Exclusivists believe that Jesus Christ is the sole criterion by which all religions, including Christianity, should be understood and evaluated. Calvin Shenk explains:

Christ did not come just to make a contribution to the religious storehouse of knowledge. The revelation which he brought is the ultimate standard. Since in Christ alone is salvation and truth, many religious paths do not adequately reflect the way of God and do not lead to truth and life. Jesus is not, therefore, just the greatest lord among other lords. There is no other lord besides him.{7}

Specific texts often employed by exclusivists include Acts 4:12; John 14:6; 1 Corinthians 3:11; and 1 Timothy 2:5-6.

The challenge within this stance is to discern and balance the universal goal of salvation with the particular nature of salvation in Christ. This challenge seems to be the dividing lineamong the range of options inherent exclusivism. Some, like Harold Lindsell, can state emphatically, "God does not reveal Himself redemptively through other means than . . . through His children's missionary activity to a lost world."{8} Another option is the pessimistic agnostic position toward the salvific state of the unevangelized. Adherents of this particular view posit special revelation as explicitly necessary for salvation and choose to go no further in their conclusions than what the Bible explicitly reads. Dennis Olkholm has pointed out, however, that "this agnostic stance toward the unevangelized can also be construed optimistically, though such optimism can only be held tentatively as a secondary theme, never to encroach on or revise the salvation-history scheme."{9} More will be made of this option further in this study.

Inclusivism is a blanket term to characterize a sort of "middle way" between exclusivism and pluralism. Most prominent within mainline Protestantism and post-Vatican II Catholicism, its notable proponents (in one formor another) include Karl Rahner, Raimundo Panikkar and Stanley Samartha{10}, and Hans Kung. Evangelical theologians such as Clark Pinnock, Norman Anderson, and John Sanders have also identified themselves with this position. Herein, the agnosticism associated with the latter option above is replaced with outright optimism. Christian salvation is not confined to the historical or geographic extent special revelation has spread, rather it must be available to all cultures, irrespective of age or geography.Salvation is still posited wholly in Christ and his salvific work. Specific knowledge of this work, however, is not necessary for the effect (i.e., salvation) to apply to those within a different religious culture who have responded to the general revelation available. Once again, Shenk explains:

Inclusivists want to avoid monopolizing the gospel of redemption. They acknowledge the possibility of salvation outside of Christian faith or outside the walls of the visible church, but the agent of such salvation is Christ, and the revelation in Jesus is definitive and normative for assessing that salvation. Jesus Christ is believed to be the center, and other ways are evaluated by how they relate to him. Other religions are not just a preparation for Christ, but Christ is actually present in them.{11}

The fundamental differences between exclusivism and inclusivism, differences that will be examined in more detail later, are the nature and the content of "saving faith." The former emphasizes explicit faith while the latter points to an implicit faith.

Differences abound within the inclusivist position as well, especially in regard to the understanding of Christ's inherent place in every religion. Some inclusivists focus only on individuals who have, out of no fault of their own, not heard the gospel. Hence, a normative understanding of evangelism is operative. Others, on the other hand, point out that the role of Christian missions is not conversion, as such, but to help people discover and unveil the Christ already within their religious tradition.

Finally, there is the pluralist position. This is undoubtedly the most difficult of the three to define in any general sense. The spectrum of pluralistic thought is as wide as it is long. The focusof this particular study will examine the contributions of its key figures: Paul Knitter, John Hick, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Just as in the previous positions, the interpretative range within just these three individuals varies. It is fitting, however, to focus primarily on them since they are the most vocal and influential figures espousing pluralism today.

Hick and Knitter argue the case for pluralism on the following grounds: (1) ethically, it is the only way to promote justice in an intolerant world; (2) in terms of the "ineffability of religious experience," so no religion can claim an absolutist stance; and (3) through the understanding that historical and cultural contexts must be the filter for any absolute religious claim.{12} Hick has argued that all world religions attempt to relate to the unknowable Ultimate Reality (or, the Real), but because of their various cultural and historical contexts these attempts are all naturally different. Hence the various conceptions of the Real and the salvation(s) sought. The common soteriological goal, toward which all religions strive, though, is rooted in the desire to transcend self-centeredness and, in turn, encounter a new (unexplainable) experience with the Real. But, he emphatically emphasizes the fact that there is "no public evidence that any one religion is soteriologically unique or superior to others and thus has closer access to Ultimate Reality."{13}

Therefore, with pluralism, Christ is no more definitive or normative than any religious figure or concept. Or, as Andrew Kirk explains, "Rather than confessing that Jesus Christ is the one Lord over all, this view asserts that the one Lord who has manifested himself in other names is also known as Jesus."{14} By "crossing the Rubicon," as Hick and Knitter illustrate, Christians are encouraged to abandon any claim of Christian uniqueness and the possibility of absolute revelation, accepting the fact that the Christian faith is one among many options.{15}

This is the ideological landscape, or perhaps playing field is more appropriate. What follows is a condensed three-pronged examination in which the veracity of the positions are examined according to (1) biblical data and exegesis, (2) philosophical veracity, and (3) moral status. None of the criteria are independent of the other. In other words, one's ultimate conclusion concerning which position seems most appropriate must be judged according to its ability to satisfy all three components.

In his recent book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age, John Hick attempts to use biblical data to support his supposition that the Incarnation was a metaphor created by the early church. He has presented three fundamental reasons for rejecting the traditional Chalcedonian-understanding of incarnation.

First, Hick concludes that if "Jesus was . . . the eternal creator God become man, then it becomes very difficult indeed to treat Jesus, the New Testament, and Christian faith as being on the same level as phenomena from other religious traditions."{16} This statement is most undoubtedly true. The Christian posits Jesus as the normative rule by which all religious phenomena and traditions are evaluated. Hick, however, willingly accepts the consequences he recognizes in the traditional affirmation; therefore, he opts for pluralism and is then forced to tweak traditional Christology.

Second, Hick finds the notion of one person truly being God and Man incoherent. "That Jesus was God the Son incarnate is not literally true, since it has no literal meaning, but it is an application to Jesus of a mythical concept whose function is analogous to that of the notion of divine sonship ascribed in the ancient world to a king."{17} Hick maintains that the traditional understanding of the Incarnation isnot a logical contradiction, but rather a muddled statement that has no meaning{18}. He writes, "It is logically permissible to believe anything that is not self-contradictory; nevertheless, not everything that is not self-contradictory makes good religious sense."{19} Therefore, to Hick, since a literal interpretation has no religious significance or sense, it must be replaced with a metaphorical understanding. More will be said of the philosophical fallacy underlying this conclusion.

Third, Hick relies exclusively on the liberal wing of Christian New Testament scholarship. Hick contends that the brunt of scholarship proves that Jesus never thought of himself as divine, nor did his early believers. The doctrine, in fact, was a later development of the early church.

The fundamental problem with Hick's argument is his reliance solely on interpretations that support his supposition. He notes that "even conservative New Testament scholars, who are personally orthodox in their beliefs, are agreed today that Jesus did not teach that he was God."{20} This is both outright false and irrelevant. It is a fundamental flaw to assert that the otherwise orthodox scholars he cites (i.e. Moule, Dunn, and Ramsay) are at all representative of the whole of conservative scholarship. There is a wealth of evidence to the contrary supporting the claim that Jesus both regarded himself as God and that this self-understanding was recognized, and that the New Testament attestation of both is historically valid.{21} Furthermore, a high Christology is seen even within the minimum sayings dubbed authentic by several of the radical critics Hick cites.{22} Oscar Cullman has, thus concluded:

Our investigation of the Christological utilization of kyrios, 'Logos,' and 'Son of God' has already shown that on the basis of the Christological views connected with these titles the New Testament could [emphasis his] designate Jesus as 'God'. . . . The fundamental answer to the question whether the New Testament teaches Christ's 'deity' is therefore 'Yes.'{23}

The approach of Paul Knitter in his landmark work, No Other Name: A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions, falters on similar exegetical grounds. Herein, he argues for a theocentric Christology that posits Christ as normative for the Christian experience, but non-absolute in any way. This foray into philosophy and the nature of truth will be discussed shortly. His use of Scripture to support his claim that "exclusivity claims," such as Acts 4:12 and John 1:14, are a sort of love language is dubious at best, and outright wrong at worst. While one can readily agree that the New Testament is filled with phrases of adoration and praise, it simply does not follow that there are no ontological implications to their praise.Does it follow, then, from Knitter's reasoning that all religious language should be understood in a non-cognitive fashion? Furthermore, he garners no textual support for his position that his love language was not intended to rule out the possibility of other saviors and lords apart from Jesus. The conclusion of Harold Netland seems appropriate when weighed with the evidence Knitter offers:

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the major reason for regarding such statements as noncognitive expressions of one's devotion and not as true-or-false assertions about actual states of affairs is a resolute unwillingness to accept the perceived undesirable ontological implications which follow if they are taken in their most normal, straightforward sense.{24}

In his most recent book, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility, Knitter attempts to answer the critics concerning his pluralist -- although he now prefers "corelational"{25} -- position. There is much to applaud in this honest examination of his previous work, particularly his strong emphasis on global responsibility. However, the brunt of his Christology remains unchanged. While maintaining his original assertion that the exclusive claims in Scripture are a "confessional language," Knitter borrows John A.T. Robinson's explanation concerning one of the most clear exclusive claims, Acts 4:12. Knitter agrees with Robinson that the context of this claim, that is, in whose power had Peter and John just healed the crippled man, is "not one of comparative religion but of faith healing."{26} According to Knitter and Robinson the point is to show that the power of healing resides in the name of Christ, not Peter and John. Knitter concludes, "The strength, then, is on the saving power [emphasis his] mediated by the name of Jesus, not on the exclusivity of the name."{27}

Knitter and Robinson miss the eschatological point of the apostles' declaration, though. Beginning with Peter's sermon on Pentecost (Acts 2), kyrios [Lord] is used simultaneously for God and for the exalted Jesus. The word appears in several quotations from the Septuagint for God (2:20, 21, 25, 34; 3:22; 4:26). In 3:19, the word is used to refer directly to God (2:39; 4:29l cf. 4:24; 7:31, 33). Leon Ladd notes, "This usage goes back to the Septuagint where kyrios is the translation not only of Adonai but the ineffable covenant name Yahweh. It is therefore amazing to find the term used at the same time of both Jesus and God. Not only is Jesus, like God, kyrios; the term is used both of God and the exalted Jesus in practically interchangeable contexts."{28} Furthermore, Peter employs the language from Joel that speaks of the "Day of the Lord" [Yahweh] and of calling on the name of the Lord for salvation, a quotation that is explicitly linked with Acts 4:10, 12. The point of these verses, then, is not simply to show the source of physical healing, but to point back to the theme throughout Acts, namely that Jesus is Lord (exclusive) and the apostles are His witnesses (1:6-8).

Therefore, the healings throughout Acts are not representative simply of healing power alone. They, in fact, have their theological roots in the language of Mark 2 in which Jesus posits his authority to forgive sins along with his authority to heal disease. Thus, in Acts the apostolic healings are a witness to what the glorified Christ, discussed in 2:14ff, has accomplished in regard to forgiveness and his "already/not yet" eschatological kingdom.{29} It is only because Jesus is regarded as "Lord" that Christians can make definitive statements concerning His person and His salvific work.

Moreover, there is a strong sense of dissatisfaction emanating from the pluralist camp itself. Several pluralists have, indeed, criticized the radical segments for playing too loose with their Christology.{30} Mary Ann Stenger comments on this "to-each-his/her-own" stance: "But if we look at this stance more deeply, we are also dissatisfied with an unthought-out, pure relativism."{31}

The normative understanding of Christ, as attested by Scripture, is that the fullness of deity was present in the human Jesus (Colossians 1:19; John 1:1,14), hence Jesus is the ultimate self-revelation of God (John 14:9-10; Hebrews 1:1-3). Even more, he is the one and only Savior of sinners, the mediator between God and Man (1 Timothy 2:5). There is no other name by which salvation is available (Acts 4:12). Jesus' death is a once-and-for-all reconciliation and justification (1 Peter 3:1; Romans 3:21-26). Acceptance of this death by faith is the operative and saving response explicitly taught. The question remains, though, is this faith explicit or implicit?

Clark Pinnock and John Sanders have arisen as two of the most prominent evangelical spokesmen in regard to the inclusivist position. Sanders firmly believes that "people can receive the gift of salvation without knowing the giver or the precise nature of the gift."{32} Pinnock affirms this conviction, "Faith in God is what saves, not possessing certain minimum information."{33} At one level, the exclusivist agrees with the latter; mere knowledge does not equal salvation. However, this position slips very close to a universalism that affirms biblical faith has no content or object.

This particular study will not attempt to fully reconcile the two themes in tension throughout Scripture: Jesus is Lord (exclusive) of all (inclusive). The argument from general revelation used by inclusivists must be balanced and held in tension with the biblical description of the power and ontological effect of sin. Romans 1:20 teaches that all people bear a responsibility for their sin of distorting general revelation. Neither Gentile nor Jew is without guilt (Romans 2:14-16). More pointedly, Paul states in Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." The Bible does not pretend to cast those who have not heard as innocent.

However, Romans 5:12-21 also teaches that if sin and death are universal, so are grace and life. Awareness of the unknown "logos," to put it in inclusivist terms, however, does not constitute salvation. Grace is only effected upon those who call for mercy (see 1 Corinthians 15:10-11; 2 Corinthians 6:1; Philippians 2:12-13). Salvation, then, is not a result of one's pious response to general revelation (or in a pious response to special revelation for that matter!), but only because of the grace of Christ. First Timothy emphasizes that God's universal desire to save man is demonstrated in the particularity of Christ's death.

The question remains, however, is an explicit faith and understanding of Christ necessary? In Romans 10:9-10, Paul appears to stress an explicit confession that Jesus is Lord and acceptance of his resurrection. By all rights, this appears as an "epistemological necessity."{34} John Sanders, however, disagrees on the basis of logic. He contends that the text is similar to the conditional statement, "If it rains, then the sidewalk will get wet." D.A. Carson explains:

If the protasis is true, the apodosis follows: if it rains, the sidewalk is wet, and if you confess and believe, you are saved. But it does not follow that if you negate the protasis, the apodosis is negated. If it does not rain, it does not necessarily follow that the sidewalk is not wet, for it might have been soaked in some other way, e.g., by a sprinkling system. Similarly, if you do not confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and if you do not believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, it does not necessarily follow that you are not saved.{35}

Hence the necessity of an examination of the philosophical grounds of exclusivism. In other words, in order to prove the thesis that an exclusive faith is biblically explicit, one must also show that it is philosophically (and, as shall be demonstrated, morally) sound.

Philosophically, the above argument is logically valid. "If A, then B" conditional statements do not necessarily guarantee the truth of their respective "If not A, then not B" conditional statements. At first glance, the philosophical ground of exclusivism is crumbling. However, a second glance shows that the inclusivist's appeal to logic collapses upon itself. There is a vital classical exception to the rule, though. If all the members of class A are identical to the members of class B, and the conditional "If A, then B" is true, so is "If not A, then not B." In other words, if all those who confess Jesus as Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead constitute class A, and all those who are saved constitute class B, and if the members of A and B are the same, it is entirely logical to believe that if you do not confess Jesus as Lord and do not believe that God raised him from the dead you are not saved.{36}

Granted, both the exclusivist and inclusivist must assume that the two classes either do or do not respectively coincide. The emphasis Paul places on the value of "knowledge" in verses 9-10, 14-15 of this same chapter seems to show him with the same understanding that an explicit faith is, at the very least, normative. The point thus far is not to say that an exclusive understanding of Christian salvation necessarily exempts individuals with only an "implicit faith" wholesale. However, the weight of the biblical data, in accordance with sound philosophical reasoning, supports an explicit faith response to Christ, per the above thesis. The question of the state of the unevangelized, in the end, must fall into the hands of a sovereign God. Perhaps, it is apt to suggest that Christian witness should take precedent over Christian speculation concerning the inexplicit nature of the Bible's message concerning the salvific state of the unevangelized. The philosophical possibility that grace extends to implicit faith is, after all, only a theoretical possibility.

The philosophical debate is also not lost on the pluralist position. The brunt of the following philosophical analysis squares upon the normative pluralist understanding and application of "truth," particularly soteriological religious truth. The philosophical objections that pluralists point to regarding the normative understanding of the Incarnation cause inclusivists and exclusivists to unite in their understanding of a normative Christology. Neither Hick nor Knitter is acquiescent to the notion of the full divinity of Jesus.

Knitter's contention is clear: "To identify the Infinite [God] with anything finite -- that is, to contain and limit the Divine to any one human form or mediation -- has biblically and traditionally been called idolatry."{37} In his understanding, one can completely affirm statements like Colossians 2:9 -- "For in Him [Jesus] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" -- by acknowledging the fact that the fullness of Jesus' body was divine, but it by no means contained the infinite entirety of God.{38} Once again, Knitter quotes John Robinson for support, "Christians can and must proclaim that Jesus is totus Deus -- totally divine, but they cannot claim that Jesus is totum Dei -- the totality of the divine."{39} Once again, though, Knitter and Robinson miss an important Christological focus of the New Testament. Second, Knitter and Robinson make the erroneous assumption that eternal non-being, that is spirit, must take up corporeal space.In addition, neither is far from the argument espoused by John Hick against the orthodox view of the Incarnation.

As mentioned, while Hick maintains that the Incarnation is not a formal logical contradiction, it is void of meaning. Furthermore, he insists that it will havemeaning only if the exact relationship between Jesus' humanity and his deity can be "intelligently" identified.{40} He remains unconvinced by the evidence that pre-Easter Christology entailed an understanding of Jesus' divinity, as well as by the classical Chalcedonian formulation: (1) Jesus is fully man and (2) Jesus is fully God. This formulation is believable if (a) there are good reasons to believe that (1) and (2) are both true and (b) there are no good reasons to think that (1) and (2) cannot be true. The difficulty, or even impossibility, of explaining the union of the two is not a good reason to think the union is false. Hick does not agree with the union of the two because jointly they imply (3) Jesus is the only Savior.{41} He, in fact, concedes this fact, "If [Jesus] was indeed incarnate, Christianity is the only religion founded by God in person, and must be uniquely superior to all other religions."{42} His "official" reason that the union of (1) and (2) is false is that the entailing uniqueness of Christianity is not compatible with the "new global consciousness of our time."{43} This objection, however, smacks of twentieth-century sensibilities inhibiting what an omnipotent, sovereign God could logically do.

The pluralist feels justified in tweaking theology, to put it rather negatively, because of the underlying postmodernism in their understanding of (bi-level) truth. As the scope of this particular study is primarily Christological, a detailed critique of the general pluralistic approach to evaluating religious truth is not possible.{44} A few comments, though, are warranted.

