Global Conflict and Religious Intolerance – Is Religion Compatible with Genuine Morality

Global Conflict and Religious Intolerance –

Is Religion Compatible with Genuine Morality?

Can Faithful Christians be Religious Pluralists?

by Ingrid Shafer

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This chart is in interpretation and adaptation of material found in Adherents.com (http://adherents.com),
The percentiles of individual world religions add up to more than 100% because the numbers used are the
upper limits of estomates. Except for Judaism, only the most populous faith traditions are included. The
percentiles of denominations within religions add up to slightly less than 100% because small splinter
groups are not part of the chart.

Ward Fellows defines the term “religion” as “the connection or relationship between humanity and a transcendent world, state, reality, person, or power” (Religions East and West, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979, 5). Archeological evidence shows that human beings, individually and socially, have given meaning to their lives in and through religious beliefs and rituals for tens of thousands of years – by burying their dead, marking sacred spaces with stone monuments, carving fertility figurines, covering hidden cave walls with drawings of animals, and eventually, as civilizations evolved specialization and division of labor, developing a ruling priestly caste to appease the cosmic powers through worship and sacrifice. The roots of the contemporary world religions, even those of apparently relatively recent origin, burrow deep into the ground waters of our story as human beings. Unique ways of interpreting experience according to fixed religious paradigms – stories, pictures, rituals – are passed on from generation to generation and are among the major forces that give shape to civilizations while they, of course, are themselves continually subtly re-forming as they adapt to the very cultural context they help shape in mutual dialogue. Understanding at least some of the most significant aspects of a group’s religion can help us have at the very minimum a somewhat accurate intuition of the “soul” of a people.

Until a century ago, it was possible for people to spend all or most of their lives without having to deal with “others” who live by very different belief systems and principles. This is no longer an option, and humanity must learn to overcome the long ingrained habit of viewing others primarily as subjects to be “converted” to OUR ways because for millennia we had been taught that the “other,” the “outsider,” the one who is “different,” is by definition dangerous and in need of correction until he or she is more like “us.”

Religion has been both a source of inter-group conflict and of conflict resolution. In this essay I am going to focus on some of the patterns that explain these two contrasting roles as they can be traced through the history of Christianity. If humanity is to survive and flourish in an environment that renders cultural and geographic isolation impossible, it is essential that the world religions must become active forces for compassion, love, and justice without which global peace cannot be achieved. In addition, adherents of any religion, including Christians, should question their own motivations whenever their moral values differ from those of humane, responsible, and thoughtful agnostics or atheists. Moral goodness ought in no way to depend on people’s belief or lack of belief in God, their assumption that a particular course of action is in accordance with God's will, or their conviction that their attitude or action will further or impede their personal salvation.

In a fascinating book, Mysticism and Morality, A New Look At Old Questions (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004), Richard H. Jones first shows that, far from religion being identical with or necessarily conducive to morality, the world religions have not only inspired violence, torture, wars, and injustice but by their very nature tend to construct value systems that "are legitimated by appeal to a religious authority and not by other-regardingness" as exemplified by Abraham's willingness to obey Yahweh's command and commit a patently immoral act by what Kierkegaard called a "'teleological suspension of the ethical' in light of an overriding duty to obey Yahweh's will" (54). Jones continues, "Basing one's actions on personal consequences is by definition not other-regarding, and thus a person acting only out of religious obligation is not being moral, regardless of the positive consequences to others, but nonmoral or even immoral" (54). However, Jones is quick to point out that people can simultaneously "act both out of a religious concern for themselves and a moral concern for others" (59) and concludes, "A religious value-system must be deemed nonmoral unless it can be shown to be otherwise" (60). However, Jones goes on:

Religious worldviews, as part of their function of legitimizing the value-system of a culture, can provide a framework in which morality makes sense and is the highest social vision. This makes the context of religious other-impinging action-guides different from that of nonreligious ones: the action-guides become part of the religious demands on a person. In sum, a religion can provide reasons and motives for being moral, even if morality is logically autonomous. (60)

Nevertheless, throughout the book, Jones continues to ask hard questions concerning the motivation of apparently moral (other-regarding) actions. In a note he wonders if Francis of Assisi kissed a leper "to comfort him or only to get over his own disgust at the sight of the leper" (292).

Beyond Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"

Ours is an age of rapidly increasing population density and shifts in global distribution of the population. In 1900 the world population was a bit under 2 billion. In the 40 years between 1960 and 2000, it doubled from about 3 billion to 6 billion, and while the rate of growth is declining, UN experts expect world population to stabilize at around 11 to 12 billion people by the end of this century. Developing countries will account for more than 90% of that growth. An Internet search for global "conflict map" results almost instantaneously in a world map in Nobelprize.org on my computer's monitor screen with flames as graphic representation of regions of conflict (http://nobelprize.org/peace/educational/conflictmap/). “The map includes more than 200 wars from 1899-2001. Each flame represents one war. "War" according to our definition is an armed conflict with at least 1,000 military battle deaths, where at least one of the parties is the government of a state....This means that many smaller wars are not included, in most cases because of this casualty threshold” (http://nobelprize.org/peace/educational/conflictmap/about.html).

On the surface, these facts appear to support Samuel Huntington's prediction of a global future inevitably doomed to a "Clash of Civilizations." However, I believe that while Huntington may speak accurately for the near future or in isolated cases, his hypothesis will eventually prove too pessimistic because his predictions assume that human beings are irrevocably trapped in their relatively unchanging cultural matrices and that millennia-old habits of hostile responses to encountering a different "other" will continue to determine intergroup relations (http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Politics/Terror/ClashOfCivilizations.html).

Huntington defines civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. . . . The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies" (Ibid.). He also assumes that "The people of different civilizations have different views on the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy" (Ibid.). And finally, Huntington argues that, "These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon disappear," concluding that in the past, "differences among civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent conflicts" (Ibid.).