Christian exclusivity (or at least normative Christology) is based on the (western) principle of non-contradiction, that is the assumption that two or more incompatible assertions cannot all be true. Admittedly, this principle is not universally accepted. In Hinduism, for instance, there is the understanding that dharma (the fundamental way of life) may differ for individuals. Zen Buddhist meditation uses the koan (an irrational riddle or phrase) to compel the individual to move past such cognitive limitations as non-contradiction.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith has fused his understanding of theological truth with this approach when he writes "in all ultimate matters, truth lies not in an either-or but in a both-and."{45} Paul Knitter does the same thing when he borrows John A.T. Robinson's terminology concerning the "two-eyed" nature of truth. Herein, Robinson compares Christianity and Hinduism, maintaining that the religious Ultimate is both personal (Christianity) and nonpersonal (Hinduism). Although he acknowledges the differences between religions, and refuses to advocate naive syncretism, but calls for a vague "unitive pluralism" that finds unity amidst the diversity.{46}

One of the fundamental understandings of postmodern philosophy is that objective truth is not "out there" to be discovered. It is,in fact, impossible to discover because of the cultural limitations of language. At best, language simply constructs one's personal reality; at worst, it is manipulative. Any attempt to "propose totalizing metanarratives that define and legitimize Reality are denounced as oppressive."{47} Only the Self is the source of personal truth and reality; furthermore, this truth and reality is real only so far as it is actively manifested. Truth, then, is entirely personally pragmatic. Something is only "true" so far as one lives it.{48}

Volumes of work are continually devoted to this ever-growing debate that has spread from the halls of academia to everyday culture. Robert Cook and Charles Taylor have identified one fundamental flaw of postmodernism. Cook has charged Hick with postmodernism{49}, and not backed down despite serious objections from Hick.Hick's response pointed out that several postmodernists have attacked his arguments as creating the sort of metanarrative postmodernism argues against: "there is one large, overarching explanation that claims to handle all religious phenomena, and that therefore fails to recognize the sheer diversity of opinion and outlook in the world."{50} Cook's rejoinder is key, however. He claims that Hick's skepticism that any religion can provide a metanarrative that truly explains reality is grounded in postmodernism. The fact that he creates a metanarrative in the process only identifies the fundamental flaw of postmodernism itself. Cook points out that "as soon as it makes an absolute claim that all truth claims are relative, it has forged its own metanarrative."{51} Charles Taylor has come to the similar conclusion that "to believe something is to hold it to be true; and, indeed, one cannot consciously manipulate one's beliefs for motives other than their seeming true to us."{52}

Regardless, the bare bones of the pluralist contention are important. Namely, no religious tradition can monopolize religious truth; hence, adherents of various religious traditions can and should be willing to listen to, and learn from, other traditions. As shall be demonstrated below, Christian exclusivism does not affirm that all available religious truth is found within Christianity. Calvin Shenk makes an important distinction between the truth inherent in Jesus (as Lord), and the imperfections inherent in religion itself, including Christianity.{53} Understanding this point of distinction is invaluable to the conclusion of this study.

Exclusive claims, however, are a necessary component of religion itself. For the most part, pluralists are glad to accept differences between religions, but they are not willing to concede that individuals recognize these differences as "exclusive"in a soteriological sense. While this methodology may hold true, to a certain extent, in matters of peripheral doctrinal differences, and even cultural paradigms, it is highly unreasonable (perhaps untenable) to necessitate the removal of the traditional understanding of Jesus as Lord as "the only way to salvation." Hence, the pluralist imperative to re-interpret Christology. Such truth claims are not inherently wrong, though. Indeed, although no ally to the exclusivist position, Raimundo Panikkar recognizes the unavoidable nature of such "truth claims" within religion:

A believing member of a religion in one way or another considers his religion to be true. Now, the claim to truth has a certain built-in exclusivity. If a given statement is true, its contradictory cannot also be true. And if a certain human tradition claims to offer a universal context for truth, anything contrary to that "universal truth" will have to be declared false.{54}

The exclusivist insistence that a normative Christology is explicitly biblical and thus reasonable to affirm in a Christian context has resulted in scathing indictments, claiming such a position is ethically immoral and utterly detrimental to fruitful dialog. Consider the following statement by John Hick:

[Exclusivism], with its baleful historical influence, in validating centuries of anti-semitism, the colonial exploitation by Christian Europe of what today we call the third world, and the subordination of women within a strongly patriarchal religious system, not only causes misgivings among many Christians but also alarms many of our non-Christian neighbours, creating invisible but powerful barriers within the human community.{55}

Granted, the previous polemic is one of the harshest available, but it is closely representative of the cartoonish understanding of the exclusivist position. The primary reason for this particularwriter's interest on the particular topic is the black eye this wing of Christianity has at the hands of those standing as morally and ethically superior. Is the exclusivist position inherently immoral or detrimental to dialog, though?

There are two important clarifications necessary concerning the moral implications of exclusivist truth claims. First, there is a difference between interacting with people and evaluating truth claims. The attacks upon exclusivism are often due to an irresponsible conviction that dissent from someone else's beliefs -- in favor of the truthfulness of one's own -- is intolerant and arrogant. Brad Stetson identifies that this is primarily rooted in mistakenly positing a necessary connection between (1) believing Christianity true and other religions untrue and (2) mistreating and disrespecting non-Christians.{56} There is simply no necessary truth in the statement that disagreement entails negative treatment. Admittedly, though, Church history is filled with accounts of brutality and negativity;however, the fact that exclusivism is tied to these episodes may be less a matter of theological implication than it is a socio-historical phenomenon.

Moreover, the brutality and negativity is not a direct corollary of the teaching and ethic espoused by Jesus. In other words, the ignorance and failure of a teacher'sfollowers does not necessitate an inadequate message. On the contrary, when a message stands directly opposed to the actions of the followers, as does the love-motivated ethic of Jesus with brutality, fault must lie squarely on the offenders shoulders and not regarded as a necessary contingent result of the message.

With this said, though, the postmodern understanding of pragmatic truth, while not entirely convincing, is beneficial and a much-needed emphasis in regard to the Christian witness Jesus calls for. James 1:22ff is emphatic in this regard: "But prove yourself doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves." He goes on to posit a clear connection between faith and action. Individual Christians are encouraged to personalize such an understanding and strive to live the faith they have been called to proclaim.

The disparaging cries against exclusivism, then, are not without bearing or history. This writer suggests, though, that the pluralists that level the cries against exclusivism should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, to borrow a cliché. Not every exclusivist is, or has been, a misogynist, a racist, or an imperialist; hence it stands to reason that the wholesale casting of the position as "immoral" is primarily a dramatic attempt at over-generalization.

Even more, if truth is pragmatic (as the postmodernist and pluralist affirms), would not the exclusivist be warranted in his/her belief that exclusivism is true (at least for that individual)?Perhaps the point of Christian witness, including dialog, is less a pointing to an "outside truth," as such, but to demonstrate both the experiential and evidential plausibility of one's particular, exclusivist belief that Jesus is Lord of all. This does not reject the notion of an objective truth but displaces the myth that epistemological certainty regarding such truth is feasible this side of the grave. Biblical faith "in that which is unseen," as theEpistle to the Hebrews describes it, is an existential certainty. That is, it is a certainty, particularly in one's salvation in Christ, evidenced in one's "reasonable" belief ­ albeit, not certainty ­ that Scripture is divinely authoritative. The grounds for such a reasonable belief, admittedly, will vary between individuals, as will many of the beliefs themselves. This approach, indeed, tiptoes on the line between modernity and postmodernism, andneither is it entirely defined, but perhaps it is an approach in the right direction.{57}

The form of witness this approach espouses is evident most clearly in a dialog that pluralists and inclusivists seem to think they have monopolized. The biblical example of such a witness necessitates the following attitudes:understanding, respect, humility, tolerance, and vulnerability. Each of the characteristics is, first, founded within the radical motivation of love that Jesus clearly emphasizes. They are, second, contingent upon the understanding that Jesus isthe Christian's personal criteria of truth; Christianity is not. Faith in the divine, not in religion, is the path to healthy dialog between religions. Furthermore, this understanding accepts and requires that faith is personalized while the person, the work and the message of Jesus remain the same. This (pragmatic, if you will) criteria is what prevents a hapless fideism that postmodern Christianity often slips into.

Exclusivist Christians have simply chosen to follow the way by which they know and interpret truth, Jesus. Shenk's first-person narrative is helpful:

We do not claim to know exhaustively, but we claim to be on the way. We do not hesitate to invite others to join us as we press toward fuller understanding of the truth. . . . Jesus is the truth, but not everything that Christians have claimed is true. Christians have been nearsighted and parochial or have married truth and power and have become oppressive. We deeply regret that some of what Christians have presented as truth is distorted. But limited knowledge or distortion should not cause us to slip into an easy relativism or distortion which debunks what is valid. Not that all we believe is distortion.{58}

Shenk goes on to describe dialog in three levels. First, there is the "living dialog." This is a relational, day-to-day interaction with persons of a different faith. A second level is working with and toward common goals with persons of a different faith -- hence, exclusivists can solidly affirm the attempts of Paul Knitter, in his most recent work, to work with other religions for social justice. The third level is a formal dialog that attempts to understand and share the fundamental similarities and differences between the respective faiths represented, evaluating, and assimilating when necessary, each from one's criterion of truth.{59} Because faith in Jesus as Lord is the cornerstone of the Christian faith, it seems to reason (per the arguments above) that the primary aspect of faith pluralists seem willing to do away with is the utmost important aspect to maintain.

The debates and lines between exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism will probably intensify before they subside. Just as mutual understanding is necessary between faiths, this writer is convinced that similar understanding would be beneficial in regard to the respective positions. Attitudes, caricatures, and misconceptions are abounding, and will continue as long as the debate proliferates. This study is but one attempt out of many to balance a panoramic understanding of the three positionsto religions with an obvious conviction that one position is particularly valid. Moreover, this particular study has contended that despite the polemic to the contrary, the exclusive nature of believing in "Jesus as Lord" for salvation is explicitly biblical, philosophically and morally valid, and does not necessarily inhibit inter-faith dialog.

Copyright © 1998 Brad Johnson. Used by permission of the author.

Endnotes

{1} Harold Netland, Dissonant Voices (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 4.

{2} See Paul Hiebert, "Christianity in a World of Religious Turmoil," World Evangelization 16 (May-June 1989): 19. Herein, Hiebert notes that 41% of the population of Singapore is Buddhist, 18% Christian, 17% Muslim, 5% Hindu, and 17% secularist.

{3} Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Adair T. Lummis, Islamic Values in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 3.

{4} Examples taken from Calvin E. Shenk's Who Do You Say That I Am? (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1997), 32.

{5} Hendrick Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938); John Nicol Farquhar, The Crown of Hinduism (London: Oxford, 1913); William Hocking, Re-thinking Missions: A Layperson's Inquirty After 100 Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932).

{6} Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982); Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Other Religions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).

{7} Calvin Shenk, 35.

{8} Harold Lindsell, A Christian Philosophy of Missions (Wheaton: Van Kampen Press, 1949), 117.

{9} "Introduction" in Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, ed. Dennis Olkholm and Timothy R. Phillips (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 20.

{10} Alan Race and Gavin D'Costa contend they both are essentially still inclusivists, although Paul Knitter disagrees. See Race, 70-106; D'Costa, 106; Paul Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), xiii.

{11} Shenk, 43.

{12} John Hick and Paul Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987), vii-xii.

{13} Olkholm and Phillips, 17.

{14} J. Andrew Kirk, Loosing the Chains: Religion as Opium and Liberation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), 11.

{15} Hick and Knitter, viii.

{16} Netland, 242. Harold Netland is referring especially to John Hick's article, "Jesus and the World Religions," in The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1977), 172.

{17} Hick, "Jesus and the World Religions," 178.

{18} John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 103-4, 106.

{19} Ibid., 104.

{20} "Response to R. Douglas Geivett and W. Gary Phillips," in Four Views on Salvation, 249.

{21} A few resources include: F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents -- Are They Historical? 5th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982); I. Howard Marshall, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979); N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); Gregory A Boyd Cynic Sage or Son of God: Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies (Colorado Springs: Bridgeport, 1995); Th six-volume series of of the Gospels Research Project of Tyndale House is technical but beneficial. Entitled Gospel Perspectives, and published by Sheffield University's JSOT Press, this series is summarized by Craig Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downer's Grove, IL; InterVarsity, 1987).

{22} See the following works concerning the "Son of Man" sayings that should, by the critics' use of the criterion of dissimilarity, be judged no less authentic that all other sayings judged authentic using this criterion: Oscar Cullman, The Christology of the New Testament (London: SCM, 1959), 137-92; I. Howard Marshall, The Origins of New Testament Christology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1976, 1990), 63-82. See also Royce Gordon Gruenler's approach to the texts found authentic using the criterion of dissimilarity in New Approaches to Jesus and the Gospels: APhenomological and Exegetical Study of Synoptic Christology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982).

{23} Oscar Cullman, 306.

{24} Netland, 260.

{25} Paul Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 1.

{26} Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, 69; John A.T. Robinson, Truth is Two-Eyed (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979), 105.

{27} Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, 70.

{28} Leon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 339.

{29} For an excellent overview of this eschatological tension see C. Marvin Pate's The End of the Age Has Come: The Theology of Paul (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).

{30} See esp. Judith Berling's quoting of Peter Phan in A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 30.

{31} quoted in Ibid., 31.

{32} John Sanders, No Other Name: An Investigation Into the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 255.

{33} Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finalty of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 158.

{34} D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 312.

{35} Ibid., 312.

{36} See Ronald Nash's development of this similar logical pattern in Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 145.

{37} Ibid., 73.

{38} For a remarkably similar discussion concerning this limited kenosis of God, from the perspective of Christianity Buddhism see Donald Guthrie's Spirituality and Emptiness (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991), 9-30, 53-78.

{39} Knitter, Jesus and Other Names, 74; Robinson, 104.

{40} Hick, Metaphor of God Incarnate, 3.

{41} I am indebted to Geivett and Phillips in regard to this formulation. See their article "Response to John Hick" in 4 Views on Salvation, 74-5.

{42} Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, ix.

{43} Ibid., 7.

{44} There are several interesting and thought-provoking studies available concerning the philosophical criteria for evaluating truth claims and religious traditions. See especially Brad Stetson, Pluralism and Particularity in Religious Belief (London: Praeger, 1994), 36-49; Keith Yandell, Christianity and Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984); R. Douglas Geivett, "John Hick's Approach to Religious Pluralism," Proceedings of the Wheaton Theology Conference 1 (Spring 1992): 43-53; Netland, 180-95.

{45} Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Faith of Other Men (New York: Mentor, 1965), 17.

{46} Robinson, 39.

{47} Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Olkhom "Introduction," Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 13.

{48} Hence the cries against historical examples of exclusivism's failures, as will be highlighted later.

{49} "Postmodernism, Pluralism, and John Hick," Themelios 19/1 (1993): 10-12; "Readers' Responses," Themelios 19/3 (1994): 20-21.

{50} Carson, 147.

{51} Ibid., 147.

{52} "Rorty in the Epistemological Tradition," in Reading Rorty, ed. Alan Malachowski (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 258.

{53} Shenk, 137.

{54} Raimundo Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), xiv.

{55} John Hick, Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1993), viii.

{56} Stetson, 118.

{57} See Daniel Taylor's The Myth of Certainty (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

{58} Shenk, 210.

{59} Ibid., 210.


Bibliography

Berling, Judith. A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.

Carson, D.A. The Gagging of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996.

Cook, Robert. "Postmodernism, Pluralism, and John Hick," Themelios 19/1 (1993): 10ff.

___________. "Readers' Response," Themelios 19/3 (1994): 20-21.

Cullman, Oscar. The Christology of the New Testament. London: SCM Press, 1959.

D'Costa, Gavin. Theolgy and Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Other Religions.

Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck and Adair T. Lummis. Islamic Values in the United States. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Hiebert, Paul. "Christianity in a World of Religious Turmoil," World Evangelization 16 (May-

June 1989): 19ff.

Hick, John. Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion. New Haven,

Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993.

_________. The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age. Louisville:

Westminster / John Knox Press, 1993.

Hick, John ed. The Myth of God Incarnate. London: SCM Press, 1977.

Hick, John and Paul Knitter ed. Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology

Of Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.

Kirk, J. Andrew. Loosing the Chains: Religion as Opium and Liberation. London: Hodder &

Stoughton, 1992.

Knitter, Paul F. Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility.

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996.

__________. No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World

Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.

Ladd, Leon. A Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eermands, 1974.

Lindsell, Harold. A Christian Philosophy of Missions. Wheaton, IL: Van Kampen Press, 1949.

Malachowski, Alan. Reading Rorty. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

Nash, Ronald. Is Jesus the Only Savior? Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994.

Netland, Harold. Dissonant Voices. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991.

Olkhold, Dennis and Timothy Phillips ed. Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World.

Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996.

Panikkar, Raimundo. The Intrareligious Dialogue. New York: Paulist Press, 1978.

Phillips, Timothy and Dennis Olkholm ed. Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World.

Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995.

Pinnock, Clark. A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of

Religions. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992.

Race, Alan. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions.

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982.

Robinson, John A.T. Truth is Two-Eyed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.

Sanders, John. No Other Name: An Investigation Into the Destiny of the Unevangelized. Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992.

Shenk, Calvin E. Who Do You Say That I Am? Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1997.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. The Faith of Other Men. New York: Mentor, 1965.

Stetson, Brad. Pluralism and Particularity in Religious Belief. London: Praeger, 1994.

Taylor, Daniel. The Myth of Certainty. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992.

Yandell, Keith. Christianity and Philosophy. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984.


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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY

PLURALISM

 

"Pluralism" denotes any metaphysical theory which claims that reality consists of a multiplicity of distinct, fundamental entities. The term was first used by Christian Wolff (1679-1754), and later popularized by William James in The Will to Believe. Pluralism is distinguished from both monism, the view that one kind of thing exists, and dualism, the view that two kinds of things exist. There are weak and strong forms of pluralism theories. The weak form holds that there are many distinct individual things, whereas the strong form holds that there are many distinct kind of things. Theories dealing with the number of entities are referred to as substantival, and theories dealing with the type of entities are referred to as attributive.

Theories of monism have varied greatly throughout the history of Western philosophy. In Presocratic Ionian philosophy, the universe is composed of the four primaries: air, water, fire, and earth. Thus, the origins of all things could be traced back to one or a combination of two or more of these primaries. Anaxagoras, however, held that the number of substances in the universe was infinitely great and cannot be numbered. Aristotle is sometimes classified as a pluralist given his view that reality is composed of individual substances (material objects with an essence). Leibniz held that all things are made up of monads, that is, elemental substances whose principal attribute is perception. They are infinite in number, and change according to their proximity with one another. As they perceive their neighboring monads, and change accordingly, they compose the things we use such as tables and chairs. Herbart described his ontology as a "pluralistic realism." This means that reality is made up of simple qualitative units for which he gave the name "reals." These join together in syntheses that lead to the world we perceive. In A Pluralistic Universe, William James explains pluralism in the world in terms of the dominance of external relations. James objected to monism on the grounds that it put too much emphasis on totality, and tended to exclude individuality and free will. In A Pluralistic Universe , James associates his concept of pluralism with the dominance of external relationships in the world. Bertrand Russell's account of logical atomism was pluralistic insofar as it was founded on the "common sense belief that there are many separate things. Later abandoning the view of logical atomism, Russell still held to pluralism given his conviction that the universe lacked a continuity and orderliness.

Contrary to Russell, one difficulty with pluralistic theories is the fact that there seems to be an underlying coherence in the universe, which suggests that there is some single shared feature, perhaps as expressed in monistic theories. Without a point of commonality, things would be in complete chaos. Further, Ordinary language philosophers, such as G.E. Moore and Wittgenstein, argue that no categories of the understanding account for the real world, whether these categories are pluralistic, monistic, or dualistic. Instead, there are hundreds of boxes in which to classify things.

IEP

 

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/pluralis.htm  3/6/03 12:11 PM

 

RESPONDING TO RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

BY KENNETH R. SAMPLES

Apologetics (from the Greek apologia, 1 Peter 3:15) refers to the branch of Christian theology that seeks to provide rational justification for the truth claim of Christianity. For nearly two thousand years Christian apologists have vigorously defended the faith. This defense has involved not only providing positive evidence for the faith but also answering question, confronting objections, and critiquing alternative (non-Christian) systems of thought. As the Christian church approaches its third millennium, what major apologetic challenges lie ahead? Given current trends-globalism, multiculturalism, and relativism (in both truth and morality)-religious pluralism looms large among them. Religious pluralism is the view that all religions, certainly all major religions, offer equally valid paths to God, or to ultimate reality.

 

Popular Pluralism

America on the cusp of the twenty-first century embodies ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious diversity. Our urban and suburban neighbors come from all parts of the globe. America, as a democratic nation, places great value on tolerance, especially tolerance of religious expression. As American citizens, we are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights the free exercise of religion. Unfortunately, some people have taken the notion of equal toleration of religious expression to mean that all religions are equally true, thus equally valid paths to God. In effect, democracy has been applied to ultimate truth.(2) This type of thinking, however, reflects non-thinking. Social pluralism does not equate with metaphysical pluralism.

 

This widely-held notion that all religions are true ignores two important considerations. First, while the major religions do share some common beliefs and values, fundamental and irreconcilable differences clearly divide them on crucially important issues. They disagree, for example on the nature of God, or of ultimate reality. Some religions affirm monotheism (one god); others affirm polytheism (many Gods); still others affirm pantheism (all is God); some even affirm atheism (no God). In Judaism and Islam, God is personal (singular); in Christianity, God is personal and more (a tri-unity);(3) while in Hinduism and Buddhism, God is less than personal. Some of the world's religious traditions view God as wholly transcendent, others as wholly immanent, and still others as both transcendent and immanent. Clearly the world's religions disagree on who or what God is, not to mention on other doctrines. As Harold A. Netland comments: "Careful examination of the basic tenets of the various religious traditions demonstrates that, far from teaching the same thing, the major religions have radically different perspectives on the religious ultimate, the human predicament, and nature of salvation."(4)

 

Simple logic tells us that all these various religious "truths" cannot be true at the same time and in the same way. For example, to say that Jesus Christ is God incarnate (Christianity) and is not God incarnate (Judaism, Islam) is to violate the law of non-contradiction. Jesus Christ must either be God incarnate or not be God incarnate; any middle position makes no sense. Since Jews, Christians, and Muslims all identify Jesus of Nazareth differently, they simply cannot, logically speaking, all be correct. Thus, the claims of religious pluralism fail to comport with the self-evident laws of thought. Christian philosopher Ronald H. Nash declares: "[A]nyone who would become a pluralist must first abandon the very principles of logic that make all significant thought, action, and communication possible."(5)

 

Philosophical Pluralism

Some philosophers of religion argue that religious pluralism is tenable if the contradictions among the world's religions are only apparent rather than real. Perhaps the religions are experiencing the same divine reality but in different ways. After all, isn't an encounter with a mysterious and unfathomable God at the core of these (and most) religions? Pluralist thinker John Hick uses the familiar elephant analogy to illustrate the point: One blind man encountering an elephant for the first time compares it with a living pillar, another with a great snake, another with a plough-share, based on limited contact with the elephant's leg, trunk, and tusk, respectively."(6)

 

Mankind cannot possibly grasp the totality of the infinite God says Hick. Thus, since we lack an ultimate perspective, people may experience the same reality differently, because of their differing historical, cultural, or philosophical biases.

No one questions the reality of biases and limited knowledge, but these truths do nothing to shore up this argument's weaknesses. First, the elephant analogy implies a radical skepticism concerning knowledge of God; specifically, it says that no one (no religion) can know God satisfactorily.(7) However, if God is largely unknowable, how are we able to know that he is unknowable?(8) For that matter, on what basis would we even know He exists? Second, while the analogy attempts to validate the truth of all religions, it succeeds rather in showing that all religions fail to adequately identify and comprehend God. In this case, the analogy demonstrates not that all religions are true but that all religions are largely false.

 

The analogy is fatally flawed, however, if viewed from the standpoint of historic, orthodox Christianity. According to Christianity, God has personally entered the world of time and space in the historical person of Jesus Christ (Jn 1:1, 14, 18). This same Jesus makes exclusive claims to divine authority that are incompatible with the homogenizing views of religious pluralists (e.g., Jn 8:58: 10:30). In fact, to accommodate pluralism, Christianity would have to shed virtually all of its distinctive doctrines: the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Atonement. As Oxford theologian Alister E. McGrath has noted, "The identity of Christianity is inextricably linked with the uniqueness of Christ, which in turn is grounded in the Resurrection and Incarnation."(9) If the analogy were altered to fit Christianity, it would portray the elephant healing the men's blindness and personally introducing Himself. God is disclosed in Christ.(10)

 

Another attempt to rescue pluralism comes from the writings of Joseph Campbell. Campbell has argued that all religions can be simultaneously true because all religions merely make mythical or poetical claims, not historical, factual truth-claims. But, again, this notion flies in the face of historic, orthodox Christianity. Whether one is inclined to accept them or not, the truth-claims of Christianity are historical and factual in nature. Jesus of Nazareth was born under the reign of an historical Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, and He suffered and died at the hands of another Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. And according to his apostles, his resurrection from the dead was an historical-factual event. As the Apostle Peter proclaims, "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Pet 1:16).

 

A Christian View of the World's Religions

Does a commitment to the unique veracity of Christianity imply that every feature of non-Christian religions is false? McGrath provides a helpful Christian frame of reference for viewing other religions: "The Christian attitude to other religions rests firmly on the doctrines of creation and redemption. Because God created the world, we expect to find traces of him throughout his creation; because God redeemed the world through Christ, we expect to look to Christ for the salvation that the Christian gospel promises."(11) While other religions may derive truth about God from general revelation (nature or conscience), salvation comes uniquely through the special revelation found only in Jesus Christ. General revelation helps explain why many religions can, and in fact do, agree on particular beliefs and values.

In a cultural climate that vilifies and misdefines intolerance, how can we graciously and honestly respond to those who are offended by the "exclusiveness" of Christianity?12 I have four suggestions: (1) We can emphasize that the gospel invites all people everywhere to receive the gift of salvation, made possible by Jesus' sacrifice. (2) Consider that a world where all religions are simultaneously true would be, in one philosopher's description, a "cosmic madhouse." (3) Exclusivity seems unavoidable. Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga poses this rhetorical question: "Doesn't the pluralist believe exclusively that all religions are equally good paths to God?" (4) Christianity's exclusivism arises not from the narrow mindedness of individual Christians but from the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ (Mt 11:27; Jn 14:1-6), attested by those who were eyewitnesses to his life, death, and resurrection (Jn 3:36; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim 2:5; 1 Jn 5:11-12).

References

1.

Mortimer J. Adler, Truth In Religion (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990), p. 2.

2.

R. C. Sproul, Reason to Believe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), p. 35.

3.

This is reflected in the unique Christian doctrine of the Trinity, according to which, the one true God exists eternally and simultaneously as three distinguishable persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

4.

Harold A. Netland, Dissonant Voices Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), p. 37.

5.

Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the Only Saviour? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), p. 55. For a clear and insightful discussion of the formal laws of logic, see Ronald H. Nash, The Word of God and the Mind of Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), pp. 103-12.

6.

As cited in Michael Peterson, et al., Reason & Religious Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 224.

7.

See C. Stephen Evans, Philosophy of Religion: Thinking about Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985).

8.

Nash, p. 36.

9.

Alister E. McGrath, Intellectuals Don't Need God & Other Modern Myths (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), p. 119.

10.

McGrath, p. 118.

11.

McGrath, p. 116.

12.

See Kenneth R. Samples, "The Challenge of Religious Pluralism," Christian Research Journal, Summer 1990, p. 39.

 

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY

The Pluralism Project

Mission

The Pluralism Project was developed by Diana L. Eck at Harvard University to study and document the growing religious diversity of the United States, with a special view to its new immigrant religious communities. In the past thirty years, the religious landscape of the U.S. has changed radically. There are Islamic centers and mosques, Hindu and Buddhist temples and meditation centers in virtually every major American city. The encounter between people of very different religious traditions takes place in the proximity of our own cities and neighborhoods. How Americans of all faiths begin to engage with one another in shaping a positive pluralism is one of the most important questions American society faces in the years ahead.

 

In the research of the Pluralism Project, we have had three goals:

1.      To document some of the changes taking place in America's cities and towns by beginning to map their new religious demography, with old and new mosques and Islamic centers, Sikh gurdwaras, Hindu and Jain temples, Buddhist temples and meditation centers, Zoroastrian and Taoist religious centers.

2.      To begin to study how these religious traditions are changing as they take root in American soil and develop in a new context. How are they beginning to recreate their community life, religious institutions, rites and rituals, and forms of transmission in the cultural environment of the United States?

3.      To explore how the United States is changing as we begin to appropriate this new religious diversity in our public life and institutions, and in emerging forms of interfaith relationships.

History and Funding

The initial funding for three years of research work was provided by the Lilly Endowment Inc. During the summers of 1991 to 1993, the Pluralism Project engaged the best energies of Harvard students from both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Divinity School in "hometown" research in such cities as Denver, Houston, and Minneapolis. Some had a more specific focus: Hindu summer camps in Pennsylvania, Vietnamese Buddhist struggles with zoning laws in California, the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in Kansas City, or the history of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Each year, during the subsequent fall semester, the researchers presented their work at a Pluralism Project fall conference. And for one semester each year, all the researchers participated in a working seminar to revise their research into substantial papers.

In 1994, the Pluralism Project began working toward the production of a multimedia CD-ROM to present some of the range of work that had emerged from three years' research. The CD-ROM necessitated further research as well as an expansion of the scope of our work to include the many other religious traditions of the United States, especially the Native American, Christian, and Jewish traditions. From 1994 through 1996, the Pluralism Project was fully engaged in producing On Common Ground: World Religions in America. This work has been supported with grants from the Lilly Endowment Inc., the Pew Charitable Trusts, the North Star Fund, the Templeton Foundation, and the Milton Fund. The CD-ROM, published by Columbia University Press in September 1997, begins to make the findings and insights of the Pluralism Project available to teachers, students, researchers and religious leaders in the United States and elsewhere in a dynamic, informative, inviting and data-rich multimedia format.

In September of 1997, the Pluralism Project was awarded a grant from the Ford Foundation. This grant enabled the Project to extend our research on America's new religious landscape by involving the participation of affiliate religion departments, theological schools, and researchers. Mini-grants enabled professors and/or departments to involve themselves and their students in research on the changing religious life of their own city or region, with special attention to the new presence of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Afro-Caribbean, and Zoroastrian religious communities.

In the fall of 2000, the Pluralism Project was awarded a renewal grant from the Ford Foundation that enables us to continue our work documenting America's religious diversity. We will continue to fund affiliate departments and researchers, along with offering small teaching development grants for high school teachers. We are developing our web presence and expanding our outreach. For example, our publication World Religions in Boston, a tremendous local resource, has provided a model now being used in many cities across the U.S. and is available in its entirety on our website. We will expand our connections to other mapping projects in the U.S. and around the globe. Additional funding from the Rockefeller Foundation will support these efforts and particularly fund the consultations on Women's Networks in Multi-Religious America. Other gatherings are being planned. To receive periodic updates on our work, please join our email list.

The Pluralism Project

Dialogue and Spirituality: Can We Pray Together?

Dr. S. Wesley Ariarajah



Chapter 3 of Not Without My Neighbor: Issues in Interfaith Relations
Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1999, pp. 26-58


When I was minister of the Moor Road Methodist church in the southern part of Colombo, I had in my congregation a person by the name of Retnanantham, who had retired as a railway engineer and now spent most of his time promoting interfaith understanding, especially between Christians and Hindus. During my early years in Colombo, he introduced me to a number of Hindu groups. They would invite me during the Christmas and Easter seasons to bring the message of these Christian festivals to hundreds of Hindus who gathered for their weekly worship events. When I asked my friend if the Hindus would not feel "nervous" about asking a Christian minister to speak at their worship events on the basic tenets of the Christian faith, he would simply say: "No, it is no problem because they know that you are a 'dialogue person'!"

I recall those events now, some two decades later, with a measure of surprise. My talk would come in the middle of the bhajan, the singing together of devotional songs. On such occasions I would begin with a story from Hindu mythology or with some scriptural references or sayings from Hinduism to create the ambience and not to be too discontinuous with what was going on. I would, however, talk about the significance of Christmas and Easter for Christians, also indicating the universal significance we attach to these events. Even though I always "preached the gospel" (for what else can one do on the themes of Christmas and Easter?), they continued to invite me, also to speak on other occasions -- a courtesy they do not normally extend to Christian ministers.

I wish now, twenty years later, that I had asked for their definition of a "dialogue person". I wonder what Retnanantham had told them a Methodist minister who is also a "dialogue person" would do and not do in a Hindu worship context. I left Colombo in 1978, without ever asking that question. Retnanantham died a few years ago.

But I have always admired the courage and strength of the Hindu worshipping community in its openness to receiving the Christian message. Hinduism is indeed a tolerant and hospitable religion, but here more than hospitality was at work.

As mentioned earlier, at the personal level I had been introduced to hospitality at one another's worship already at KKS, when the next-door children would join us at family prayers, and we from the Christian family were always welcome to be present at the evening Hindu puja. But as a minister, I could not return such hospitality to Hindu groups in Colombo and ask their leader to come and give the message of Deepavali, Sivarathiri or Krishna Jeyanthi and other significant Hindu festivals at a Christian worship service or even at a monthly prayer meeting in a Christian home.

I might ask the Hindu Swami from the Ramakrishna mission or the Buddhist monk from the Wellawatte Vihara to speak in the church hall on "national reconciliation" or "world peace". But if I were to ask them to speak on the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna or the Lord Buddha, it would provoke strong protests in the congregation. I was aware that some members of the congregation were not too happy that "their minister" was "present at Hindu worship", even if it was to give the Easter message. They would rather it was done in the market square.

In such a context a Christian worshipping or even praying with a Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim would be considered by many Christians as a "betrayal" of faith or, if they are in a more charitable mood, as a "dilution" of faith.

 

Why such hesitation?

Why are most Christians hesitant about participating in the worship or an act of prayer that originates from another faith tradition?

Five areas can be lifted up as reasons at the root of much of the objection. I would characterize these as theological, biblical, liturgical, cultural and psychological.

The theological reasons for the especially Protestant Christian reluctance to engage in worship with a person of another faith stem from a negative evaluation of other religons as human attempts to find God. They are not based on God's self-revelation, and are therefore expressions of human sin and self-centredness. When approached from this theological perspective, the prayer life of these religions, according to some Christians, is "not valid", "not directed to the true God", "superstitious"; and their prayers are "not appropriate for us, because they are not directed through Jesus Christ".

Such a blanket negative evaluation of other faiths creates many problems for our understanding of God, the nature of God and God's providence, and for our belief in the Holy Spirit as the "giver of life". Such an evaluation of other faiths directly questions one of the streams within the Bible that unambiguously affirms the universal communion between God and all of God's creation.

The negative attitude, however, is deep-rooted, and I have noticed that Christians develop ad hoc theological asides to deal with the issue. Some Christians, though deeply committed to monotheism, live with a "functional polytheism", assuming that the Hindu and the Muslim are praying to "other gods". Others insist that while their prayers may be sincere, a "proper understanding of God" is necessary in order for the prayer to be effective, which of course they do not find in other traditions. At the extreme end there are those who even today would claim that prayers not directed through Christ are "misguided" and are "of the devil". To pray with others is, for them, the ultimate theological compromise that destroys all the rationale for the Christian faith, its witness and mission. In relation to Buddhism, where one cannot discern a clear doctrine of God, common prayer would amount to apostasy.

While theology remains the bedrock, the most vocalized objections are, however, biblical. Here again the arguments are all too familiar. The injunction "you shall have no other Gods before me" is written into the very first commandment with the warning "you shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God..." (Ex. 20:4ff.).

In responding to the Hindu-Buddhist context, this prohibition is reinforced by the many passages that prohibit the worship of idols and give explicit instructions to tear them down. As part of the process of settling down in the land of the Canaanites, the Israelites were asked to "destroy all their figured stones, destroy all their molten images and demolish all their high places" (Num. 33:52).

Few Christians take the trouble (because of the theological reason) to understand the meaning and significance of images in Hinduism and Buddhism. Nor do they pay attention to the use of images within the Roman Catholic tradition or to the use of icons in the Orthodox churches as "windows into God". For them the very presence of any image constitutes a turning away from the Lord God to the golden calf. This would be confirmed for them in the New Testament in such statements of Paul as: "... What fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever?" (2 Cor. 6:14-16).

As often in such use of the Bible, the fact that there are other passages and themes that might help us to have more openness on this issue is ignored.

The biblical reasons, however, also run at a deeper level and relate to such concepts as "covenant", "election", "people of God", "revelation", "the one mediator", "no other name" and so on. The "missionary mandate" is seen as the decisive pointer to the gulf between Christians and others in such matters.

It is not difficult to collect a body of biblical passages and concepts that would militate against any thought of engaging in worship with peoples of other faith traditions.

The liturgical reason is perhaps the most immediate problem that a person who wants to participate in worship across religious traditions begins to experience. The word "liturgical" is used here in a special sense to denote the symbol system, rites, rituals, gestures and the structure, shape and form of worship that each religious community has evolved in the course of translating its faith into a sustained worship life, especially in community. Forms of worship in various religious traditions are very different and are not easily understood or entered into by those outside. Even the very concept of worship and the elements that go into it differ widely among religions.

The cultural reasons are very similar to the liturgical one. I know Christian friends from the West who would enter a Hindu temple at the height of the puja, when all the devotees are in a state of total rapture, and find the whole affair completely "chaotic"; some cannot imagine "worship" when the devotees are not seated in rows of pews listening to a preacher. Similarly there are Hindus who attend Christian services and find them no more than public lectures interspersed with prayers and hymns. Every time I entered a mosque at prayer time, even in Sri Lanka or India where I share with Muslims the general culture of the land, I had felt myself a "stranger" to the place. There is an "attitude of prayer" that is unique to the Islamic community and cannot be duplicated elsewhere or shared by those outside the fold.

The cultural dimension of a religion functions as a culture within a culture. Therefore, not only friends from the West but also Indian Christians have a hard time entering into the spirit of Hindu worship. This is not peculiar to the interfaith situation. I know Protestant friends who have, during ecumenical visits, attended Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox liturgical services and come out of them totally bewildered and even confused by their very richness.

For most Christians in the third world there is also a psychological block about participating in worship with other religious communities. First it has to do with the fact that many of these religious traditions are what they themselves or their ancestors had "left behind" to follow the "true faith" that was presented by the missionary or Christian evangelist. If they had believed that God listened to the prayer of the Hindu they might not have converted to Christianity. Second, one of the fears drilled into Christians, especially in the context of the predominance of other faiths, is the fear of compromise, of syncretism and the dilution of the Christian faith. Interfaith worship appears as a classic example of such compromise. And last, one faces the problem of identity. While Hindus, Muslims and Christians look alike and act in much the same way in their day-to-day life in society, their places of worship and the worship life itself give them particular identities as individuals and communities. There is something distinctive about the way each religious tradition has evolved in its worship life; its adherents see worship as one of the secure sources of identity, one they would like to retain and cherish.

It is interesting, in this context, to observe immigrant communities all over the world attempting to reproduce as much of their worship life as they possibly can in their new situations. The Buddhist population in a city in the United States, for example, may not be large, but still, despite the fact that they all follow Buddhism, the Thai, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Sri Lankan, Korean, Chinese, Cambodian and other versions of it are all reproduced in the city both in visible structures and in worship life. Some wonder why they spend so much of their scarce resources in building separate temples, especially when in new minority contexts an ecumenical expression of Buddhism would be far more desirable and viable. Separate structures, however, come up in city after city. This is not because they are anti-ecumenical; it is simply an issue of identity. Nor is it peculiar to Asians. When I first came to Geneva and wanted to worship in the English language, I had the chance to choose from among the Scottish, English or American cultural types!