However, even Huntington admits that "People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change" (Ibid.). This, I believe, is a crucial point, an internal inconsistency, that undermines Huntington's entire argument. The present is radically different from any preceding age, and that difference calls into question projections based on the patterns of the past. If the boundaries of civilizations are open to any change then there is no reason why, under favorable conditions, those boundaries cannot be expanded to include potentially all of humanity in a way that preserves healthy diversity while encouraging a sense of universal human kinship. However, those boundaries can and will not change until and unless adherents of the various world religions are willing to respect the adherents of faith traditions other than their own and to collaborate for the common good of humankind. As Christians, we have no right to tell non-Christians what is true or erroneous about their faith – as long as a belief does not encourage intolerance – but as members of the human community we have not only the right but the duty to work towards interreligious harmony. We are obligated to find the resources within our own tradition to inspire fellow Christians to work toward interreligious and interdenominational harmony, just as Muslims, Hindus. Buddhists, and members of all the other religions or ideologies are morally obligated to do the same in terms of their tradition. For the sake of humanity, people all over the world will have to accept at least a moderate form of religious pluralism, not to replace their primary faith but to help it become part of a global web of religions-in-dialogue capable of working toward peace,

What is Religious Pluralism?

Religious Pluralism is the belief that no single religion should be privileged and that people of all faith communities or none should be respected and allowed to live by the principles of their tradition without interference as long as those principles do not call followers to harm others. In the United States (and many other Western nations) the implementation of religious pluralism is a guiding principle protected by law and is closely related to the separation of church and state. But for ordinary people hoping to live peacefully in a community, at least as important as the officially guaranteed liberty of religion and conscience, is the attitude of their neighbors who identify with a different religion or denomination. In the latter sense, especially, religious pluralism is diametrically opposed to fundamentalism which assumes that the teachings of a particular religious tradition interpreted a certain, unchanging way, represent an absolute truth and that consequently all other interpretations, religions, and ideologies are in error and in need of being corrected.

Christianity

Christianity is one of the religions of Abraham, and like its source, Judaism, Christianity evolved around the conviction of the possibility of a human relationship with a personal, caring, and just God who is also the omnipotent Creator of the universe. For Christians, this relationship is defined by the core belief that the divine became revealed in a unique, historic person, Yeshua/Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnation of God, the Anointed One, the Christ.

Thus, for Christians, Jesus is at once the primary way of relating to God and the world, the model to be emulated in life, and a way of imagining the Divine. The Christian is called to follow Jesus whose Hebrew name means “YHWH (Yahweh) is salvation.” In other words, for Christians, Jesus of Nazareth--his manner of thinking, acting, and being--is the standard that informs (or should inform) life as it is lived in the present. The New Testament offers clues that can help us become such followers of Jesus but, because of the limitations of language and the cultural chasms that divide contemporary Christians from one another and the worlds of the past, we must never forget that, as Paul already realized, we always see in (or through) “a glass darkly” whether we speak of God or try to understand scripture. The glass could be the focusing/distorting lens of our interpretive faculties or the more or less uneven mirror of our minds. Either way, absolute certainty eludes us. Hence, it is not surprising that there is in practice not only one Christianity, there are thousands of Christianities, all of which claim to be genuine – and often exclusively true – ways of following Jesus and imagining the Divine.

Jesus lived almost 2000 years ago at a time when divinity was understood primarily in terms of imperial power and demand for absolute obedience. Jesus preached a message of radical love rooted in his experience of the Father as an implacably, passionately loving cosmic force, and that message is as relevant today as it was two millennia ago. The essence of Christianity, the living center, is that “radioactive” love that can purify, activate, and transform whatever it touches. Jesus challenges us not only to love family, friends, and associates, but to love our enemies. Jesus challenges us to turn the other cheek, to be kind to those who hurt us, to give to others without expecting anything in return, to go the extra mile. Jesus challenges us to overcome all innate tendencies we might have to hate or “get even,” no matter how serious the provocation. He lived by his own principles to the end. As he hung on the cross he asked that his tormentors be forgiven. Jesus challenges us to be the best we can be and to remember that we are created in the image of God, called to actualize the divine spark within us. This call to the practice of radical love is the essence of Christianity, and it transcends all denominational boundaries.

Christian Beginnings

Jesus was born between 4 and 6 BCE (Dionysius Exiguus, a sixth century scholar-monk miscalculated when he reformed the calendar to start with what he thought was the date of the birth of Christ) in Palestine, a small Jewish territory in the vast Roman Empire, a loose amalgamation of countless nations, languages, cultures, religions, cults, and competing deities. His preaching aroused the envy of some Jewish religious leaders and his popularity made him suspect among Roman authorities who routinely crucified political enemies and were always prepared to nip another Jewish insurrection in the bud. Jesus was executed and buried. Three days after his burial, his tomb was found to be empty. His followers reported that they continued to see him alive, his resurrected body bearing the wounds of the crucifixion, and that he remained with them for several weeks before they saw him being taken up bodily beyond the clouds toward the heavens.

Jesus had promised that he would never leave his people, and fifty days after his resurrection his followers were gathered together for the Jewish feast of Shavuos, a wheat harvest festival and a celebration of the giving of the Torah to Moses. Suddenly, as reported in the Book of Acts, the room was filled with a violent storm and tongues of fire leapt among them and they were filled with the Spirit of God, also called the Paraclete, who would give them the ability to share the message of their ascended Lord, the Good News of the Father’s implacable love, with the world. Christians still celebrate that day annually as Pentecost, “The birthday of the Church.”

This pivotal experience of their living, dying, and resurrected Lord became the kernel round which Christianity began to coalesce, first as one Jewish sect among others, and eventually in the form of a growing number of Christian house churches, sharing a family resemblance, and often under women leaders. For the first three centuries, the Romans tried to suppress Christianity, in part because Christian pacifism was considered an expression of disloyalty to the military ethos of the state. Ironically, in 313 Emperor Constantine legalized this new religion of peace because, according to tradition, he had won a major battle with the aid of the Christian God. Naturally, the post-Constantine Christian Church became increasingly centralized, organized according to the efficient hierarchical administrative practices of the Roman Empire, with bishops as heads of dioceses, responsible for priests in charge of parishes (the term “Pontifex Maximus” [Supreme Pontiff] used to refer to the Roman Emperor in his function as the High Priest of pagan Rome and came to be applied to the Bishop of Rome once the Empire had become Christian).

From Yeshua to the Christ to Quantum Physics

In order to impose greater unity, in 325, Constantine called the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council. Some 300 bishops participated. They wrote the Nicene Creed which is still affirmed in many Christian churches and first clearly enunciated the most central of Christian doctrines, the affirmation of the Incarnation as so-called “hypostatic union,” so named by the Council of Chalcaedon in 451, which affirms that in Christ there are two complete natures that are seamlessly united "without mingling, without change, indivisibly, undividedly, the distinction of the natures nowhere removed on account of the union but rather the uniqueness of each nature being kept and uniting in One Person and One Substance, not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son only begotten God Word, Lord Jesus Christ."

In contemporary terminology, Jesus-the-Christ is BOTH 100% human AND 100% divine – a nonsensical statement in terms of the rules if deductive logic and common sense but perfectly intelligible in terms of mystical thinking that dares to violate the principle of non-contradiction, and, even more stunningly, a prefiguration of the mind-bending theories of the contemporary descendants of medieval theologians – Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, David Bohm, Richard Feynman, and others. According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, regardless of the velocity of different observers, all of them will measure the speed of an incoming light beam as the same constant value, the speed of light. In other words, the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. The opposite-dissolving-and-fusing attributes applied to Jesus by theologians from John the Evangelist to Kierkegaard point toward the ineffable and radically enigmatic at the heart of the Incarnation. They creatively and imaginatively juxtapose, join, and overcome opposites and transcend (not contradict!) common sense logic. Like Zen koans (e.g. ”what is the square circle?”), they hint at the elusive, always-just-beyond-the-horizon truth by forcing us to leave the safety of ordinary categories of reason, and rendering them translucent to the emergent meaning that illuminates its own genesis. Jesus-the-Christ is BOTH the Ground of Being beyond time and space AND the screaming-nursing-peeing-sleeping baby boy born to a Jewish teenager in the reign of Caesar Augustus. He is the human manifestation of the Divine that is at once personal and impersonal, one and many, full and empty. Twentieth century physics has given us a powerful analogy to help us accept, if not rationally understand, the nature of Christ. Light and electrons are simultaneously quantum and wave, discreet packets and continuous flow. In “Quantum Theory Without Observers” (1998), Sheldon Goldstein, writes:

According to Richard Feynman, the two-slit experiment for electrons is ... “a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality it contains the only mystery.” This experiment ... “has been designed to contain all of the mystery of quantum mechanics, to put you up against the paradoxes and mysteries and peculiarities of nature one hundred per cent.” ... Nobody can give you a deeper explanation of this phenomenon than I have given; that is, a description of it.” ( http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein/papers/qts/node4.html )

In a more recent paper, “Are All Particles Identical?” (2005) Goldstein notes:

It is not a new idea that what appear to be two different species of particles may in fact be two different states of the same species. It is particularly obvious that spin-up and spin-down are merely two states of the same particle because we often encounter super-positions, such as spin-left, of these states. ... We explore here the most extreme possibility of this kind: that all particles are fundamentally identical, i.e. , that fundamentally only one species of elementary particles exists. Let us call this the identity hypothesis. This one species would then have to have different states corresponding to being an electron, a quark, a neutrino, or whatever . The consequences of the identity hypothesis are, in a sense, less dramatic than one might expect: we shall point out how every quantum theory involving several particle species can indeed be transformed into a theory of just one species, thus incorporating the identity hypothesis, without any change in the predictions for experiments. (http://math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein/papers/aapi.pdf)

The Growth of the Christian Church

In 380 Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire, and in 392 he outlawed the practice of paganism. By the end of the fourth century the canon of the New Testament was established. Enforcement of doctrinal uniformity led to persecution of heretics (Arians, Donatists, Monophysites, Pelagians, Christian Gnostics, and so forth). In addition, Augustine of Hippo, a former Manichaean, introduced a strong emphasis on original sin, the terrors of hell, the evils of sexual desire, the need for divine grace, and the corruption of “the World” in contrast to the “City of God.” In subsequent centuries, Christian factions continued to kill one another over doctrinal matters (i.e. the veneration of icons), and Christian rulers (such as Charlemagne) forced subject populations to convert or be slaughtered. In 1054 the Catholic (Western) and Orthodox (Eastern) branches of Christianity formally separated, mutually excommunicating one another. Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade in 1095, and presumably unintentionally, ushered in a period of “Holy Wars” not only against the forces of Islam in the Holy Land but a series of wars against heretics (Cathars and Albigensians), schismatics (Greek Orthodox), and – especially – the “Infidels” and “deicides” at home – the “perfidious Jews.”

Still, even in medieval times there were periods of fertile interaction of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, especially in Spain under a Muslim government that gave non-Muslims a respected, albeit subservient, function within society as a whole. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Spanish Judaism produced brilliant poets, scholars, and courtiers. Later, initially even under Christian rule, Spain continued a tradition known as convivencia in which Jews and Muslims were involved in cultural, intellectual, financial and even political life all over Spain. Philosophers and scientists collaborated. There were churches, synagogues, and mosques in Toledo and other major cities. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this brief window of relative religious tolerance was gradually giving way to increasing religious hatred, especially after the Jews were accused of having started the plague by poisoning wells, leading in 1492, under Ferdinand and Isabella, to the expulsion of the Jews and the subsequent Inquisition that targeted anyone suspected of practicing any religion other than what was considered orthodox Christianity.