 

A changing landscape

By the time I joined the WCC staff worship across religious barriers had already become an issue in quite a few member churches, especially in the Western hemisphere. Several factors have contributed to this development. The most important among them is the increased contact between Christians in the West and Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and people of other faiths who had come to live among them as immigrants. Many who have had no immediate contact with these communities now had their first experience of them as praying, believing and worshipping communities with long spiritual histories. These religious traditions and some of their contemporary movements also engaged in missionary activities, offering alternatives to Christianity and secular humanism. Gradually all this led to a growing interest on the part of the younger generation of Christian "spiritual seekers" to try out meditation, yoga and the like as supplements to their Christian faith.

Today interfaith encounters, mixed marriages and the common search for peace during times of conflict give rise to situations where prayer or some form of worship is called for as part of the right response. The expectations on such occasions differ vastly, resulting in rather confused and even conflicting understandings of what is meant by "inter-religious prayer" or "inter-religious worship".

In a recent meeting jointly organized by the Office of Inter-religious Relations of the WCC and the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, Thomas Thangaraj gave what he called "five scenarios" that the phrase "interreligious prayer" would bring to the mind of many Christians.(1)

First, some would consider the very presence of Christians in acts of worship of other traditions as a measure of participating in inter-religious prayer. For them presence includes involvement. Those who are opposed to inter-religious prayer are not likely to enter places of worship belonging to other traditions; even if they do, they will not remain there when an act of worship takes place. When the Dialogue Sub-unit held multilateral dialogue meetings, we would announce in advance which of the religious communities would be leading prayers each day. The prayers were held as the first event in the morning so that, while people of other traditions willing to be participants or to be present as observers could do so, others might join the meeting at the end of the prayers. This has nothing to do with over-sensitivity on the part of the organizers of the dialogue. Many would openly complain if they were "trapped" or "forced" into a situation of having to be present at other people's worship. They see this as an act of compromise. Therefore in all such meetings we would announce the options in advance: "To be involved to the extent the community leading the worship is able to invite us to participate", "to be silent observers", or "to be absent". We always had candidates for each of those options.

The second understanding of inter-religious prayer for many Christians is the use of rituals, gestures, readings and prayers from other religious traditions.

Some years ago I was asked to conduct a workshop on prayer. I gave the participants a few prayers and asked them to identify the authors and if possible the context of those prayers. One of them was the following:

 

This is my prayer to thee, my Lord -- Strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart. Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service. Give me the strength never to disown the poor. Or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love. (2)

Several participants thought that it was a prayer of St Francis of Assisi. Other responses included St Teresa of Avila, "a Christian saint" whose name they could not remember, Martin Luther, and "a verse from a hymn by Charles Wesley". The group was surprised to learn that it was from Gitanjali by the celebrated Hindu Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore.

It was interesting that none of them would attribute such a prayer to sources outside the Christian tradition, and of course there was no expectation that a prayer "belonging" to another religious tradition would be used in a Christian workshop on prayer.

If I used a prayer from the Upanishads, Tiruvasagam or a Sufi saint in the pulpit without identifying the source, there would be no adverse comment; and if there was a reaction it would be appreciative -- "that was a beautiful prayer that you used today". But were I to identify the source of the prayer as Hinduism or Islam, that would provoke strong criticism among many parishioners, who would consider it an "interreligious prayer" !

The third scenario is the normal one in inter-religious gatherings, consultations and national events where a multifaith group decides to have moments of prayer or is called upon to pray. The most widely reported instance in recent years was the call for a Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi (1986) by Pope John Paul II. What happened there is along the model that has been in use in many interfaith gatherings, where the integrity of the worship tradition of each faith is respected, but the prayers are offered in the presence of other faith communities.

The fourth type has been a challenge to many teachers and chaplains of schools (in some parts of the world), hospitals and prisons, who are called to lead prayers at gatherings of people drawn from different faiths. Here a multifaith audience is already in place, or a context of openness may be taken for granted, and the leader's task is to design a mode and content of prayer that is both inclusive of and sensitive to the faiths of those present. Given the diversity of religious traditions and their approaches to worship, this has never been an easy task.

The fifth scenario is of more recent origin. Here people seek to go beyond the model of successive prayers in the presence of all to the possibility of "praying together". Several attempts have been made to prepare interfaith prayer services for persons from different religious traditions. The attempt in this area has been along two lines. The first is an attempt to include in one act of worship elements from different traditions. Thus, the invocation might come from Hinduism, a song from the Christian tradition, reading from the Quran, prayers from Sikhism and the blessings from Buddhism. The second involves the difficult task of producing new texts, prayers and songs that would be "acceptable" to all the groups participating in the worship.

The fifth scenario represents both the desired goal of interfaith worship and the intractable problems in attempting it. Those against inter-religious prayer have accused the first method within the fifth scenario as syncretistic and the second as going for the lowest common denominator thus missing out on the central elements peculiar to each of the religions represented.

What then should we say? Is inter-religious worship or prayer a pointless pursuit that will in the end leave everyone dissatisfied? In spite of all the pressures of living, working and struggling together, should we decide that when it comes to praying we must maintain our separate identities and consider our ways and forms of worship as necessary and unchangeable? Will attempts at interfaith prayer eventually lead to the watering down of all our worship experiences?

The reluctance is of course understandable. And because of it many persons, especially in Christian leadership, participate in interfaith worship events with visible uncertainty and hesitation. I have watched Christian leaders participate in interfaith worship events; their body language conveys much more than what is said. Although some have gradually grown into it, many of them participate in interfaith worship with question marks written all over their faces! Some of them go up the stage much the same way children go to school for the first time. Many stand up there, alongside other religious leaders in full regalia, with a "when-will-this-thing-be-over?" expression, desperate to be backstage before any of their own congregation appear at the show. To any discerning person, some of the religious leaders at interfaith worship events appear to be there because of "diplomatic necessity" rather than any sense of conviction. Perhaps that is precisely what they would like to convey to their reluctant congregations, who might be wondering what in the world their bishop is doing up there with a Shinto priest, a Buddhist monk and a Hindu swami.

This is not just being frivolous. I have myself been a participant in many interfaith worship situations in all of the five scenarios described above, and have had the opportunity both to experience and observe first-hand what goes on. Part of the problem has to do with the different understandings within the religious communities on how much participation in another religious ritual is possible. In Japan, for example, it is common for a Buddhist to feel completely at home while participating in a Shinto or Christian worship event. While Christians are unwilling to share the consecrated elements with persons who are not part of their religious community, Hindus would, at the end of the puja, bring the prasad (food first offered to God during the puja ) and offer it to all who are present at worship, and might even be offended if the hospitality is turned down.

When I was minister of the Methodist church in Jaffna, one of the staff of the overseas division of the Methodist Church in Britain came to visit the Jaffna church. One afternoon we decided to tour Jaffna. When we arrived at the Nallur Hindu temple, we noticed that the priest was performing a private puja for an extended family of about twenty persons. Our visitor wished to see what was going on, and we watched from a respectable distance. When the puja was over the priest offered the prasad to the family members, and seeing the European woman and me standing at some distance, began to approach us to offer it to us as well.

I could see my friend was in a state of panic. This was her first visit to a Hindu temple, she had told me, and I had not anticipated that it would lead to such an embarrassing situation. We had only moments to decide how to meet it, and no possibility of engaging in a theological discourse!

"You are free to turn it down," I whispered to her: "He will understand. I am receiving it because the issue here is hospitality, not food offered to idols."

I received in the traditional fashion and she followed, her hand slightly shaking.

We had a fascinating discussion later about the range of options available to us and what it might have meant for the person extending hospitality. As she boarded the train to go back to Colombo, she thanked me with a broad smile saying, "In Jaffna, you `kill' people with your hospitality!" She must have meant the warmth of friendship and the lavish hospitality she was offered in many Jaffna homes. But somehow I could not help connecting it to the Hindu temple. There is hospitality, also in interfaith relations, that can be quite overwhelming.

While withdrawing to the comfort of our own worship world does appear to be the easiest option, even reluctant religious leaders are up there on the stage, even if only for diplomatic reasons, because we do have a new reality today that can no longer be ignored. As communities live in close proximity and face common issues and common problems, and share common visions for a just, reconciled and peaceful world, they corne under enormous pressure also to pool their spiritual resources in dealing with them. In any case, in an increasingly multifaith world we constantly face situations that demand new initiatives and new ways of holding our faith in relationship to others. Isolationism, including in the religious and spiritual spheres, can be practised today only if we are prepared to opt out of society, or are willing to participate in it only on our own terms.


What then should we do?

 

Dimensions of the issue

In the work of the dialogue programme of the WCC we felt that the first and most important task in this area is to sort out the language and meanings given to words which create part of the confusion that prevails. In my own treatment of the subject so far in this chapter I have used the words "prayer" and "worship" interchangeably, only because they are in fact used in that way in many of the discussions and publications. The way forward lies in having greater clarity on what we mean by such words as "spirituality", "spiritual disciplines", "prayer", "worship", "liturgy" and so on, and on what is in fact called for, and not called for, in interfaith situations.

 

"Prayer" and "worship"

Anthropologists say that all human beings in all periods of history have had some practice of prayer. The urge to pray comes from their sense of the mystery that surrounds them in creation and of their own awareness of self-transcendence. It is said that even when more and more scientific explanations are found for the natural processes in creation, the miracle of life, its complexity and its purposefulness continue to fascinate human beings. So does the mystery of life and death, leading to the popular statement that human beings are incurably religious, even when they refuse to give it a label.

"Prayer" in this context is the attempt by human beings to be in communion or communication with the sacred, the holy, the Other, in common parlance, with God. In this respect "prayer", in the strict sense of the word, is the universal aspect of religion. "Prayer to religion", it is said, "is what rational thought is to philosophy." It is the language of the heart, the response to the miracle of life. Even though not all people necessarily engage in an active and conscious prayer life, it is an inalienable part of being human to have an "attitude" of prayer, especially when the human heart is elevated by the sense of the mystery of life or confronted with the reality of the finitude of life.

Human beings thus are "praying animals". When the very last bit of that true sense of prayer dies in them they turn into brutes, unleashing unimaginable suffering on other humans. It is not without significance that such acts are characterized as "brutal". Animal lovers today, however, are critical of our use of the word "brutal". They point out that in so far as animals generally follow the laws of nature, there are fewer "irrational killings" in the animal world. They would rather use the word "monstrous" to describe the acts of people who cannot or do not any longer pray. In other words, prayer is a "human" activity; the urge to pray is so universal that it transcends national, cultural and religious barriers.

"Worship", on the other hand, normally does not refer to a general quest, but to an ordered response to a realized experience of the Sacred within a specific religious community. It is significant that the word "worship" is generally used to refer not to acts of individuals but of communities. Here the emphasis is not on "search", "quest", "exploration" and so on, but on "praise", "thanksgiving", "adoration" and the "confession of faith". Every worshipping community has a "story" to tell. In worship, therefore, a community celebrates the central event that had been their "window" into the Divine. For the Jewish community it is the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai, to the Muslims the revelation of the Quran, to the Christians the revelation in Jesus Christ, to the Hindu what the seers "saw" in the Vedas, and so on. Thus, worship is not an open-ended activity; it has points of reference; it is built on a story which is celebrated in myths, symbols, rites and rituals. Much of what happens in worship is meaningful only to those who share the "story".

A powerful illustration of this truth is recorded by David Brown, the late bishop of Guildford, England, when he writes about his relationship with Muslims:

 

My distance from Islam came home to me in a sad but profound way one evening in Khartoum, when I went to the home of a Muslim leader. There were some thirty men sitting at ease in the courtyard and for an hour or more we enjoyed an open discussion about religious matters. Then the time came for the night prayer, and they formed ranks to say it together. I asked if I might stand with them, but the Shaikh told me I could not do so, since I did not have the right "Intention" (niyya ). I had to remain standing at the edge of the courtyard. Even though I have walked on the approaches of Islam for over 30 years I can only speak of it as a stranger. (3)

The story is as moving as it is revealing. The Muslims are aware that the bishop has a full grasp of Islam and knows how to engage in Islamic prayer. They also know him as a person who had sympathetically accompanied Islam and Muslims for more than thirty years. Here they were not dealing with a "stranger" to them or to Islam. And still the bishop, in so far as he subscribes to the Christian "story", does not have the niyya, the right "'intention", to be able to join the prayer line. To join that line, he has to be part of "their" story.

Thus even though the word "prayer" is used, the bishop was encountering Muslims at "worship". It is the "private space" of that religion where others would be out of place. I have also been in situations where Christian priests had to explain to Hindus attending Christian worship why they could not be invited to come forward and receive the eucharist.

Unfortunately, since much "prayer" takes place within the context of "worship" and some communities use the word "prayer" to indicate their "worship life", it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between the two. There is, however, a growing awareness of the need to make the distinctions between what is "internal" to the life of a religious community and where the community can be open to others both in the extending and accepting of invitations to pray together. Many Christians today are looking for clear guidance on this issue.

 

Pastoral dimension

The issue of inter-religious prayer thus is no longer a privileged question engaging the attention of specialized groups engaged in interfaith explorations. The pastoral dimension of the issue is what has concerned the WCC's Office on Inter-religious Relations and the Holy See's Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.

Together they started in 1994 a four-year joint reflection and study of the issue, beginning first to document what has been happening in the churches, collecting worship materials and guidelines that were being used, and calling on those engaged in interfaith prayer to recount their experiences.

This was followed by two events in Bangalore, India, and Bose, Italy, where practitioners of interfaith prayer, biblical scholars and theologians sought to open up the issues involved and to show directions in which they might be followed up in the future.(4)

The Bangalore statement puts forward the pastoral dimension as the key issue:

 

Participation in inter-religious prayer is not an optional activity restricted to an elite group, but an urgent call for a growing number of Christians today, and should be a matter of concern for all Christians. In the pluralistic world in which we live, concrete situations of everyday life provide opportunities for encounters with people of living faiths. These include interfaith marriages, personal friendship, praying together for common causes (in the context of war, racism, human rights violations, AIDS, etc.), national holidays, religious festivals, school assemblies, meetings between monastic communities of different faiths and gatherings at interfaith dialogue centres. Sometimes, it is prayer for a common purpose, perhaps in a crisis situation, which draws people of different faiths to pray together. Often, the experience of working together on a social project leads to a desire to pray together. In all these contexts, respect, honesty, transparency and openness nurture inter-religious prayer and make it possible. (5)

I have quoted the above to emphasize that the question "Can we pray together?" is not an academic one; it will become more and more important in the future to all who believe in prayer. In Bangalore, the searching of the scriptures showed that in the Bible there are passages that appear to be against such prayer, and yet others that present God as the compassionate one who listens to the cry of every human heart. The Bible affirms the particularity of the call of a people to a specific faith and discipleship; yet, it stresses God's intention to bring all things to fulfilment.

Having weighed the context of the churches and the witness of the scriptures, the Bangalore statement had this to say in conclusion:

 

While recognizing that the development of inter-religious praver will be related to particular situations, we see a great value in the World Council of Churches Office on Inter-religious Relations and the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue continuing to provide opportunities to share and reflect on this experience, so that churches together joyfully respond to the new opportunities of not only meeting and working with members of other religions, but also, where appropriate, praying with them. Such prayer, we believe, is a symbol of hope, which both reminds us of God's purpose and promise for justice and peace for all people and calls us to offer ourselves to be used in this work. (6)

The meeting at Bose, a year later, went deeper into the theological issue and of the different kinds of situations of prayer that call for different approaches. The Bose statement too affirmed the importance of the issue to churches and other religious communities:

As prayer transforms our life, so inter-religious prayer should have a positive impact on the life and relationship of our communities. As we move into deeper encounters in inter-religious prayer, we might experience it as a journey, realizing that prayer in itself is open-ended, a sign into the mystery of God. (7)

Spirituality and spiritual disciplines

My own exploration of this subject within the WCC, however, did not begin with the question of inter-religious prayer, but with the issue of "spirituality". Following the Vancouver assembly of the WCC (1983), the WCC's programme on Renewal and Congregational Life began exploring the concern for "a spirituality for our times". The word "spirituality" was a rather vague notion, and soon there was awareness among those dealing with the issue of the widespread use of the word among people of other religious traditions. Of even more interest was the realization that in recent times many of the persons within the church who had chosen to undertake a "spiritual journey" or wanted to explore the "spiritual dimension of life" had opted for "spiritual disciplines" or "spiritual practices" that they had discovered from within other religious traditions. It was interesting to discover, for example, that even though meditation had been part of the church's tradition, many Christians were looking to Buddhist or Hindu meditation techniques to centre their life in God.

The more we probed, the more we discovered that there had been an inter-religious "dialogue of spirituality" that had not received the attention of the church or even of those concerned with dialogue.

Ann E. Chester, in an essay on "Zen and Me", says that she had to turn to Buddhism for help because of the overemphasis within Christianity on the spoken word, which in her view tends to limit God to the meaning of the words spoken.

 

But "centring down", as the Quakers put it, remaining at the "still point" within, completely open to the all-pervading energy of God, was to be in touch with myself, with who I really am; it is also to give God full freedom to help me become what I am capable of being... Zazen has helped me to seek that depth, to be at home there, to deepen it, to act out of it. (8)

What has been the story within the church of spiritual journeys that had been helped by spiritual practices originating from other religious traditions? What has been the experience of those who have undertaken that journey for long periods of time?

In December 1987 the Dialogue programme, in collaboration with the programme on Renewal and Congregational Life, brought together about twenty persons (in Kyoto, Japan) from the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions who had spent at least ten years of their lives engaged in spiritual practices from other religious traditions. The group also included persons who, while practising such disciplines, were engaged with others in the struggles for justice and peace.

The stories they shared were fascinating. Some have been drawn to use other spiritual disciplines because, living in proximity to others (as in Asia), they were impressed by the visible manifestation of authentic spiritual life in them. Others were attracted by the cultural affinity and roots of the spiritual practices of other traditions, such as the kind of music, art, gestures, rites and meditative practices that constituted their spiritual discipline. Many from the West were motivated in their spiritual journey "by a sense that there was `something missing' in the spiritual life of our churches, a shallowness or emptiness, or a lack of deepening guidance". They said that especially in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions they found "forms of practice and prayer that have been both challenging and enriching". (9)

As the result of intense sharing of such experiences of benefits, problems, risks and possibilities of venturing into the spiritual practices of other traditions, the group was able to make these three affirmations in its final statement:

 

First, we affirm the great value of dialogue at the level of spirituality in coming to know and understand people of other faiths as people of prayer and spiritual practice, as seekers and pilgrims with us, and as partners with us in working for peace and justice.

Second, we affirm the deepening of our own Christian faith in the journeys that have taken us into the spiritual life and practice of other faiths. In walking along with the other, with the stranger, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we have had, in our sharing, the experience of recognition. We have seen the unexpected Christ and have been renewed.

Third, we affirm the work of the Spirit in ways that move beyond the Christian compound and across the frontiers of religion and take us into creative involvement with people of other faiths in the struggles of the world.(10)

Even though this meeting brought together persons who have had long experience in this field and have become experts in the art of integrating, practising and expressing deep Christian convictions through spiritual practices from other faiths, the issue itself is of immediate interest to many Christians in their day-to-day life.

Is it all right to meditate using Buddhist guidance on meditation? Can I practice yoga and still be a Christian? Is it permissible to read other scriptures and spiritual writings, and will they contribute to my spiritual development?

Ultimately such questions are about the self-sufficiency of our own traditions. They raise the question whether there are areas in which the spiritual life and practices of our own traditions can be corrected, enriched and enhanced by interaction with others.

When I was a student and was used only to Methodist worship, I was under the impression that this was the most adequate form of Christian worship. At college, out of necessity, I worshipped according to the Anglican tradition and came to a new understanding of liturgy, and to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of both forms of worship. In the ecumenical movement I have encountered many other forms, ranging from Quaker meetings to the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox liturgies, which opened even more windows into the manifold ways in which a community might celebrate its faith.

In 1983 I was secretary for worship at the WCC Vancouver assembly. The most important issue we raised at the first meeting of the assembly worship committee was this: The people who come together for worship, around three thousand of them, are from different cultures, speak different languages, sing different songs and come from different confessions with different styles of worship. Should we see this as a problem or as an opportunity? Should we try to overcome the diversity or use it creatively?

That one consideration made all the difference to the assembly's worship life, and the worship at Vancouver became a landmark in ecumenical worship, which has been one of the most memorable dimensions of ecumenical life in recent decades.

Why did the Vancouver worship experience become so meaningful and exciting to so many of the participants?

The reasons are many, the most obvious among them being the simple fact that every confession represented at the assembly experienced its own tradition enriched and enhanced by the way the riches of different traditions and cultures were forged together into acts of worship. People were able to enter into a "fuller" dimension of worship than they had experienced within their own tradition. They also became convinced that they had much more to learn about worship itself.

 

A personal experience

This truth had already come home to me, at the level of an interfaith encounter, through an interesting episode to which I have returned often, mainly to illustrate the meaning of dialogue.

It too happened in Colombo.

Once while I was walking along the main street (Galle Road) I met one of the Hindu friends that Retnanantham had introduced to me. It was late on a Friday afternoon and we were passing the Hindu temple at Bambalapitiya.

The Hindu friend asked me if I could wait for five minutes while he went into the temple to worship. I agreed, and stayed outside looking at the magazines displayed at the tobacconist near the entrance to the temple. My friend was back in five minutes to continue the conversation we had begun.

Some time later I had to write a paper on Hindu worship and decided to look more closely at what happened in the Hindu temple. Several things struck me that I had not noticed before.

As one enters the temple at the time of the puja, the first thing one experiences is the special aroma from the camphor and incense that are being burned in front of the deity. Then, one's eyes are filled with religious sculpture and paintings, the image beautifully clothed and garlanded, and the arathi, the lamp that is raised in front of the image several times in circular motions, both as a mark of respect and as the prayer of invocation. The ears are filled with the sounds of the chanting of the mantra, the ringing of the bells and the beating of the drums. Now the priest brings to those gathered the prasad from the altar (a mixture of milk, water and fruit), and having received it, and having "seen" and "been seen" by the deity (darshan ), one prostrates oneself on the ground and rises again, invoking the name of the deity representing God at that temple: "Siva, Siva!", "Om Muruga", "Om Sakthi", "Govinda" and so on. Once this brief act of worship is over, the devotee is free to leave.

I realized that through three thousand years of experimentation Hindus have developed a special "strategy" of catering to all the senses in an act of worship - of smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch - all at once and with much intensity, to help the devotee "to rise to the awareness of standing in the presence of God". If worship has to do primarily with standing in the presence of God, of dharsana or seeing and being seen by God, there was no need to tarry much longer. Little wonder that my Hindu friend was able to complete the worship in five minutes.

A surprise awaited me when I shared this with the Hindu friend. Impressed with what I had to say about Hindu worship, he asked if he could come to one of my Sunday services. His contact with Christian worship had not gone beyond school assemblies.

Of course I had to extend to him an invitation to my church at Moor Road at 6:00 the following Sunday where I was to lead the worship and preach. But I was nervous, especially after rny "discovery" of the multifaceted nature of Hindu worship catering to all the senses all at once.

At Moor Road church we had a little wooden cross standing on the bare altar table and a vase of flowers. Then there were of course rows and rows of pews. Apart from that, there was nothing to "see", to "smell", to "taste" or to "touch".

I suddenly realized that we Methodists have put all our eggs in the one basket of "hearing". Prayers, hymns, readings, sermons - all cater to the one sense of "hearing".

Little wonder, I told myself, that while the Hindu can worship in five minutes, we must take an hour or more, and that on each occasion the sermon must make up for all that is lacking, in order to enable those present to "rise to the awareness of standing in the presence of God".

Well, we may have got used to the "hymn sandwich" (hymn - prayer - hymn - readings - hymn - sermon - hymn), but will a Hindu be satisfied with "one-sense" worship?

On Sunday I stuck to the traditional pattern with the usual "stirring" sermon. I saw my Hindu friend seated in the last row. At the end of the service I went around greeting the people, and when I came to my Hindu friend, to my surprise he was deeply excited. It had been a wonderful experience for him. We decided to meet to talk about it.

"So what was so wonderful about the worship?", I asked him the next day, wondering if he was being "nice" to me, as we say in Sri Lanka.

No, he was not being "nice" to me. "You have been to our temple," he said, "and you have seen how we come and go during the puja. There is no common intention; we all stand there as individuals. But in the church there were some three hundred people all seated quietly with the same intention to pray. And then," he continued, "in the temple we do not read the scripture, the priest does not explain the scripture and apply it to life."

I remembered that in the Hindu tradition teaching and priestly ministries are usually separated. The priest does not teach; he performs the rituals. There is no teaching done with the puja. Teaching, when it happens, takes place outside the worship context.

He was also impressed with the intercession, how we remembered members in need by name, how we prayed for peace, justice and so on. It had altogether been a spiritually enriching, experience for him. Obviously his other senses had not been complaining!

But this was a revealing experience for me. Here was I, a Methodist minister, going into a Hindu temple and discovering dimensions of worship long lost to the Methodist tradition. And here is a Hindu, coming into a Methodist worship to discover dimensions of worship missing in his worship experience.

I often recall this experience when we talk about dialogue in general to illustrate how dialogue leads to mutual correction, mutual enrichment and mutually helpful self-criticism. I also use it to stress the point that Diana Eck, moderator of the WCC Sub-unit on Dialogue, used to make: "We not only need to know the others; we also need the others to know ourselves."

It is no wonder that most people who have ventured into other spiritual traditions have found their own faith enriched, and those who are involved with other faiths see interfaith worship as something that the churches should take with greater seriousness as they look towards the future.

 

Looking to the future

For reasons given in the earlier part of this chapter, interfaith worship will continue to be a difficult and controversial issue in the life of the churches. As with the issue of mission, so also with the question of interfaith worship, real change can come only with a more radical reassessment and restatement of the Christian faith for a pluralistic world.

In the meantime, it appears to me that the developments on the ground demand a new approach to worship within all religious traditions. What might be possible and necessary can be represented in three concentric circles, as P.D. Devanandan did when he spoke of creed, cultus and culture, when dealing with the indigenization of the faith.

The inner circle represents the core of liturgical life in which each community celebrates its "story". This in Christian tradition, for example, is the celebration of the eucharist, in which meaningful participation is linked to what Christians believe God to have done through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the religious community's "private space", providing it with distinctive identity and cohesion as a community gathered in celebration. A community may decide to be "hospitable", to allow others to be observers in this space, to maintain an unobtrusive presence, to participate to the extent that the community is able to invite them, and to be open to the witness that the community gives to their faith through the celebration of the "story" that is formative.

Beyond this, and sharing the same centre, should be a second circle, which might be called the community's participation in a "common wealth of spirituality". It is indeed unfortunate that most religious communities, especially at the official level, are reluctant even to "touch" the best spiritual resources and practices available, if they are known to have originated outside their own tradition. Much of this attitude is due to prejudice rather than considered theological reflection. As mentioned earlier, as a pastor I was able to use any number of resources from other religious traditions in a Christian service provided I did not in any way reveal their source. If, however, I were to mention where they are from, all the defences would be up.

The group that met in Kyoto to discuss spirituality in interfaith dialogue witnessed to the fact that it is indeed possible to use other spiritual practices, scriptures, written and symbolic resources to enlarge one's spiritual vistas and to deepen one's religious life. It was significant that they did not feel they were being syncretistic, because all the resources they had acquired from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and so on, in their experience, enabled them to deepen their own core faith, and also helped them to discover new dimensions of spiritual life and practice.

This has relevance also to the gospel and culture debate. The Kyoto group did not begin with a clear distinction between gospel and culture, and then present the issue as a "problematic" and ask, "And how are we going to relate these two?" That kind of approach has plagued ecumenical discussions from the beginning. It makes the assumption that there is a "gospel" that is culture-free, and "culture" that can be extricated from what it expresses. Since the gospel is about incarnation it can only exist as expressed within a culture, and any encounter of its challenge can only happen from within some culture. The question then is, "Now that I have responded to the challenge of the gospel, how can that find expression in my life? How can I `be rooted and grounded in love' and have `the power to comprehend the breadth and the length and the height and the depth' and `to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge' and so `be filled with all the fullness of GodÕ" (Eph. 3:17-19)?

No spiritual resource or practice needs to be "out of bounds" in the exploration and expression of that love simply because it originated outside one's own tradition. I have myself been deeply moved by the depth of devotion and the enormous sense of the overwhelming grace of God that is witnessed to in the Hindu scriptures like Tevaram, Tiruvasagam, and the penetrating ethical-moral analysis and guidance given in the Tirukkural. I have had no difficulty turning to them often, as I turn to the Bible. The fact that these Hindu scriptures name the One beyond all names as "Sivan" has never bothered me. Syncretism is not innately present in other resources, as many seem to imply. Syncretism has to do with what one does with these resources and what one does with one's own faith in embracing them. Religions are not fortresses to be defended; they are springs for the nourishment of human life.

While most religious communities, certainly at the official level, are still very nervous about moving in that direction, the barriers to such spiritual practices are constantly being breached by the younger generation in its search for an authentic spirituality. There is a need to lower all barriers so that the spiritual resources of all religious traditions will become the common property of all.

Some would have great difficulty with this suggestion because they believe that what happens in the second circle would be truly authentic for any religious community only when it flows out of and is an expression of the faith at the core. Otherwise, they would argue, the result is eclecticism, a curious, confused and unproductive amalgam of "practices" rooted in nothing except the practice itself. Then there are also practices in all religions that are considered to be superstitious, or contrary to fundamental values upheld by one or another of the religious traditions. In KKS, while I used to be deeply impressed by the thevarams sung at our neighbour's house, I was put off by the animal sacrifices offered at the Mariamman temple some distance from home - another dimension of religious expression that passes as Hinduism. Not all practices are "spiritual" simply because they are "religious".

These considerations have been at the heart of the traditional objection to openness to the spiritual practices of other religions. The Kyoto group, however, felt that this is a theoretical issue, raised mainly by those who have not undertaken such spiritual journeys. As in everything else, in spiritual practices too there is need for discernment, discrimination and rejection. What we are faced with, in the traditional approach, is an indiscriminate fear of anything that is not "ours".

For the Kyoto group, such fear appeared empty because they found that the practices they had adopted only deepened their awareness, commitment and rootedness to the centre. They also found that, without that freedom to explore, they were confined to a narrow understanding of the centre, defined within some culture in some period of history. In fact genuinely indigenous and contextual theologies can arise only within that space of freedom and exploration. Otherwise indigenous theologies may continue to look like vases of flowers plucked from the neighbours' gardens, rather than the flowering plants that draw nourishment from the different soils in which the gospel is planted.

There will of course be eclecticism, the irresponsible and unproductive amalgam of practices merely to satisfy one's curiosity. There could be expressions of religious life that not only stray from but even betray the core faith. But these do not happen only when one moves beyond one's tradition to explore spirituality. False religion, ceremonial religion, betrayal, syncretism and apostasy are prevalent internally in all religions. Most often it is not what goes in from the outside but what comes from the inside that defiles us. Otherwise why would we need prophets? And "heresies" are important for the life of the church. They arise only in periods in the history of a religion when there is genuine, but bold and daring, reflection on the meaning of the faith, and when concerted attempts are made to enter into a critical dialogic with the culture and the context in which the faith community lives. Genuine "orthodoxy" can only emerge out of genuine "heresies".

We cannot refrain from venturing for the kingdom out of our fear to take risks. We cannot say to the Householder when he returns, "Master, we (I) knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so we (I) were afraid, and went and hid the talent in the ground. Here is what is yours" (Matt. 25:24-25).

The kingdom of God is more daring than that. It is based on the belief that while some seeds will inevitably fall along the path where birds eat them up, on rocky ground where they cannot grow, and among thorns that choke them, there will indeed be a harvest - thirty, sixty and a hundred fold! The birds, rocks and thorns are no reason to stop sowing. Sowing must continue. Without sowing there can be no reaping.

Then comes the third concentric circle, worship in the interfaith context. As we have seen, it has become impossible for religious communities to live in isolation from one another. More importantly, there is a gathering recognition that if religion is to make any impact on the world we live in, religions must cooperate among themselves and bring their efforts and voices together in addressing issues. It is this realization that has resulted in the proliferation of interfaith organizations nationally and globally, and in the emergence of issue-oriented interfaith groups. The strengthening of the interfaith movement is also seen in the intention to hold the Parliament of World's Religions on a more regular basis, in the attempt to set up United Religions to accompany the United Nations, and in such efforts as the drawing up of a global ethic and religious charter to fight discrimination, intolerance and all that leads to genocide. All these developments have brought even more pressure on the issue of interfaith worship and prayer. But religious communities, while acting together on a good many issues, are unable to pray together because their "stories" do not match.

The third circle should address this problem.

Each community has its own "narrative" that defines it. That narrative, as seen earlier, is important to its life, identity and worship. It is the defining narrative of that specific community. And it is only natural that we have such independent narratives as individual religious communities, for all religions evolved either in isolation from others or as reform movements within existing religions needing to have identity in difference. Many of the interfaith efforts over the past decades were meant to promote conversation among these separate narratives and to enable them to respect and give space to each other.

But as communities grow even closer together, there is also the need to create "meta"- narratives that serve the "human story" and the common destiny that is ours as a global community. To go back to KKS, I had no narrative within the religious sphere to make sense of my neighbours as religious persons except, of course, as objects of conversation. At that time I did not know what the problem was. Now I realize that my narrative was too narrow to make sense of the outside world (except in mission) because in it there was no place for any other narratives.

I have studied the great Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. What is fascinating about them, among other things, is that there are numerous stories within the one Story. Any one of those "stories within the Story" would stand on its own, and convey a penetrating insight into human nature or provide an important ethical insight. At the same time they are within the one Story and are essential both to the development of the plot and to the total impact the epic is meant to make on the hearers or readers.

Each religion of course has a kind of meta-narrative of its own (like creation - fall - consummation) to situate its core narrative. The problem is that there is no place in them for other stories. The Human Story is of epic proportions. A single story, in which there is no room for any other, cannot do justice to it. If the story is of epic proportions, we need nothing less than an epic on it.

This is not a plea to work towards a universal religion of humankind, or a "call to unite all religions" under some vague ethical or religious notions. One of my tasks at the WCC dialogue desk has been to respond to documents sent to the WCC by people who have found the "Solution to Unite Mankind [sic] under One Religion", "Proposals for Uniting the Abrahamic Faiths", "Proposals for the Spiritual Unity of Humanity" and so on. When these arrived, addressed to the WCC, colleagues in the General Secretariat simply put the stamp "For suitable action" or "Please reply" and sent them to the Dialogue sub-unit.

Many of them are the result of reflection and hard work that individuals have put in over several years. Most of them also reveal painstaking research, documentation and sifting of facts and figures on what is happening to religion and religious communities around the world. Often they also show an awareness of the contents of the different faith traditions. Though some of the suggestions are frivolous and naive, a number of them are sincere and serious proposals made by persons who are deeply convinced that the divided and at times conflictual relationship among religious communities do much harm to human life. They often reveal real spiritual concern over the divisions based on religion, and a conviction of the enormous potential religions have for the healing of the world, if only we could harness their spiritual energies.

The WCC of course is committed to promoting unity among people of a single religious tradition. It was formed as an expression of the unity of the churches and "to prepare the way for a much fuller and much deeper expression of that unity". That process of preparation has gone on for many years. If realism is any virtue, we had it in good measure!

Interfaith organizations such as the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) and United Religions Initiatives and all interfaith dialogue programmes seek to bring religious traditions closer together in order to promote understanding and cooperation among them. These are important initiatives and have borne much fruit. But proposals to establish a "common religion for humankind", or to bring "all religions together into unity" are far more problematic. There is at present no mechanism to implement such proposals. They also fail to take serious account of the non-theological and non-spiritual factors that are at the centre of much of our divisions.

Meta-narrative evolves out of the life of the community. The systematization should follow, not precede, experience. Therefore, one can only say that the Story that includes the stories is in its initial stage of evolution. The "proposals" that we receive are not products but the signs that this meta-narrative is "in the making", and that we are in a process where all our independent narratives are being brought together into an epic.

It is little wonder, then, that despite all the difficulties we face in reconciling our stories and our symbol systems, we do have interfaith worship occasions, and interfaith prayer materials and multifaith service orders are being produced. Such prayer/worship is no longer held in secret, hidden from the eyes of officialdom, but in cathedrals, on highly visible national occasions, on TV - and in Assisi. Some of them are led by the heads of religious communities who would, in a theological context, have few or no tools to explain what they are doing! Without a meta-narrative, what they do makes no sense. Inadequate as such acts are, they nevertheless contribute to the evolution of that narrative.

In the third concentric circle, then, we are in the unfamiliar territory of interfaith prayer and worship. On many occasions we are called upon to pray, and especially when a calamity befalls a community we dare not refuse to pray together. It will be ambiguous; it will appear to be compromising- it may not fully satisfy any of us in the group; but as praying people, we dare not refuse to pray.

Our need to learn to pray together, however, is not just a matter of expediency, resulting from religious communities increasingly being thrown together because of population movements. Those studying the development of the religious life of humankind are convinced that as a human community we are on the threshold of a new "critical corporate consciousness" of being a global community. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, for example, is convinced that the gradual convergence of different religious communities has now reached the period of "a common religious history" of humankind. There was a time, Smith says, when we could speak of a Christian, Islamic or Hindu religious history, but now they are all becoming "strands" in a total human religious history, for now we are being pushed to a stage in which every religious person has been opened to the possibility of learning from all the religious traditions. (11)

As the boundaries that strictly and radically separate religious communities begin to weaken gradually, as did denominational boundaries during recent decades, we are entering, even as we enter a new century and a new millennium, a new religious reality of an uncharted territory. In the third concentric circle of our prayer life, then, we are in the wilderness, looking for a new formation, a new sense of who God is, and a new discovery of who we are all together as God's people. For, as St Paul says, we know "that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" and that "the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now", even as "we ourselves, who have the first fruit of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redeeming of our bodies".

It is in this context of attempting to link the narrative of the redemption of the Christians in Rome (to whom Paul was writing the letter) to the meta-narrative of cosmic redemption that Paul also confesses that "we do not know how to pray as we ought". Then come the words of encouragement: that the Spirit intercedes "with sighs too deep for words", and that "God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom. 8:18-27).

We are where the first disciples were when they were faced with a new reality. Although they were of a community that had prayed for centuries, they went to Jesus and asked, "Lord, teach us to pray." The challenge of praying with others can be no less demanding.

The three concentric circles, in the spiritual experience of believers, will be closely inter-related. Believers will also find that they influence one another in all directions.