Christian Humanists

Clearly, not all Christians shared at all times the bleak vision of depraved human nature projected by Augustine (and subsequently adopted by Luther and other northern European reformers, especially the Calvinists) or the hostility toward the pre- or non-Christian world with its diverse religions and philosophical schools. In the 12th century Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, issued the first translation of the Qur`an, and in the Reformation era the Swiss theologian Theodor Bibliander edited Peter's translation. He and his publisher were promptly arrested, but released after Martin Luther vouched for them.

Incarnational thinking inspired theologians of the High Middle Ages, such as Thomas Aquinas, and especially the humanists of the Italian Renaissance. St. Thomas, for example, saw no conflict between reason and faith, and spent his life attempting to help others make sense of Catholic doctrines and justify those doctrines in terms of the cultural paradigms and conceptual vocabulary of his era (in which Christians and Muslims had begun to exchange ideas) which included the understanding of Greek philosophers (especially Aristotle) filtered through the lens of Arabic thought. Thomas believed in an orderly cosmos whose structure reflected the rationality of God’s mind. Human beings, as created in the image of God, were naturally endowed with an intellect capable of making moral judgments which intuitively manifested rational norms. He also argued that we could know aspects of divine nature by observing the world. This principle is called analogia entis – analogy of being.

Scholars, such as Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64), Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (c. 1463-94), and Giorgo Vasari (1511-1574 were simultaneously devout Christians and admirers of ancient thought, contemporary non-Christian thinkers, and humanity as created in the image of God. Pico della Mirandola, happily cited Zoroastrians, Jews, and Muslims as valuable sources as he extolled the magnificence of being human:

Finally, the Great Artisan mandated that this creature who would receive nothing proper to himself shall have joint possession of whatever nature had been given to any other creature. He made man a creature of indeterminate and indifferent nature, and, placing him in the middle of the world, said to him "Adam, we give you no fixed place to live, no form that is peculiar to you, nor any function that is yours alone. According to your desires and judgment, you will have and possess whatever place to live, whatever form, and whatever functions you yourself choose. All other things have a limited and fixed nature prescribed and bounded by our laws. You, with no limit or no bound, may choose for yourself the limits and bounds of your nature. We have placed you at the world's center so that you may survey everything else in the world. We have made you neither of heavenly nor of earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and dignity, you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose. To you is granted the power of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine."

Marsilio Ficino, a Catholic priest and the leader of the Florentine Academy, was also known as alchemist, astrologer, philosopher, musician, and celebrated translator of Plato’s writings. He was especially intrigued with the immortality of the soul. He tried to demonstrate that the neo-Platonists of the late Classical period, especially Plotinus, provided a perfect substructure for Christian revelation. His commentary on Plato's Symposium (dialogue on love) incorporated Plotinus’ theory of the soul's alienation in space and time. Eventually, perfected through the practice of “Platonic love” (mystical, spiritual, pure affection), the soul ascends through the ever more rarefied levels of matter, nature, soul and mind to achieve final unification with the divine source in the beatific union with God. Like St. Thomas, albeit in terms of Plato rather than Aristotle, Ficino saw no contradiction between true, perennial philosophy and Christian revelation and was convinced of the inherent unity of classical thought and Christianity.

Nicolas of Cusa, the 15th century philosopher, mathematician, canon lawyer, bishop of Brixen, mystic, and Cardinal, describes a vision of future religious peace:

It happened after some days, perhaps as the fruit of an intense and sustained meditation, that a vision appeared to this ardently devoted Man. In this vision it was manifested that by means of a few sages in the variety of religions that exist throughout the world it could be possible to reach a certain peaceful concord. And it is through this concord that a lasting peace in religion may be attained and established by convenient and truthful means.

If there had been more people like Nicolas in positions of power, a majority of the [ the] religiously motivated or rationalized crusades, jihads, and wars in general that have torn apart global humanity in the past millennium might have been avoided because respectful dialogue defuses even the most destructive warheads of religious intolerance and hatred.

Michel Eyguem de Montaigne (1533-1592) represents an alternate Renaissance-humanist strain, one less convinced of the grand nobility of humanity at the apex of creation and more skeptical of the human ability to use reason effectively to make value judgments (Note that the John Florio translation is in the public domain and was first published in 1603):

[B]ut reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false and impossible, is to assume unto himselfe the advantage, to have the bounds and limits of Gods will, and of the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve: And that there is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie. If we terme those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attaine, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what clouds, and how blinde-fold we are led to the knowledge of most things that pass our hands: verily we shall finde, it is rather custome than science that removeth the strangenesse of them from us: ... ( Chapter XXVI: It is Follie to Referre Truth or Falsehood to Our Sufficiencie – http://www.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/montaigne/1xxvi.htm )

Whence it followeth that nothing is so firmly beleeved as that which a man knoweth least; nor are there people more assured in their reports than such as tell us fables, as Alchumists, Prognosticators, Fortune-tellers, Palmesters, Physitians, id genus omne, 'and such like.' To which, if I durst, I would joyne a rable of men that are ordinarie interpreters and controulers of Gods secret desseignes, presuming to finde out the causes of every accident, and to prie into the secrets of Gods divine will, the incomprehensible motives of his works. ( Book I. Chapter XXXI: That a Man Ought Soberly to Meddle with Judging of Divine Lawes – http://www.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/montaigne/1xxxi.htm ).

Montaigne points out that people live by very diverse standards and rules in different parts of the world and that the ways we understand ourselves and our environment is a function of the very conditions we claim to have the objective power to assess.

Christian Reformers

The spirit of Humanism encouraged Christians to dare criticize Church functionaries, such as pardoners and summoners, peddlers of relics and indulgences, incompetent parish priests, venal bishops, and arrogant, corrupt popes. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer (ca.1343-1400) described a couple of such slimy characters:

There was a Summoner with us in that place,

That had a fiery-red cherubic face,

With pimples, and his eyes were small and narrow;

As hot he was and lecherous as a sparrow;

Black scabby brows he had, and scraggly beard;

His was a face that all the children feared.

(http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Chaucer/CanterburyTales/CanterburyTales2.html)

The Summoner brought a noble Pardoner

........

His wallet lay before him in his lap,

Brim full of pardons piping hot from Rome.

..............

For in his bag he kept a pillow-case

That was, he said, our Blessed Lady`s veil;

He claimed to own the fragment of the sail

That Peter had the time he walked the sea

And Jesus saved him in His clemency.

He had a cross of latten set with stones,

And in a glass a handful of pig`s bones. (Ibid.)

In late fourteenth century Prague, Jan Hus (c. 1372/73-1415) discovered the writings of the English reformer John Wycliffe who argued, among other things, that an evil authority ceases to be a legitimate authority. In 1401 Hus began to teach philosophy at Charles University, lecturing on Aristotle and Wycliff’s theology. Hus was later appointed the rector of Bethlehem Chapel, where he preached in Czech (rather than Latin), and in his homilies attacked the feudal lords for exploiting the people, and the Church for what he considered un-Christlike greed and clerical immorality. This was the period of the so-called Great Schism of three popes reigning simultanously, and in 1412, Pope John XXIII, one of the popes, placed Prague under interdict because of Hus’ heretical teachings. Hus traveled to Germany to defend himself at the Council of Constance (1414-1418), a synod called primarily to bring an end to the schism involving popes Gregory XII, Benedict XIII, and John XXIII. Eventually all three popes were deposed or resigned and Martin V was elected in 1417. However, before the schism had been settled, Hus – who had been promised safe conduct – was arrested, condemned of heresy, and burned at the stake on July 6, 1415 (I visited the place of his execution about 15 years ago. It was covered with gifts of flowers.)

During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), a priest, poet, and scholar, satirized both members of religious orders and the popes with scathing wit:

And next these come those that commonly call themselves the religious and monks, most false in both titles, when both a great part of them are farthest from religion, and no men swarm thicker in all places than themselves. ... For first, they reckon it one of the main points of piety if they are so illiterate that they can't so much as read. And then when they run over their offices, which they carry about them, rather by tale than understanding, they believe the gods more than ordinarily pleased with their braying. And some there are among them that put off their trumperies at vast rates, yet rove up and down for the bread they eat; nay, there is scarce an inn, wagon, or ship into which they intrude not, to the no small damage of the commonwealth of beggars. And yet, like pleasant fellows, with all this vileness, ignorance, rudeness, and impudence, they represent to us, for so they call it, the lives of the apostles. (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8efly10.txt)

And for popes, that supply the place of Christ, if they should endeavor to imitate His life, to wit His poverty, labor, doctrine, cross, and contempt of life, or should they consider what the name pope, that is father, or holiness, imports, who would live more disconsolate than themselves? or who would purchase that chair with all his substance? or defend it, so purchased, with swords, poisons, and all force imaginable? so great a profit would the access of wisdom deprive him of--wisdom did I say? nay, the least corn of that salt which Christ speaks of: so much wealth, so much honor, so much riches, so many victories, so many offices, so many dispensations, so much tribute, so many pardons; such horses, such mules, such guards, and so much pleasure would it lose them. (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8efly10.txt)

In the early sixteenth century, Martin Luther, a German Catholic priest and theologian, was appalled at the sorry state of the church and officially started the Reformation. However, critical as he was of corruption in the Catholic Church, Erasmus would not join Luther and the other Reformers. Instead, he tried to mediate with Rome, holding a central position. He realized that once a schism started, based on an individual's right to interpret Scripture, ever new generations of dissenters would splinter off, and there could be no such thing as a unified Protestant Church, or unified Christendom. He was right, and the Reformation not only ushered in the age of brutal religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but would lead to the eventual fragmentation of the Western Church into thousands of major and minor denominations whose “divisions are so extreme . . . that sincerely and devoutly held beliefs by the most conservative Christians may well be considered blasphemy by the most liberal, and vice-versa” ( http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_divi2.htm ).

Contrast the words of Thomas Aquinas, Pico della Mirandola, and Marsilo Ficino with the following passage from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, a seminal work for many of the Reformed traditions. While the timelines overlap and some of the ways of thinking associated with the Renaissance and Humanism certainly contributed to launching the Reformation, and provided critical tools to the Reformers, overall, the Reformers used those tools not only to attack what they considered erroneous Catholic teachings and practices, they reacted against what they interpreted as the un-Christian assumptions of the Humanists.

Calvin interprets Paul:

Thus he thunders not against certain individuals, but against the whole posterity of Adam - not against the depraved manners of any single age, but the perpetual corruption of nature. His object in the passage is not merely to upbraid men in order that they may repent, but to teach that all are overwhelmed with inevitable calamity, and can be delivered from it only by the mercy of God. As this could not be proved without previously proving the overthrow and destruction of nature, he produced those passages to show that its ruin is complete. Let it be a fixed point, then, that men are such as is here described, not by vicious custom, but by depravity of nature. The reasoning of the Apostle, that there is no salvation for man, save in the mercy of God, because in himself he is desperate and undone, could not otherwise stand. I will not here labour to prove that the passages apply, with the view of removing the doubts of any who might think them quoted out of place. I will take them as if they had been used by Paul for the first time, and not taken from the Prophets. First, then, he strips man of righteousness, that is, integrity and purity; and, secondly, he strips him of sound intelligence.(http://www.reformed.org/books/institutes/bk2ch03.html )

Human Achievement from God or Satan?

The two divergent, and often diametrically opposed paths of Christian self-understanding can be illustrated by contrasting the attitudes of their respective biographers toward the Italian Leonardo da Vinci and his younger German contemporary Georg (subsequently called Johann) Faust. Both men were viewed as possessing gifts and powers that far exceeded the abilities of ordinary mortals. The source of those unique gifts and powers, however, was seen as God in the case of Leonardo, and Satan in the case of Faust.