"Can we pray together?" we asked. It appears that we need to pray our way through to find an answer. This might have been what the group that met on inter-religious prayer in Bose meant in the words that we have quoted above:

 

As we move into deeper encounters in inter-religious prayer, we might experience it as a journey, realizing that prayer itself is open-ended, a sign into the mystery of God. (12)

 

NOTES:

1.      M. Thomas Thangaraj, "A Theological Reflection on the Experience of Inter-religious Prayer", in the report of a consultation on inter-religious prayer, Pro Dialogo/Current Dialogue, bulletin 98, 1998, 2, pp. 186-88.
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2.      Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (song offerings), London, Macmillan & Co., 1996, song 36, p. 28.
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3.      David Brown, "Meeting Muslims", in The Churches and Islam in Europe (II), Geneva, 1982, pp. 47-48. Quoted in Can We Pray Together? Guidelines on Worship in a Multi-Faith Society, London, British Council fo Churches/Committee for Relations with People of Other Faiths, London, 1983, p. 1.
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4.      Inter-religious Prayer, Pro Dialogue/Current Dialogue (joint number), bulletin 98, 1998, 2. This give sthe history of the project, the key presentations made and three evaluations from Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant perspectives. For the statements from Bangalore and Bose meetings see pp. 231-43.
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5.      Ibid., p. 231.
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6.      Ibid., p. 236.
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7.      Ibid., p. 243.
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8.      Ann E. Chester, "Zen and Me", Spring Wind, IV, no. 4, winter 1984-85, pp. 25-26.
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9.      Tosh Arai and Wesley Ariarajah, eds, Spirituality in Interfaith Dialogue, Geneva, WCC, 1989, p. 1.
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10.  Ibid., p. 1-2.
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11.  W.C. Smith, Towards a World Theology, London, Macmillan, 1981. See esp. his chapters on "A History of Religions in teh Singular" and "Religious Life as Participation in a Process".
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12.  Op. cit., p. 243.
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The Pluralism Project

 

The Challenge of Pluralism

Diana L. Eck



Nieman Reports "God in the Newsroom" Issue
Vol. XLVII, No. 2, Summer 1993


In May of 1990 in a suburb of Boston not far from the starting point of the Boston marathon, the Hindu community of New England dedicated a temple to the goddess Lakshmi, pouring the consecrated waters of the Ganges over the temple towers, along with the waters of the Colorado, the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. In April of 1993 in Sharon, the Islamic community of New England broke ground for a major new Islamic center to provide an anchor for the nearly 20 mosques in the Islamic Council of New England.

These events are increasingly typical of the religious life of New England. Indeed, the religious landscape of much of America is changing -- slowly, but in dramatic ways that test the pluralist foundations of American public life.

The Jain community celebrates the end of its season of fasting with a great feast held under a bright yellow and white striped tent in the backyard of its temple in Norwood, formerly a Swedish Lutheran Church. A young man being ordained as a monk kneels shaven-headed amidst the Cambodian Buddhist community in its temple in Lynn -- one of three Cambodian Buddhist temples in the northern suburbs of Boston. Sikhs come to their gurdwara in Milford for the celebration of Vaishaki. African American Muslims gather in Malcolm X Park in Dorchester to celebrate Id Al Adha during the month of the pilgrimage to Makkah. Buddhist dignitaries from a dozen monastic lineages assemble in Cumberland, Rhode Island, where a Korean Zen Master for the first time in history formally transmits his lineage of teaching to three American teachers, one of them a woman. This is New England in the 1990's. The whole world of religious diversity is here.

This new reality is not a New York-California phenomenon of the cosmopolitan coasts of America. This is a Main Street phenomenon. There are Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists in Salt Lake City, in Toledo and in Jackson, Mississippi.

The questions raised for America are far-reaching and will be important questions for journalists to follow -- not only those who write explicitly on religion, but those who write about education and the controversies of school boards, about politics and the influence of religiously based political action committees, about the courts and the continuing reinterpretation of the foundations of religious freedom by the Supreme Court, about hospitals, health care and medical ethics in a multireligious environment. Over the next decade, this new multireligious reality will have an impact on virtually every aspect of American public life.

One hundred years ago this summer the World's Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago as part of the Chicago World's Fair. Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians came from around the world to join with the Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Unitarians who organized the 17-day event. In 1893, India's Swami Vivekananda dazzled audiences with his eloquent statement of Vedanta philosophy and Dharmapala, the energetic Buddhist reformer from Sri Lanka, berated his listeners on their relative ignorance of Buddhism. They were new and exotic figures for most of the Americans at the Parliament who had never before heard a Hindu or a Buddhist speak. What is most striking in 1993 as Chicago prepares for a gala centennial of the Parliament of Religions late this summer is the fact that today the diversity of the 1893 Parliament is the reality of the neighborhoods of Chicago.

The Chicago metropolitan Yellow Pages list dozens of entries under the unusual headings "Churches: Buddhist" or "Churches: Islamic." There are nearly 70 mosques and Islamic centers in the Chicago metropolitan area. According to the Chicago-based Islamic Information Service there are half a million Muslims. The suburbs of the city boast two sizable and elaborate Hindu temples in Lemont and Aurora, to say nothing of the 18 smaller places of Hindu worship. There are at least 25 Buddhist temples in the Buddhist Council of the Midwest -- Japanese Jodo Shinshu, the Thai Wat Dhammaram, the Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian Buddhist refugee communities and homegrown American Zen communities. There are Baha'is, Zoroastrians, Jains, Sikhs and Afro-Caribbean Santeria practitioners. The local planning committee convened to plan the centennial of the Parliament is far more diverse than the Parliament had been.

One need not go back 100 years to document the dramatic rise in America's Asian population. Most of it has taken place in the last 25 years. It is important to remember, however, that 100 years ago at the time of the Parliament, U.S. immigration policy toward Asia was a policy of exclusion. The Statue of Liberty stood in New York harbor facing the Atlantic and not in San Francisco facing the Pacific. Chinese workers had built the railways of the West, were industrious miners, and had built Buddhist temples and celebrated Chinese festivals in seemingly unlikely places like Helena and Butte, Montana. In 1882, however, the first Exclusion Act was passed, aimed specifically at the Chinese. In the decades that followed, the exclusion policy was reaffirmed and gradually extended to other "Asiatics." In the 1923 Supreme Court case "Hindus," which in this case meant a Sikh named Mr. Thind, were excluded from U.S. citizenship. Through the first half of the 20th Century Asian immigration was tightly constricted.

The 1965 immigration act proposed by John F. Kennedy and signed into law by Lyndon Johnson set immigration on a new footing, eliminating the national origins quotas that had linked immigration to the national origins of groups already established in the U.S. It is to this legislation that one can attribute the modern burst of Asian immigration -- from about 1 million Asian Americans in 1965 to 7.3 million in 1990. The 1990 census shows how rapidly the "Asian and Pacific Islander" population is growing. In one state after another the percentage of Asian American population growth from 1980 to 1990 is by far the highest of any ethnic group -- in Minnesota up 194 percent from 1980, in Georgia up 208 percent, in Rhode Island up 245 percent. Nationwide, the Asian population rose 79.5 percent in the same decade. New immigration, not only from Asia, but also from the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe, has begun to change the cultural landscape of many parts of the U.S. in ways that are dramatic and yet so subtle we have scarcely begun to see them.

What does this mean in terms of religion? One can make an educated guess from statistics on ethnic composition, but the truth is we do not know. The one recent statistical study done by the City University of New York as an ancillary project of the National Jewish Population Survey has been widely disputed, especially in its projection of the numbers of Muslims in the U.S. as 1.4 million. This contrasts with a minimum of 8 million estimated by the Islamic Society of North America and a figure of at least 5 million estimated by responsible scholars. Even a conservative estimate would mean there are more Muslims that Episcopalians, more Muslims than members of the United Church of Christ. The more highly charged question is whether there are more Muslims that Jews. However uncertain the response to that question may now be, it is clear that within a few years Islam will have become the second largest religious community in the U.S. Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or Sikh communities may be small statistically, but the news of the 1990's is that they are very much present and their presence is not that of the passing gurus of the Seventies, but that of new American immigrants who have brought their faith with them to this country and are about the business of building the institutions to perpetuate it.

The Pluralism Project is a three year study project which has engaged Harvard students at all levels -- undergraduates, masters students and doctoral students -- in what is basically "hometown" research on this changing religious landscape of America. Our research is guided by three questions. The first is a more focused version of the demographic question: What do specific American cities now look like, religiously? How many mosques, temples and gurdwaras are there in Denver, in Houston, in Oklahoma City, in Minneapolis? Our second question is how are these traditions changing as they take root in the American context? Are there emerging some distinctively American adaptations of Buddhism or Islam? Finally, how is the United States changing as this new multireligious reality begins to be visibly present in our public life? How are schools, hospitals, and councils of churches engaging with this new multi-sided religious life?

One of the cities we have studied is Houston. The remarkable fact about Houston is not its Texas glitter, its NASA space-age image, or its huge Southern Baptist churches, but its substantial Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu populations. Houston is the only city in the country with a comprehensive Islamic plan for the zones and neighborhoods of the city. The Islamic Society of Greater Houston has divided the city into eight zones, with a main mosque and satellite mosques in the various regions of this sprawling city. The southwest zone has dedicated a new mosque, which is the showpiece of Islamic Houston, accommodating 900 for Friday prayers. Not all the mosques in Houston are part of the I.S.G.H. regional plan, for there are about two dozen mosques in all -- Sunni, Shi'a, Ismaili, African-American. Over 10,000 Muslims crowd into the George Brown Convention center for prayers on the Id festival days. In 1970 there were fewer than 1000 Muslims in Houston; today there are estimated to be 60,000.

The Buddhist population of Houston is almost as large, with an estimated 50,000 Buddhists and 19 Buddhist temples at last count, nine of them Vietnamese. There are 14 Hindu temples and organizations including the spectacular Meenakshi Temple in the southern suburb of Pearland. The Hindu population of Houston is estimated to be 40,000, with an annual summer camp sponsored by the Vishva Hindu Parishad and a city-wide celebration of the birthday of Krishna in the George Brown Convention Center attracting 6,000 to 10,000 people.

Houston, like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, may be unusual, but smaller cities have a share in this diversity as well. In Oklahoma City there are five mosques, none with an exterior sign indicating the presence of an Islamic community. There are four Hindu temples, one Sikh gurdwara, two Vietnamese Buddhist temples, a Thai Buddhist temple, and a Japanese Buddhist Soka Gakkai International group. In Denver there are 11 Buddhist temples serving an immigrant Asian population that includes fourth- and fifth- generation Japanese Americans along with newer Thai, Cambodian, Korean, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants. Indeed there are six Vietnamese temples in Denver. In addition there are three mosques, two Sikh gurdwaras, two Hindu temples and a Taoist temple. In Portland, Oregon there are four mosques and 18 Buddhist centers. Buddhism is said to be the city's fastest growing religion, with both recent immigrants and home-grown Euro-American Buddhists.

If one were to visit American cities and towns, as my student researchers have in the last two years, much of this changing landscape would still be invisible, which is one reason most of this comes as a surprise to many Americans. The prayer room of a newly forming Muslim community is in the garage of a home purchased by the community, in a commercial office building, or in a shopping plaza. One of the Shiite mosques in Houston is in a former athletic club, given to the community by a donor; its Qur'an classes on Sundays are held in the squash courts. The Kwan Um Sa Buddhist Temple, one of the oldest of the Korean Buddhist temples in Los Angeles, is in the spacious second floor quarters of an old Masonic Hall with its plush red chairs and, now, its golden images of the Buddha. The Hindu Satsang Mandali in Stockton, California meets in the hallways and rooms of a suite in a commercial building. The enormous Muslim Community Center in Chicago where over 1,000 Muslims gather weekly for the Jum'ah prayers is a former movie theatre.

This is the invisible change. There are thousands of small communities of immigrants that gather, trying to maintain for themselves and preserve for their children the traditions of faith that link them together culturally. They meet at first in living rooms or rented Knights of Columbus Halls, then perhaps in a building acquired for the specifically religious and cultural use of the community. A church may be ideal because it is already zoned for religious use. The Richmond Hill Sikh gurdwara in Queens meets in a former Methodist church. In Allston, Massachusetts, a Korean Zen community with martial arts as part of its meditation practice, has created a spacious zendo in the sanctuary of what was formerly a Baptist church. In Lynn, the Cambodian Buddhist community has acquired a Methodist church for its first home. An African American Muslim community in Dorchester meets in a building that was a church, then a synagogue and is now the Masjid al Qur'an. On the whole, a passerby would not notice 90 percent of the thousands of Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim religious centers in our cities and towns.

In the last decade, however, the new religious landscape has started to become visible. Hindus began building traditional Hindu temples, sited on hills like the Sri Venkatesvara temple in Penn Hills outside Pittsburgh, the Rama temple on a hill in the Chicago suburb of Lemont, or the Balaji Temple in the Malibu Hills of California. They built suburban temples in Boston, Atlanta and Albany, in Lanham, Maryland, and San Antonio, Texas. The white temple towers are covered with the images of the gods and goddesses. Buddhist temples are also being built and therefore becoming visible in a new way: the Providence Zen Center in Cumberland, R.l. the Chuang Yen monastery in Kent, New York; Wat Thai in North Hollywood, California. The most spectacular is the Hsi Lai Temple, the largest temple in the western hemisphere, built by the Chinese Pure Land community on a hilltop in Hacienda Heights, California. It covers 1.4 acres of land and includes a monastery, an educational wing, a conference center and a huge main shrine room with thousands of Buddhas set in niches around the walls.

The first mosque built as such in the United States was dedicated by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1934. The Muslim population then was very small. When President Eisenhower attended the dedication of the National Mosque on Embassy Row in Washington in 1957, he spoke of the mosque as an expression of the important relation of the U.S. with the Muslim world. Today the U.S. is part of the Muslim world. There are new mosques in the United States designed and built by American architects, like the Islamic Center at 96th Street and Third Avenue in New York designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In Toledo a mosque rises from the cornfield just off an Interstate highway. In New Orleans, Tempe, Houston and Portland there are examples of American Islamic architecture.

The second question of the Pluralism Project serves to remind all of us that the history of religions is not over -- it is still happening before our very eyes. What is Hinduism becoming in the U.S., in Pittsburgh and suburban Chicago? Religions are not fixed entities that are passed intact from generation to generation, culture to culture. On the contrary, religions are more like rivers -- dynamic, ever changing, splitting, converging. How these traditions are changing in the U.S. is fascinating research, making the comparative study of religion in 20th Century America a field of study in itself.

A Vietnamese monk in Phoenix told one of our researchers, "We must take the plant of Buddhism out of the pot and plant it in the soil of Arizona." What will Buddhism become as it takes root in American soil? As laity take over many of the roles of monks? As monks adapt their lives and monastic rules to demands of a Thai American congregation in North Hollywood? As women take on roles of teachers, roshis, Zen masters? We pose these as research questions, but the answers are still tentative, still in the making.

What will Islam become in the U.S. with so many Muslim cultures converging in Houston -- Pakistanis, Indians, Trinidadis and Syrians -- all now Americans and all Muslim? How will the emergence of pan-Islamic organizations like the Islamic Society of North America influence the history of American Islam? Will there be a more "ecumenical" Reformed Islam, somewhat like the Reform Judaism that developed so distinctively in the U.S.? What will Hinduism become in the U.S., where an ancient, complex tradition now has to develop means of transmission that are brand new, such as weekend classes or youth summer camps? Hindus from India who were never asked, "What do Hindus believe?" are now having to answer that question -- in their neighborhoods and offices, in schools and P.T.A. meetings. The Northern California Hindu Businessmen's Association has published a simple reference card to "The Ten Commandments of Hinduism" -- a real innovation in a tradition that has never been codified or formulated in such a way. In some countries of Asia, temples and mosques may have state or royal patronage; one did not belong to a particular temple as a "member." In the U.S., however, these religious communities need to recreate themselves with a network of voluntarism, with membership lists for tax-exempt status, with newsletters and fund-raising dinners. In short, many of these communities have begun to generate the whole infrastructure of denominationalism.

Finally, with this new multireligious landscape, the United States is changing too. What will this wider range of cultures and religions mean to American life? This is our third question. The national identity crisis of the last five years, taking the form of the so-called "culture wars" and the current multiculturalism debate is about this question of our complex identity. Who do we mean when we say "we"? It is the most important question any people can ask. "We the people" of the United States is an increasingly diverse "we." In a world in which the "we" is being defined in ever more narrow ethnic or religious terms, the experiment of America is well worth watching.

There are public emblems of the changes that are happening. One of the U.S. astronauts on the Challenger was a Buddhist American. The newly elected mayor of Kuntz, Texas, not far from Houston, is a Muslim American. The senior vice-president of a major Boston technology think-tank is a Hindu American. On June 26, 1991, a Muslim imam, Siraj Wahhaj of Brooklyn, opened a session of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time. In February of 1992, Imam W. Deen Mohammed of the Chicago-based American Muslim Mission opened a session of the U.S. Senate with prayer, again the first Muslim ever to do so.

We may be Christians in the majority, Jews and Muslims next, then Buddhists and Hindus, but the majority is pledged to preserve the foundational liberties, of all minorities. There are many, however, who do not recognize this wider and more complex "we." There are still advocates of prayer in the public schools, like the Christian Coalition and Catholic Alliance in New York City, who imagine that the prayer would be a generic Judeo‑Christian prayer -- not a prayer from the Rig Veda, the Qur'an, or the Pure Land school of Buddhism. And those who insist on teaching "creationism" as the view of the divine origin of creation imagine unthinkingly that this means teaching the God-centered creation story of Genesis. But what about the unfolding of creation from the lotus which grows from the navel of Lord Vishnu in the Hindu creation account? The new complexity of American religion sets these persistent old agendas in a brand new context.

In April of 1990 the city council of Savannah, Georgia issued a proclamation in which Islam is recognized to have been " a vital part of the development of the United States of America and the city of Savannah." The proclamation acknowledges that "many of the African slaves brought to our country were followers of the religion of Al­Islam." In light of this, the mayor and the city council of Savannah proclaimed that "the Religion of Al Islam be given equal acknowledgment and recognition as other religious bodies of our great city."

Festivals are also ready markers of a culture's presence. The Chinese New Year parade in New York is an old institution, but the Sikh Vaisakhi Day parade is new. The city that measures its official holidays by the suspension of alternate side of the street parking has added the two Islamic feast days -- Id al Fitr and Id al Adha -- to the official list. In San Francisco, the city issued a proclamation marking the end of the annual festival honoring the deity Ganesha. The article in India Abroad on September 6, 1991 read, "Mayor Art Agnos has issued a proclamation declaring September 22 Golden Gate Ganesha Visarjana Day. It is believed to be the first time that the mayor of a city in the United States had honored the Hindu deity."

Americans all carry coins with the motto E Pluribus Unum -- Out of many One. But given the more complex landscape of America -- culturally and religiously --America now has the opportunity and challenge to think anew about what that might mean. What is meant by this term pluralism?

First, I would want to insist that pluralism is not the sheer fact of this plurality alone, but is active engagement with plurality. Pluralism and plurality are sometimes used as if they were synonymous. But plurality is just diversity, plain and simple -- splendid, colorful, maybe even threatening. Such diversity does not, however, have to affect me. I can observe diversity. I can even celebrate diversity, as the cliché goes. But I have to participate in pluralism. In the Elmhurst area of Queens, for example, a New York Times reporter found people from 11 countries on a single floor of an apartment building on Justice Avenue -- all living in isolation and fear -- each certain that they were the only immigrants there. This is diversity to be sure, but it is not pluralism.