In 1550, some three decades after Leonardo had died and Luther had started the Reformation north of the Alps, the Italian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) considered Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) uniquely favored by God: “The greatest gifts are often seen, in the course of nature, rained by celestial influences on human creatures; and sometimes, in supernatural fashion, beauty, grace, and talent are united beyond measure in one single person, in a manner that to whatever such an one turns his attention, his every action is so divine, that, surpassing all other men, it makes itself clearly known as a thing bestowed by God (as it is), and not acquired by human art” ( www.fordham.edu/).

On the other hand, the German Faust (c1480 - c1539), who had much in common with Leonardo, was accused by his biographers of owing his gifts not to God but to Satan. The difference, I believe, can at least be partially traced to the radically different world-views found in Catholic Renaissance Italy and Protestant Reformation Germany. Along similar lines, historian Crane Brinton distinguished between what he called “spare” humanists in northern Europe and “exuberant” humanists in the South ( The Shaping of Modern Thought, 1963, 35). Despite the “Holy Office” and official condemnation of nascent science by the Magisterium, Renaissance artists and thinkers tended to focus on the Incarnation as sign of God’s presence in the world (in keeping with Thomas Aquinas’ analogia entis [analogy of being]) while Lutherans and other Protestants (especially Calvinists) tended to focus on original sin as a sign of Satan’s power in the world. Both of these perspectives had been present from the beginning of Christianity but became more extreme and polarized during the Reformation period.

The Enlightenment

With roots in the Renaissance-Humanist movement, the European Enlightenment is at least in part a reaction to the religious and intellectual fanaticism of the post-Reformation era. The writings of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) represent an early foreshadowing of Enlightenment ideas.

Grotius lived in Holland, at the time a center of European publishing, famous for being the only society in early modern Europe where all kinds of religious groups – including Jews, Mennonites, Catholics, Calvinists, and other Protestants – lived peacefully together. This was particularly significant since this was also the period of the Thirty Years War (1618-48) that devastated central Europe. A biblical scholar and renowned lawyer, Grotius held a variety of political positions, including service as Attorney General and as the Governor of Rotterdam. As the Calvinists rose to positions of leadership, they tried to abolish religious tolerance, convert or expel all Dissenters, and turn Holland into a theocracy. Grotius struggled against the Calvinist notion of predestination in favor of free will. He unsuccessfully tried to forge a compromise acceptable to all parties, and in 1618, after a Calvinist coup, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Three years later, he escaped and spent most of the remainder of his life in France , Germany , and Sweden . In 1625 De Jure Belli Ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) appeared in Paris. Grotius died of exhaustion after a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea on his way back to Sweden with his family.

In contrast to the cynicism of Hobbes and Macchiavelli concerning human nature, and despite the injustices to which he himself had been subjected, Grotius pointed toward an ideal of treating persons as individuals with innate dignity and as such as citizens with inalienable rights of what we would now call a global community. He considered war an occasional necessity for the protection of rights and punishment of transgressions. By proposing a form of universal law, he sought to transcend the violent upheavals of religious hatred spawned by the Reformation, emergent nationalism, political absolutism, and decades of devastating warfare. In the following passage from On the Law of War and Peace, Grotius carefully points out what representatives of one nation may or may not legitimately require of citizens of an enemy nation:

XXI. With respect to the actions of men, there is another rule which may properly come under this head, and that is, the unlawfulness of urging or persuading any one to do an unlawful act. For instance, no subject has a right to lift his hand against his sovereign, to deliver up a town without public authority, or to despoil his neighbour of his goods. It would be unlawful then to encourage the subject of an enemy, as long as he continues his subject, to do any of these acts. For the person, who urges another to do a wicked act, makes himself a partner in his guilt. Nor can it be received as a just answer, that urging a subject to the perpetration of such a deed is nothing more than employing the lawful means of destroying an enemy. For though it may be necessary and just to destroy him, if possible, yet that is not the way, in which it should be done. ... But employing the spontaneous offers of a deserter's [sic] not contrary to the laws of war, and is a very different action from that of seducing a subject from his allegiance. ( http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Law508/GrotiusBook3.html ).

Despite the animosity of many "Enlightened Rulers" toward the institutional Church and papal anathemas hurled in past centuries at the evils of “modernism,” it now seems clear that the call for liberty, brotherhood, equality, and respect for diversity represents the very best Christianity has to offer and is far closer to the message of Jesus than the crusading intolerance that burned witches, Jews, and heretics, ignited the assorted religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and championed the notion of divine rights for absolute monarchs. In addition, in a milieu as deeply permeated by Christian culture as the Western world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, democratic ideals simply could not have proliferated as quickly as they did if they had not been anticipated in at least certain key elements of the Christian tradition. Official Roman Catholicism vehemently opposed the very notions of freedom, equality, and fraternity -- the essential civil liberties of the French Revolution. Yet, those notions had not emerged in a vacuum. They were developed in a cultural matrix steeped in Christian traditions by men almost all of whom were baptized Christians who were generally educated in Church-run schools. Francois Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, for example, had received an excellent education at the Jesuit College Louis-le-Grand. Denis Diderot, was also educated by the Jesuits before graduating with an MA from the University of Paris. Jean Le Rond D’Alembert, an illegitimate child, named for the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond where his mother had left the newborn, was educated at a vaguely Jansenist College des Quatre-Nations where his professors advised him to study for the priesthood.

Some of the intellectual fathers of the Enlightenment, such as Guillaume Thomas François-Raynal (1713-1796) were priests. Abbé Raynal was one of the brilliant stars of the Enlightenment and appears to have been equally committed to the Church and his ideals of human liberation. Educated by Jesuits, he had entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained.

While the Enlightenment along with the Declaration of Human Rights had originated in France , other European regions were profoundly affected, and especially among educated Catholics, the ideals of human rights came to be seen as flowing naturally from the best Christianity could be.