Pluralism requires the cultivation of public space where we all encounter one another. Where are those public spaces? Certainly universities where the curricular and non-curricular issues of multiculturalism are boiling on the front burner. Public schools and school boards have also become the venue of this encounter with the discussion of the new Houghton Mifflin social studies texts in California and the publication of the "Declaration of Cultural Interdependence" in New York. Hospitals as well have had to confront critical issues of cultural and religious diversity in the face of crisis and death. Every one of these public institutions is experiencing the new tensions in appropriating a more complex multicultural sense of who the "American people" now are.

But where is the encounter that takes explicit account of the deep differences of religion? Religion is the unspoken "r­word" in the multicultural discussion. It is present just beneath the surface in the heated multicultural debate. It is often in interfaith councils that religious issues can be raised to the surface and interreligious relations discussed as such. The last 10 years have seen the genesis of a few effective interfaith councils at the local and metropolitan level -- in Los Angeles and Washington, in Rochester, Wichita, Tulsa and San Antonio. Councils of churches have become councils of churches and synagogues. Then the Muslims joined, or the Buddhists and Hindus. Yet the process of developing this interfaith infrastructure is just now beginning in many cities. When a Hindu temple in Pittsburgh was vandalized and its sacred images smashed, or when a mosque in Quincy, Mass. was set ablaze by arson, or when a Vietnamese monk in Dallas found a cross burning in his front yard there was no infrastructure of relationships in place to respond.

Second, I would ask whether pluralism does not ask more of the encounter with one another than simply tolerance. Tolerance is a deceptive virtue. In fact, tolerance often stands in the way of engagement. Tolerance does not require us to attempt to understand one another or to know anything about one another. Sometimes tolerance may be all that can be expected. It is a step forward from active hostility, but it is a long way from pluralism.

Part of the problem is recognizing how little we do understand one another and how much our mutual perception is shaped by common stereotypes. Americans as a whole have a high degree of religious identification, according to every indication by George Gallup, and yet a very low level of religious literacy. Every high school graduate is required to dissect a frog, but every high school graduate is not required to know something about Islam -- the religion of a fifth of humankind. Few school systems have academic study of world religions built into the social studies curriculum. Few seminaries training leaders for churches and rabbinate have any required courses in the basics of other faiths -- even though the local context of ministry in the U.S. today will surely require such fundamental literacy. One of our researchers working in Oklahoma City in the summer of 1991 spoke with a city official about her survey for the Pluralism Project. His interest aroused by her effort, he offered, "You know, there's a Jewish mosque right down the street!" It turned out to be a Greek Orthodox church.

Finally, pluralism is not simply relativism, but makes room for real commitment. In the public square or in the interfaith council, commitments are not left at the door. On the contrary, the encounter of a multicultural society must be the encounter of commitments, the encounter of each other with all our particularities and angularities. This is a critical point to see plainly, because through a cynical intellectual sleight of hand, some critics have linked pluralism with a valueless relativism -- an undiscriminating twilight in which "all cats are gray," all perspectives equally viable, and as a result, equally uncompelling.

The encounter of a pluralistic society is not premised on achieving agreement, but achieving relationship. Unum does not mean uniformity. Perhaps the most valuable thing we have in common is commitment to a society based on the give and take of civil dialogue at a common table. Dialogue does not mean we will like what everyone at the table says. The process of public discussion will inevitably reveal much that various participants do not like. But it is a commitment to being at the table -- with one's commitments.

The United States is in the process of negotiating the meaning of its pluralism anew. In this new struggle to understand the American "we," the role of religion in our multicultural society will inevitably be discussed. The new religious communities of the U.S. are presently finding their own ways of participation in the public square. The American Muslim Council has been formed to be a focal point for the discussion of Muslim participation in the political process. At its meeting in February the issue of what a Muslim political action committee in a non-Muslim country might be was hotly discussed. The Islamic Medical Association brings the concerns of American Muslim doctors to bear on medical ethics. African American Islam -- both in its orthodox Sunni stream and in the Nation of Islam -- brings Islamic moral values to the crisis of drugs and violence. The International Network of Engaged Buddhists seeks to bring the insights of Buddhism and its philosophy of the interdependence of all things to bear on the environmental debate. The Jaina Association of North America considers the issues of animal rights and the extinction of species in light of the long Jaina tradition of non-violence toward all creatures. As the questions and the answers of the new American religious communities are brought to the table in the various forums of public life, the meaning of "pluralism" reaching beyond the sheer fact of our plurality will be tested for its strength again and again.


Reproduced by permission of the copyright holder,
The Nieman Foundation at Harvard University

 

AUGUST 2002 MANAGING DIVERSITY IN A DEMOCRACY

 

A New Religious America: Managing Religious Diversity in A Democracy: Challenges and Prospects for the 21st Century Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Keynote Address delivered By Professor Dr. Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Harvard University, USA, at MAAS International Conference on Religious Pluralism in Democratic Societies, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from August 20-21 2002.

It is a great pleasure and honor to be here at this gathering this morning to address the question of Religious Diversity and Religious Tolerance in a Democratic Society. There could be no more important question in our world today than the question of how we negotiate our religious differences in a world in which all of us now live together in greater proximity than ever before.

 

As we think about the movements that have reshaped the world in which we live in the past half-century, even in the past decade, there are many key words that come to mind. There is the term "globalization" which has many meanings, both positive and negative. Globalization has made all of us more acutely aware of the ways in which our currencies, our economies, our political fortunes, our attempts at waging war and our attempts at building peace are all inter-linked. "Interdependence" is another key term, and is a concomitant of globalization. It is not possible to "go it alone" in the kind of world in which we live, for there is no such thing as "alone." As religious communities and as nations our futures are inextricably linked.

 

Along with the globalization of world systems has come the movement of people as refugees and as economic and political migrants. The demography of our world has changed, and our way of looking at a world of religious, cultural, and ethnic difference must now begin to catch up with those changes. One of my colleagues at Harvard has described the post-cold war world as one that will be marked by rigid adherence to civilizational identities, and ultimately a "clash of civilizations." Some people believe that his dire predictions of a clash of Islam and the West has been borne out in the events of September 11 and their global aftermath. Some may make a persuasive case for this view, but to my mind it is missing the critical analysis of the changing demography of our world. It is missing the critical analysis of the global currents of culture and religion that have come with this new geo-religious reality.

 

Just where, we must ask, are the so-called Confucian, Islamic, and Hindu worlds that will be the forces with which the so-called West must reckon? They are everywhere, today. It is precisely the interpenetration and proximity of great civilizations and cultures that will be the hallmark of the twenty-first century. The map of the world in which we live cannot be color coded as to its Christian, Muslim, Hindu identity, but each part of the world is marbled with the colors and textures of the whole. People of different religious traditions live together all over the world -as majorities in one place, as minorities in another.

 

This is a fact you have long known in your distinctive ways in Malaysia. It is a fact we are grappling with in new ways in the United States. America has become, over the past forty years, a truly multi-religious society. The new demography of America has come largely since the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationalities Act, which eliminated many of the discriminatory quotas that had characterized American immigration policy for decades. New immigrants have come to American shores from all over the world and have become citizens. They have brought with them not only their luggage and economic aspirations, but their Qur'ans and Bhagavad Gitas, their images of Krishna and Murugan, their incense to light before the Bodhisattvas on their Buddhist altars. It is important to recognize just how much these past forty years have changed America. The 2000 census reveals that eleven percent of us are now foreign-born, with the majority coming from Asia and Latin America.

 

So, speaking as an American today in 2002, I would like to make clear to all of you that the "Islamic world" is not somewhere else other than America. No indeed, the United States is part of the Muslim world. Chicago with its seventy mosques and half a million Muslims is part of the Muslim world. Washington D.C. where the Islamic Society of North America will gather ten thousand strong for their annual convention in just ten days time is part of the Muslim world. That fact is important for America; and it is important for the rest of the Muslim world in which American Muslims now participate. This morning I was able to open my email here in Kuala Lumpur and read an invitation from the Islamic Center of Long Island in New York. It was for a "Religious Solidarity Day" of reflections, remembrance, prayer and unity to be held at the mosque at the one-year anniversary of the attacks of September 11. Dr. Faroque Khan wrote:

 

As spokesperson for Islamic Center of Long Island in New York I often get asked questions like: 1) Where are the moderate Muslim voices? 2) Are you with us or against us? 3) What have you done for America since "9/11"? 4) Does your Mosque fund terrorists overseas? Well, if you like answers to these and other similar questions, meet first hand the victims of 911, hear from the mother of a 23 year old who gave his life rescuing others at WTC. Learn about the impact of Patriot act and secret detentions and most importantly see first hand how a vibrant Muslim community in NY worked hand in hand with Christian/Jewish and other groups after 911 to make NY a better place for all, we invite you to a very special memorial program at ICLI on Sunday Sept 8th from 10 am to 1 p.m. as per the attached program.

 

Three things interest us about this announcement: First, the obvious involvement of the Muslim community in Long Island civic life. Second, the ability of this community to provide space for what will surely be some sharp criticism of the "Patriot Act" and the "secret detentions" following 9/11, a critical dissent that is a sure sign of a participatory community. Third, the involvement of the community in interfaith outreach, especially in relation to Christian and Jewish neighbors. All this bespeaks a confident, participatory Muslim community, even in the most difficult of times.

 

And what about Buddhism? I have often said that Los Angeles, with its multitude of Buddhist communities spanning the whole of Asia, is the most complex Buddhist city in the world. Its Chinese temples, its Korean and Japanese temples, its Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao temples, its Tibetan communities --all these partakes of the cultures and religious ways of all of Asia. But the Buddhism of Los Angeles also includes the entire spectrum of "new Buddhists," the native born Americans who, by the millions, practice meditation and have built hundreds of meditation centers with Tibetan, Zen, Korean Zen, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Thai teaching lineages.

 

And Hinduism? Cities like Pittsburgh, Nashville, Atlanta, and Houston have splendid Hindu temples and have seen the magnificence of temple consecration rites most of these new immigrants had never witnessed in India. They are part of whatever one might mean by the "Hindu world," as are the multitudes of Hindus here in Malaysia and they are facing the challenging task of passing on some form of the Hindu tradition to their children and grandchildren, the second and third generation. In the fall of 2000 at the time of the visit of the Indian Prime Minister, a Hindu opened a joint session of the U.S. Congress with the daily invocation. He was a priest from the new Siva-Vishnu Temple in Cleveland, Ohio. And there are also Sikhs who have built gurdwaras from New Jersey to California and have taken seriously the promise of religious freedom, litigating for their right to wear a turban on a hard-hat job or on the Los Angeles police force. And there are Jains who have trained their children in a curriculum of non-violence and insist that school cafeterias have clearly marked vegetarian options; Jains who offered prayers for peace in the Ohio state legislature in the days following the catastrophes of September 11.

 

In America, we are still in the process of understanding the new religious reality that is ours. Our newfound complexity links us as Americans to virtually every part of the world through the traditions and experiences of our newest citizens. This complexity requires that we appropriate anew the fundamental freedoms assured by our Constitution: the free-exercise of religion and, along with it, the non-establishment of religion. To be sure, religious diversity is a concomitant of religious freedom. And religious diversity requires a very strong civic tolerance for people who may differ from one another in profound ways. Beyond tolerance, I would argue, freedom of religion requires the energetic engagement of people of different faiths in creating a common society, for the foundation of democracy is participation.

 

Pilgrimage to Pluralism

I speak to you today about the United States, not because America has the answers, but because America has struggled with these issues of religious difference, religious tolerance, and democracy from the very beginning. The Pilgrims and Puritans who sailed the seas from Europe to establish communities in a new world wanted to be free to practice their religious faith. At first, they were not thinking about a wider ethic of religious freedom when they clung to the shores of the Atlantic and created new communities. They were thinking about survival. History reminds us that they did not, for the most part, consider the Native peoples they encountered in America as people of another religious way of life, but as heathen who had no religion at all. And history reminds us that as the decades brought more and more settlers from America to Europe, our Christian ancestors did not, in fact, create widely tolerant communities. The Puritans envisioned a society, a Biblical Commonwealth, decisively shaped by their own form of Christianity. They were concerned primarily with religious freedom for themselves and did not see religious freedom as a foundation for common life with people who differed from them. In seventeenth century Puritan Boston, for example, Solomon Franco, a Sephardic Jewish merchant, was "warned out" of town. An anti-Catholic law was enacted stating "that no Jesuit or ecclesiasticall person ordained by the authoritie of the pope shall henceforth come within our jurisdiction. . . . " The Puritan establishment of Boston put four Quakers to death on the gallows on Boston Common. Dissenters like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchison had to flee the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of their non-conformist religious beliefs, settling in what is now Rhode Island.

 

During the long argument that produced a nation out of thirteen colonies, there were those who wanted to establish a state religion in the new world and those who urged tolerance and freedom for all religions. The principle of religious freedom eventually won the day and was written into the Bill of Rights: that there shall be no establishment of any given religion, no sect of Christianity, not even Christianity itself, and that there shall be no infringement of the free exercise of religion. The most critical lesson was this: The freedom we seek for ourselves, we must also cherish for everyone, even those with whom we disagree.

 

It is significant that the founders and framers of the Constitution were, to be sure, people of faith. The likes of Jefferson and Madison actually argued their case for a secular Constitution on religious grounds. Our freedom is grounded in the God-given freedom of the mind to think and to choose. Standing for religious freedom --even freedom from any form of religion-- is grounded in the very freedom ordained by God. A state that would enforce uniformity of religion is against the very principles of God's sovereignty and ultimacy. God did not propagate truth by coercion, so why should we?

 

Such a vision of religious freedom was not part of the heritage of most European newcomers to America. In England and France there had been state established and supported religion. And there had been a ghastly legacy of bloody wars in the name of religion. The new American democracy turned away from that legacy toward the separation of church and state, and the free-exercise of religion.

 

Interestingly, religion in the new country became stronger precisely because the churches no longer had support from public tax coffers; they had to compete with one another in the free market of Christian ideas in order to thrive, and one of the consequences of this unprecedented approach to religious freedom was the proliferation of churches. When the Frenchman Alexis de Toqueville traveled around America in the 1820s, he discovered, to his surprise, that severing the ties between church and state seemed to make religion stronger, rather than weaker. Unlike France, where the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom seemed to march in opposite directions, in America they seemed "intimately united" and "reigned in common over the same country." Churches needed to win the support of parishioners in order to survive, and the spirit of voluntarism inspired a lively and intense competition in religion and the creation of a multitude of "denominations" that have become a distinctive feature of American religion. Toqueville wrote, "There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth." He called religion the "first of political institutions," astutely discerning that while the churches were not supported by the government and were not directly involved in politics as such, they were nonetheless extremely influential in the political sphere.

 

The history of making this unprecedented vision of religious tolerance and religious freedom into a firm foundation for a complex society is actually a very rocky one. If you want to know just how rocky this pilgrimage to pluralism has been, look at our nineteenth-century history. Ask the Catholics and Jews, whose history in the U.S. has included bitter periods of anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. Ask how the Chinese were received, who built makeshift temples on the west coast and in the Rocky mountains in the 1850s and 1860s, or ask how it went for the Sikhs who were called "ragheads," and who built their first places of worship in California in the 1910s. Ask the Japanese Buddhists who were imprisoned in America's own concentration camps during World War II. Ask the Native peoples of America, who did not win the clear right to practice their religious life-ways until the passage of the Native American Religious Freedom Act in 1968. Ask the Muslim and Sikh Americans who have felt the sting of a backlash in the months following 9/11. But through all this, the principle of the non-establishment and free-exercise of religion been a constant corrective to the excesses of intolerance.

 

The United States motto, E Pluribus Unum, "Out of Many, One," has been easy to put on our coins, but difficult to implement in our society. How are our diversity and our oneness related? There have been many voices in this debate, but let me give you a sense of three approaches, three ways of handling "difference." First, there have been exclusivist voices: the oneness of the unum, of the nation, requires the exclusion of those who are different. The manyness of difference poses a threat to oneness. Second, there are strong assimilationist or inclusivist voices, which insists that the nation's oneness requires the many to shed their differences and become assimilated into the normative culture. Third, there are pluralist voices who see the nation's oneness as shaped by the encounter of the many, the engagement of the many. We hear all three voices in our history, and we can discern all three in today's arguments over the new immigration and American multiculturalism.

 

Exclusivism: Go Home!

On August 13, 1993, the Cultural Affairs Officer of the Police Department called Pirun Sen, one of the leaders of the small Cambodian Buddhist community that had recently settled in Portland, Maine. "I am sorry to bother you so early in the morning. . . Vandals broke into the temple house last night. I think when they discovered all of the Buddhist things in it they decided to mess it up a bit. Can you meet me in twenty minutes?" With a heavy heart, Pirun Sen rushed to the temple and met the police at the small gray house they had dedicated as the Watt Samaki Buddhist Center. The windows of the blue sedan parked in the yard were smashed; the door had been hacked open with an axe; the contents of the Buddha hall were strewn around the yard. When he ventured inside, Pirun Sen saw the worst devastation of all: the words "Dirty Asian, Chink, Go Home" written across the wall. He closed his eyes, frightened and sickened by what he saw.

 

This is exclusivism, demanding that difference be destroyed, that those who are different go home. Wherever home may be, it's not here. When vandals broke into the newly constructed Hindu-Jain Temple in Pittsburgh and smashed the white marble images of the Hindu deities, they wrote the word "Leave!" across the main altar. That is the simple message of exclusivism: what is foreign should leave. Today's immigrants confront both the graffiti and the violence of xenophobia and hatred in the many rude and raw ways that force us to take a look at our long history of dealing with difference by excluding it. "Why don't you go back to where you came from!" shouted a North Carolina grade-school student at a Muslim classmate, wearing her headscarf, in the weeks following September 11. The little girl turned to him and said, calmly, "I came from Connecticut."

 

The narrative of exclusion has long been part of the American story. With the new intensity of mid-nineteenth century immigration, "Leave!" was the cry of what came to be called Nativist movements --those who claimed the old Protestant Anglo-Saxon core population as "native" and looked on newcomers, especially Catholics and Jews, with suspicion. The Nativist accusation was that it was difficult to be a good American and a good Catholic at the same time because the very freedom of mind and speech on which democracy depends was, in their view, usurped by the Church and the Papacy. This characterization took a long time to die. Not really until John F. Kennedy addressed the question specifically during his 1960 campaign, and not really until he was elected President, did it begin to dissipate.

 

Jews also experienced the exclusions of America, especially social exclusion. In 1877, Joseph Seligman, a successful Jewish banker and a friend of the late Abraham Lincoln, was not permitted to register as a guest at the Grand Union Hotel in Sarasota Springs, New York, a form of exclusion that would be repeated thousands of times for over one hundred years. In these decades of the late nineteenth century, Jews were accused of not assimilating to American culture and keeping themselves separate and aloof, but were simultaneously refused admission to schools and universities, clubs, hotels and resorts.

The exclusionist agenda had many targets, but Asians were the group most directly and specifically named and attacked. "Asian exclusion" became embodied in a series of immigration acts, defining in increasingly restrictive terms which immigrants could enter the U.S. and which groups could qualify for citizenship. We know that a sense of "identity" is often shaped by the categorization of the "other," and in terms of American national identity in the nineteenth century, the clearest "other" apart from the African American population was Asian.

 

The Chinese exclusion act was passed in 1882. In arguing in favor of the act, John Franklin Miller, a senator from California, insisted that the Chinese culture is wholly "other" --unchanging, wholly immutable. The anti-Chinese movement was not cast in explicitly religious terms, but deep cultural and civilizational terms. The two civilizations of East and West, he argued, have now met on the west coast of America. They are "radically antagonistic, and as impossible of amalgamation as are the two great races who have produced them. Like the mixing of oil and water, neither will absorb the other." In sum, he argues, since the Chinese will never adapt to American culture, they must be kept out.

 

Today the sheer prejudice of groups like the Asiatic Exclusion League seems astonishing. Today, American citizens of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese origin are elected to public offices, conduct our greatest symphonies, and lead our universities. Voices of exclusion remain and sometimes become visible in the graffiti of intolerance, but as we assess prospects for the future, exclusion cannot be viable. The exclusion of "difference" however defined is not consonant with a democracy based on freedom of conscience and religion.

 

Assimilation: The Melting Pot of Difference

A second attitude toward difference in America is summed up in the word "assimilation." The most vivid image here is the melting pot, the crucible where differences dissolve into the common pot, adding their flavors, but losing their form. Newcomers shed difference in order to blend in. This is what we might call an "inclusivist" point of view: people are welcomed to come --and be like "us."

 

This is the "melting pot" image of America. It was a Jewish writer, Israel Zangwill, who first popularized the "melting pot" image of America in his play entitled "The Melting Pot,," which opened in 1908 at the crest of America's most massive era of immigration. The play's hero, David, an immigrant from Russia, puts it this way as he surveys the immigrants at Ellis Island: "America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand good folk, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like those, brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to --these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians --into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American!"

 

Here, becoming American in this view means shedding difference. One of the sites of early twentieth century assimilation was American industry, and Henry Ford's plant in Detroit had a "Ford English School Melting Pot." A cartoon of the period displayed its ethos in vivid visual form. Immigrants in their national costumes were depicted on the "wheel of change." As the wheel turned, all the costumed Europeans in national dress were dipped into the melting pot and rose again as new Americans, wearing house-dresses and business suits, and carrying American flags. In today's terms, such assimilation would mean that the Sikhs building a gurdwara in Southern California should get rid of the golden domes of India in favor of the predominant architectural style of southern California. Muslims women should forego distinctive Islamic dress, and the Muslim policeman in Newark should shave his beard to fit in with the rest of the clean-shaven police force.

 

As an approach to this widening diversity, the assimilationist assumes that immigrants will come and blend in, contributing to the cultural mix, but ultimately relinquishing the most distinctive aspects of their home culture to take on American culture. Of course, moving from one part of the world to another as an immigrant inevitably involves some forms of assimilation. In fact, everyone is changed in the "melting pot" of assimilation.

 

But religious differences do not melt so easily. And the melting pot has never been an adequate image to describe some of the deepest dimensions of America's encounter with difference. The unum of the one cannot and does not, in fact, mean uniformity and sameness.

 

Pluralism: The Symphony of Difference

There have also been strong pluralist voices in thinking about difference, and some of the most visionary have come from minority groups. Early in the debate over Chinese exclusion, the Black abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass called America "composite nation" destined to become "the most perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen." To fulfill this vision, he insisted that the U.S. draw upon the distinctive gifts and energies of people from every nation, including the Chinese. And as for religion, "We should welcome men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general conformity. Religious liberty always flourishes best amid the clash and competition of rival religious creeds."

All will be "molded" into Americans not by uniformity, but by observing the same law, supporting the same government, enjoying the same liberty, and vibrating with the same national enthusiasm. Douglass did not use the term "pluralism," but his vision of a "composite nation" strikes me as a pluralist vision in which differences, including religious differences, become the building blocks of a new community.

 

In 1915, a Jewish immigrant, the sociologist Horace Kallen, wrote a much-discussed article in The Nation, taking issue with the melting-pot vision of America. He may well be the first to use the term "pluralism" to describe an alternative vision. The article was titled, "Democracy versus the Melting Pot," and in it he argued that the "melting pot" ideal is inherently anti-democratic. It collides with America's foundational principles. After all, one of the freedoms cherished in America is the freedom to be oneself, without erasing the distinctive features of one's own culture. Kallen saw America's plurality and its unity in the image of the symphony, not the melting pot. America is a symphony orchestra, sounding not unison, but in harmony, with all the distinctive tones of our many cultures. He described this as "cultural pluralism."

 

In Kallen's view, there are many things that immigrants to America can and do change --their style of dress, their politics, their religious affiliation, their economic status. But whatever else may change, "they cannot change their grandfathers." Cultural pluralism preserves the inalienable right to the "ancestral endowment" of selfhood imparted by one's parents and grandparents. One has a right to be different, not just in dress and public presentation, but in religion and creed, united only by participation in the common covenants of citizenship. American civilization is "a multiplicity in unity, an orchestration of mankind." In the final paragraphs of his 1915 article, Kallen develops the orchestra image:

 

As in an orchestra, every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody, and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization, with this difference: a musical symphony is written before it is played; in the symphony of civilization the playing is the writing, so that there is nothing so fixed and inevitable about its progressions as in music, so that within the limits set by nature they may vary at will, and the range and variety of the harmonies may become wider and richer and more beautiful. But the question is, do the dominant classes in America want such a society?

 

I find this an appealing image --the symphony of society, each retaining its difference, each sounding together, with an ear to the music of the whole. We know, of course, that disharmony and even cacophany is part of the noise of diversity. How do we create a society together out of all this diversity? There is, after all, something we "play" together: a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, and a way of living with our deepest differences that is premised on these common covenants. Learning how to do that requires our patience with the disharmonies of practice and the dissonance of dissenters.

 

The symphony image needs some modification, however, as Kallen himself seemed to realize. A symphony is usually written in its entirety before it is played, and no society or nation has such a script. The work of cultural pluralism requires revisiting and reclaiming the energy and vision of democracy in every generation and with every new arrival. Perhaps we need to stretch our imagination to something more akin to jazz, for in jazz "the playing is the writing." And because it is not all written out, it requires even more astute attention to the music of each instrument, it requires collaboration and invention among the players. Learning to hear the musical lines of our neighbors, their individual and magnificent interpretations of the themes of America's common covenants, is the test of cultural pluralism. Our challenge today is whether it will be jazz or simply noise, whether it will be a symphony or cacophony, whether we can continue to play together through dissonant moments.

 

As the United States becomes more and more religiously, culturally, and racially diverse, we have no choice but to practice the scales of pluralism. When I think of American diversity, I often think of New Hampshire Avenue in the outskirts of Washington, D.C., where a Cambodian Buddhist monastery, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a Muslim community center, a Disciples of Christ Church, a Synagogue and a Gujarati Hindu temple sit virtually side by side in the same neighborhood. This is diversity, to be sure. But it will require the efforts and the practice of everyone to create a truly pluralist society in which people from all these backgrounds consider themselves neighbors in a common enterprise. Pluralism is not a given, but requires our practice, our creative work, not alone, but together.

 

The diversity of New Hampshire Avenue is not simply a curiosity for a Sunday drive. What it represents has profound implications for every aspect of American public life. What is happening to America as all of us begin to renegotiate the "we" of "we the people?" That "we" in the United States is increasingly complex, not only culturally and racially, but also religiously. What will this mean for American electoral politics, for the continuing interpretation of "church-state" issues by the Supreme Court, for American public education and the controversies of school boards, for hospitals and health care programs with an increasingly diverse patient population, and for colleges and universities with an increasingly multireligious student body?

Today, throughout the world, old multireligious societies are in danger of fragmenting under the pressures of politicizing religious movements. New multireligious societies in Europe and North America are questioning whether pluralism has perhaps gone too far. Complex identities are being simplified and minted into smaller and smaller coins and religious markers of identity are often presumed to be the most divisive of all differences. It is a dangerous time for religiously plural societies, and yet it is a time in which boldly practicing the scales of pluralism is more important than ever.

 

After September 11

On the morning of September 11, 2001 when hijacked planes exploded into the towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a new era began for us all, in every part of the world. The meaning of that new era is not yet clear, but let me recount something of my observations from the point of view of an American scholar of religion. First, it is important to know that within hours of the attack a group of national Muslim organizations had joined together in a joint statement condemning the violence as both Muslims and Americans. Months later many Americans were still asking why Muslims had not raised their voices, but the truth is they did, and repeatedly, but they were not heard and reported widely enough. Second, within hours of the attack an unprecedented rash of xenophobic incidents began -from low level harassment, ethnic slurs, broken windows, and threatening calls, to arson, beatings, and murders. Third, while the roster of hate crimes was growing, so were prodigious efforts at local and national outreach across religious boundaries -- interfaith services and interfaith education programs.

One thing became certain: the challenge of relations between and among people of different religious and cultural traditions, both in the United States and around the world moved closer to the top of the agenda and became more urgent than ever before.

 

We must be frank about the fraying of the American social fabric. Our wake-up call was not only the violence and destruction of the hijacked planes. We also found reciprocal violence in our midst: the firebombing of a mosque in Denton, Texas; the storming of a mosque by an angry crowd in Bridgeview, Illinois; the shooting at worshippers approaching a mosque in Seattle. An angry man drove his car through the plate-glass door of the new mosque in Cleveland, Ohio. In Alexandria, Virginia someone hurled bricks wrapped with hate-messages through the windows of an Islamic bookstore, shattering the glass. Rifle-fire pierced the stained glass dome of the mosque in Parrysburg, a suburb of Toledo. The rash of scatter-shot incidents included Hindu temples attacked in suburban Chicago and in Matawan, New Jersey, a Gujarati-owned convenience fire-bombed in Somerset, Massachusetts, and an Iraqi pizzeria burned down in Plymouth, home of the Pilgrims.

 

Sikhs were also attacked, their turbans making them ready targets of those who, in their ignorance, saw them as cousins of Osama bin Laden. The watchdog group called the Sikh Media-watch and Resources Taskforce (SMART) received reports of over two hundred incidents: a Sikh attacked with a baseball bat in Queens, shot with a paint-ball gun in New Jersey, beaten unconscious in Seattle, and assaulted at a stop light in San Diego. In Mesa, Arizona, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was shot and killed as he was planting flowers around his Chevron station and convenience store. The history of prejudice and stereotype demonstrates that religious insignia and institutions often becomes key markers of "difference," the most visible targets for bigotry and violence.

 

The documentary register of acts of violence is, of course, much easier to assemble than the register of new initiatives of cooperation and understanding. Yet assembling the evidence of new patterns of interreligious encounter and relationship is also important in discerning how the "we" is being reconfigured in multireligious America and in assessing our prospects for the future.

 

In the months since September 11, it is important to realize that the instances of interfaith outreach have outweighed the incidents of hate-crimes a thousand to one. The immediate xenophobic backlash revealed the ragged edges of America's complicated encounter with difference. But it also revealed something more foundational and finally, I believe, more heartening about American society. As a civil society "we the people" will not condone indiscriminate violence against neighbors of any faith or culture. And so it was, across America, in the wake of September 11. While one misguided would be patriot shot and killed Balbir Singh Sodhi, thousands poured out to the gas station he had owned and to the civic arena where his memorial service took place to say, with one voice, "This is not who we are!." By January 2002, the family of this Sikh man had received more than 10,000 letters and messages of support.

 

Similarly, in Denton, Texas a circle of interfaith leaders assembled immediately at the mosque for prayer and protection. The Palestinian bookstore owner in Alexandria, Virginia, stunned by the shattered glass and its message of hatred, soon discovered hundreds of supportive neighbors he did not know who sent him dozens of bouquets of flowers and hundreds of cards expressing their sorrow at what had happened. In Toledo, as Cherrefe Kadri, the woman who is the president of the Islamic community told it, "That small hole in the dome created such a huge outpouring of support for our Islamic community. A Christian radio station contacted me wanting to do something," she said. "They called out on the airwaves for people to come together at our center to hold hands, to ring our mosque, to pray for our protection. We expected 300 people, and thought that would be enough to circle the mosque, but 2000 people showed up to hold hands around the mosque. I was amazed!" Last week in Seattle, the Idriss Mosque that had experienced rifle-fire and harassment immediately after September 11 held a barbecue to thank the hundreds of neighbors who had organized a round-the-clock vigil to protect the mosque.

 

Not surprisingly, the interfaith networks and councils that had grown in America during the 1990s sprung into action with immediate civic leadership, and cities that had never had an interfaith civic council formed one. Virtually all of the community services in cities and towns across America involved leaders from a wide spectrum of religious communities. At the National Cathedral in Washington, Muzammil Siddiqi, leader of the Islamic Society of North America, was among those offering prayers. The Episcopal Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon said, "Those of us who are gathered here -Muslim, Jew, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu-- say to this nation and to the world that love is stronger than hate." At an interfaith service in the Bay Area, the Governor of California, Gray Davis, put it clearly: "Our enemies have failed to divide us. We are one people. We are Americans. We don't care if you were born in the Mission District or the Middle East."

 

These efforts continue. Let me offer a few more local examples from the section of our Pluralism Project website (http://www.pluralism.org) called "In the News":

 

·  In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Association for Interfaith Relations hosted four panels of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist participants in response to September 11 At Wayne State University in Detroit, women students organized a "Scarves for Solidarity" movement to wear headscarves in support of Muslim women students.

·  On May 18, 2002.a four hundred citizens of Pittsburgh joined in a Celebrating Diversity walk, with Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist leaders.

·  On June 6, 2002, an interfaith group in Kansas City brought people from the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Sikh faiths together for a prayer gathering to remember September 11.

·  On June 8, 2002, Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Columbus, Ohio announced plans to build a Habitat for Humanity house together this coming fall.

·  On July 22, 2002, members of a Jewish congregation participated in Muslim prayers for the first time, hosted by Islamic Community in Southern Florida in a joint "Festival for Peace."

 

Education and outreach, fundamental to building relationships in a pluralist society, has been another positive prognostic of this period. As American bombers were leaving an airforce base in Missouri to fly non-stop to Afghanistan, mosques all over America were holding open-houses, inviting neighbors in to learn more about Islam, even in the face of a wave of Islamophobia. The Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge published an open letter to their neighbors, saying: "We utterly condemn the use of terror to further any political or religious cause. As Muslims, we abhor the killing of innocent civilians. Our holy book, the Qur'an, teaches: 'If anyone kills an innocent person, it is as if he has killed all of humanity. And if anyone saves a life, it is as if he has saved all of humanity' (Ch. 5, verse 32). The letter announced a community open house to be held the following Sunday. It closed, "God willing, we can lend one another strength to find hope in these uncertain times." More than seven hundred people came to the open house, many of them visiting a mosque for the first time.

 

The story was the same across the country. In Austin, Texas, for example, hundreds showed up for the Sunday afternoon open house. A woman interviewed by the Austin American-Statesman put the matter plainly and succinctly for all of us when she said, "The time of not getting to know each other is over."

 

I take her words as a concise statement of America's task ahead: "The time of not getting to know each other is over." Getting to know each other is often not easy. As a leader of one of our Muslim organizations put it, "Never have I felt so harassed, and never have I felt so embraced." Harassed, yes, because he was stopped the first time he tried to board a plane. Embraced because when he finally got a flight to Washington DC it was to meet with other Muslim leaders and President Bush at the White House.

 

In this process of getting to know each other, the outreach of America's Muslim communities, even in this difficult time, was very important. The word iftar entered the common American lexicon for the first time as Muslim communities across the country-invited friends and colleagues to share the fast-breaking meal with them at the end of each day of Ramadan. The mayor of Columbus, Ohio attended an iftar in one of the Islamic centers. Professors, classmates, and administrators in universities, including my own, were invited to evening prayers and an iftar meal by the Islamic Society. There was an iftar at the State Department for government employees, and for the first time in history, the White House hosted an iftar banquet for Muslims.

 

Pluralism Defined

Let me close, then, with a few words about pluralism. Pluralism is not an ideology, but rather the dynamic process through which we engage with one another in and through our very deepest differences.

 

First, I would argue, that "pluralism" is not just another word for diversity. It goes beyond mere plurality or diversity to active engagement with that plurality. Religious diversity is a observable fact of American life today --from Flushing, New York where Sikhs and Jews worship across the street from one another, to San Diego, California where the Islamic Center and the Lutheran Church are next door neighbors. The makings of pluralism are surely here, but without any real engagement with one another, this might prove to be just a striking example of diversity. One can study this diversity, complain about there being too much diversity, or even celebrate diversity. But the diversity alone is not pluralism. Pluralism is not a given, but must be created. Pluralism requires participation, and attunement to life and energies of one another. In the world into which we now move, sheer diversity without this real engagement will be increasingly difficult and dangerous.

 

Second, I would propose that pluralism goes beyond mere tolerance to the active attempt to understand the other, like the step taken by Milwaukee's Christians and Muslims when they signed that covenant pledging themselves to the process of mutual understanding. Although tolerance is no doubt a step forward from intolerance, it does not require new neighbors to know anything about one another. Tolerance comes from a position of strength. I can tolerate many minorities if I am in power, but if I myself am a member of a small minority, what does tolerance mean?

 

Today, with the free exercise of such a panoply of religious traditions in our nation and in our neighborhoods, a truly pluralist society will need to move beyond tolerance toward constructive understanding. Beginning to root out the stereotype and prejudice that form the fault-lines of fracture is critical for a multi-religious society. Tolerance can create a climate of restraint, but not a climate of understanding. Tolerance is far too fragile a foundation for a religiously complex society, and in the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.

 

Third, I would insist that pluralism is not simply relativism. It does not displace or eliminate deep religious commitments, or secular commitments for that matter. It is, rather, the encounter of commitments. Some critics have persisted in linking pluralism with a kind of valueless relativism, in which all cats are gray, all perspectives equally viable and, as a result, equally uncompelling. Pluralism, they would contend, undermines commitment to one's own particular faith with its own particular language, watering down particularity in the interests of universality. I consider this view a distortion of the process of pluralism. I would argue that pluralism is the engagement, not the abdication, of differences and particularities. While the encounter with people of other faiths in a pluralist society may lead one to a less myopic view of one's own faith, pluralism is not premised on a reductive relativism, but on the significance and the engagement of real differences. . The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. In the world in which we live today, the language of dialogue is a language we will need to learn

 

In the late 1950s, the Catholic thinker John Courtney Murray described America's civic pluralism as the vigorous engagement of people of different religious beliefs around the "common table" of discussion and debate. He wrote, "By pluralism here I mean the coexistence within the one political community of groups who hold divergent and incompatible views with regard to religious questions. . . . Pluralism therefore implies disagreement and dissension within a community. There is no small political problem here. If society is to be at all a rational process, some set of principles must motivate the general participation of all religious groups, despite their dissentions, in the oneness of the community. On the other hand, these common principles must not hinder the maintenance by each group of its own different identity."

 

Murray sees the engagement of difference in a pluralistic society as modeled, not on the structure of warfare, but on the structure of dialogue. Vigorous engagement, even argument, around the "common table" is vital to the very heart of a democratic society.

 

I would also contend that it is vital to health of religious faith, so that we appropriate our faith not by habit or heritage alone, but make it our own within the context of dialogue and engagement with people of other faiths. Such dialogue is not aimed at achieving agreement, but achieving relationship. Whether in the public school, the city council, or the interfaith council, commitments are not left at the door. The "common table" of civic life grows and its shape is re-figured with each new group of participants, each new seat added

 

Today, the United States has joined multi-religious countries throughout the world in struggling to appropriate a positive, constructive, and creative pluralism. The challenge and the unparalleled opportunity we all face is to build societies, indeed nations, of many peoples with many cherished religious and cultural traditions. Beyond this, the challenge we all face is to build a world-wide culture of pluralism in which our differences become the source of our vibrancy and strength. We may not succeed, and we may find the world ever more deeply divided by our differences. But if we can succeed, this legacy of nations like the United States and Malaysia will be the greatest form of lasting leadership we can offer the world.

 

http://www.usembassymalaysia.org.my/eck.html  3/6/03 12:36 PM