Between 1802 and 1827, Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg (1774-1860) was Vicar General of Constance, the largest and most populous diocese in Germany with a population of about 1.5 million and over six thousand secular priests, monks or friars, and women religious. As Vicar General, he had a great deal of influence, even though he was repeatedly rejected for the episcopate by Popes Pius VII and Leo XII. He and other Enlightenment Catholics wanted to establish a national church, only loosely associated with Rome. They hoped to improve inter-denominational relations by having Catholic and Protestant congregations not only take turns using the same church but also exchange ministers in order to get to know one another’s teachings and practices. Enlightenment Catholics called for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and representative government. They argued that under certain conditions, divorce and remarriage should be allowed. They also considered the official position that all children in a mixed marriage should be raised Catholic unfair to the Protestant partner, and suggested that both Catholic priests and Lutheran pastors should be involved in such wedding ceremonies. Over 150 years ago, Enlightenment Christians, Lutheran as well as Catholic, were turning into inter-Christian pluralists, and while Rome ruthlessly suppressed this movement and continued to insist that there was no salvation apart from the Catholic Church, eventually, more than a century later, it would bear fruit in the Second Vatican Council, and many of those same ideas are now officially part of orthodox Catholicism.

The United States as Actualization of Enlightenment Ideals

Our Founding Fathers were Enlightenment thinkers, and many among them were Deists, but this does not mean that they cannot or should not be considered Christians. Those who assume that Deists are non-Christians tend to hold a narrow understanding of Christianity. They fail to recognize that many of the main ideas of the European Enlightenment, such as faith in progress, rationality, and human perfectability, were among ideals associated with the Christian Humanists of the Italian Renaissance who traced them back to antiquity. The Jefferson Bible with its emphasis on Jesus as moral teacher is a powerful example of the Enlightenment spirit at work in the New World, a world Jefferson hoped would be governed by God-given human reason and avoid the Old World pitfalls of inner-Christian persecutions caused by superstition and bigotry.

The pronounced critique of institutional religion of many Enlightenment thinkers should not be interpreted as rejection of Christianity, an ungodly and arrogant substitution of the secular for the sacred, but rather as a further development (and possibly a flowering) of essential Christian principles that flow both from Incarnational theology and the example and teachings of Jesus. These principles include – despite nineteenth century anathemas by popes and other Christian leaders condemning many of them – respect for persons, call for individual accountability, social justice, democracy, equality, human rights, liberty of thought, and so forth. When the devout Lutheran Immanuel Kant defined the Enlightenment as humanity's leaving behind immature childhood and coming of age and the contemporary Baptist scholar Harvey Cox, citing Saint Paul and pointing to parables attributed to Jesus, views secularization as "unlocking the gates of the playpen" the "secular city" becomes part of the process of actualizing what has traditionally been called the Kingdom of God.

Hence, the U.S. can be considered a nation founded on Christian principles as long as the term Christian is defined broadly and the Enlightenment is understood as a legitimate expression of Christian values. The U. S. Constitution did not specifically endorse faith in God or a particular denomination or religion precisely because the Founding Fathers realized state governments should be free to decide religious issues without federal compulsion. On the other hand, while the Deists of the infant nation can be considered Christians in the above inclusive sense, it is inappropriate to identify them (or the United States of today) with the conservative political and social agenda of the contemporary Religious Right.

The Pluralist Model of Religion

September 6-9, 2003, I had the privilege to be part of “The Pluralist Model: A Multi-religious Exploration,” an international summit of religious pluralists organized by John Hick, Paul Knitter, Perry Schmidt-Leuke, and Leonard Swidler, and sponsored by the Department of Theology, Birmingham University (Birmingham, England) and the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Temple University, Philadelphia, U.S.). Participants included some forty religious scholars from sixteen countries and eight religions, including Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism. During the final session of the conference on September 9, 2003 we adopted the following Key Principles:

1.         Interreligious dialogue and engagement should be the way for religions to relate to one another. A paramount need is for religions to heal antagonisms among themselves.

2.         The dialogue should engage the pressing problems of the world today, including war, violence, poverty, environmental devastation, gender injustice, and violation of human rights.

3.         Absolute truth claims can easily be exploited to incite religious hatred and violence.

4.         The religions of the world affirm ultimate reality/truth which is conceptualized in different ways.

5.         While ultimate reality/truth is beyond the scope of complete human understanding, it has found expression in diverse ways in the world’s religions.

6.         The great world religions with their diverse teachings and practices constitute authentic paths to the supreme good.

7.         The world’s religions share many essential values, such as love, compassion, equality, honesty, and the ideal of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself.

8.         All persons have freedom of conscience and the right to choose their own faith.

9.         While mutual witnessing promotes mutual respect, proselytizing devalues the faith of the other. ( http://www.metareligion.org/model.htm )

This set of key principles simply means that the One we call God, the Really Real, can be approached in an infinite number of different ways, all of which are legitimate, as long as they don't call us to break the ONLY unconditional Prime Directive: always to act in the most loving, caring, humane manner possible under given circumstances. Religious Pluralism does not call us to abandon our religious traditions. It calls us to expand and deepen our definition of religiousness and spirituality to include the simple, self evident premise that the very fact that I expect others to respect my right to view the Really Real through my unique set of lenses means that I am morally obligated to grant them the same privilege.

Religious Pluralism – Worship of “the Beast”?

Alas, this seemingly common-sense assumption of reciprocal respect ceases to be simple as soon as one introduces the human factor – adherents who are convinced that their religion is the "only true religion," that anyone who practices a different religion or denomination will be eternally damned, and that it is part of the mandatory practice of their faith to convert others to the TRUTH. In other words, there are some forms of religious practice in most if not all faith traditions that are incompatible with religious pluralism. This can be easily demonstrated by exploring the vast array of Internet pages that flow from and cater to religious fanaticism and are dedicated to battling the very notions of ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and developing a global ethic. Since in this essay I am concerned only with Christianity, I will limit myself to “Christian” examples:

            The New World Order Religious System of the Antichrist

            The Global Ethic

It was signed on by the 150 largest religous [sic] groups in the world. The bottom line of the whole thing is that if you say that your God is the Only True God, you are fit for nothing but destruction. All the largest religous [sic] groupings in the world signed on to this New World, Global, Religous [sic] System of the antichrist. The obvious target will be the Jews. The less obvious target is all Bible believing Christians. Christians need to get to know the meaning of Israel , and especially what an oblation is. ( http://www.dccsa.com/greatjoy/netge.html )

When Ecumenism, Unity, Dialogue, and the Interfaith Movement Come Together

One of the most dangerous pieces of literature relevant to ecumenism, unity, and interreligious dialogue comes from the WCC's [World Council of Churches] interfaith movement and that is their Global Ethic Project. Its "charter", the "Declaration towards a Global Ethic", was adopted by more than 200 religious and spiritual leaders at the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions. The "Declaration towards a Global Ethic" is the brainchild of an interfaith religious group consisting of Robert Müller (former UN assistant Secretary General) and his closest allies. The document was drafted by Müller's friend, Hans Küng, who had published a book in 1991 titled "Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic". (http://www.moravians.org/DHawks_WCC_Article.html )

The above-cited paragraph is an example of just how little people care for the facts and how far they will let their imagination roam when they suspect (or want to prove) a conspiracy. I sent a copy of this manuscript to Hans Küng’s colleague and friend, Professor Leonard Swidler at Temple University, who was deeply involved in the genesis of the Global Ethic project. Here is his reply:

Muller had nothing to do with the idea of a “universal declaration of a global ethic” as such. In fact, the idea was mine. After reading Hans's book Weltethos in 1990 while Arlene and I were teaching in Japan, I wrote an editorial for JES [The Journal of Ecumenical Studies] proposing the idea as a way to make a “global ethic” concrete and not just a desideratum, and invited Hans as a JES associate editor to co-sign it with me. He suggested that we get another 15-20 religious scholars of different religions to co-sign it with us and also try to get other periodicals to carry it. We planned to release it in Sept. 91 when Hans was scheduled to give a speech at UNESCO in Paris and would include the idea in it. And so it happened. (E-mail to ihs@ionet/net from dialogue@temple.edu, May 22, 2005, 3:08 PM)

Swidler’s editorial was entitled “Toward a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethos” and included the following point: “1) Every major religion and ethical group needs to commission its expert scholars to focus their research and reflection on articulating a Global Ethos from the perspective of their religion or ethical group – in dialogue with all other religions and ethical groups” (Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 28.1 [Winter 1991], 124) The editorial was signed by Leonard Swidler and Hans Küng and included a list of 24 additional scholars who had added their signatures. Robert Muller was not even one of the signatories. The following year, the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago (NOT the WCC!) commissioned Küng to develop a draft that was subsequently endorsed by the 1993 Parliament. Robert Muller was among the close to 200 delegates who signed the document (http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/globalethic.html).

            Ecumenism or 'Mystery Babylon'?

Under the guise of tolerance and ecumenism, Satan is undermining the world's ability to discern the true from the false. In desperation many will be very willing to follow the lead of a strong religious leader who can—with signs and wonders—point them toward worshiping the Beast (Revelation 13:11-18). This Parliament of the World's Religions is a significant step in his plan to bring about his version of world government influenced and guided by his religious deception. (http://cgg.org/index.cfm/page/literature.showResource/CT/PW/k/625 )

The call for developing a global ethic and living by the principles of religious pluralism and ecumenical dialogue is interpreted as a Satanic temptation by these contemporary descendants of the seventeenth century Lutheran biographers of Faust.

Ronald H. Nash’s Critique of the John Hick’s Pluralism

In 2004, Ronald H. Nash published an article, now on the Web, in the Christian Research Journal. In this article Professor Nash, who teaches philosophy at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, tries to establish the absolute incompatibility of religious pluralism, especially as developed by John Hick, with what Nash considers genuine Christianity. I was particularly struck by Nash’s insistence that Hick’s claim that “God was both personal and impersonal, as though this would make his system big enough to include theists, pantheists, and everyone else,” had to be false because:

A little reflection, however, shows how unsatisfactory that move was. The world contains some square objects and some round objects, but it does not and cannot contain objects that are round and square at the same time. Likewise, reality might contain either a personal God or an impersonal god, but it is impossible for the one supreme God to be both personal and impersonal in nature at the same time. (http://www.equip.org/free/DJ771.pdf )

Toward the conclusion of his essay Nash again faults Hick for refusing to make a clear distinction between truth and error:

Hick’s position also implies that beliefs can be true and false at the same time, true for people conditioned in one way and false for others conditioned in another way. This view would also make the supposed truth of pluralism itself a function of geographic and cultural conditioning. Roger Trigg notes, “Hick’s argument, so far from encouraging us to give equal respect to all world religions, makes us wonder whether religion is any more valid than atheism.” (http://www.equip.org/free/DJ771.pdf )

Does Nash really want us to consider God an object among objects, subject to the laws of classical physics? Does he expect us to stuff the Infinite into a common-sense three-dimensional Newtonian shoe box where only three right angles can meet at one point and parallel lines by definition can’t converge? For Christians who accept the Incarnation, the koan of the Infinite Finite, the square circle, Hick’s understanding of God ought to flow smoothly from Jesus the Christ as Symbol of God revealing to the world the inability of human reason fully to comprehend the Mystery – though humans can intuitively, imaginatively, emotionally, analogically, and even rationally grasp hints of the REALLY REAL in the most unexpected places. Hick’s God is quite consistent with Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being and Tillich’s assertion that to affirm God’s existence is as atheistic as to deny it. Could Hick’s unknowably knowable, finitely infinite, eternally temporal, impersonally personal God be a God of the quantum? In his article, “Creation as a Work of the Trinity” Dr. George L. Murphy, physicist and pastor, notes that “In this paper, we ... pursue the belief that the God who is involved with the world in quantum phenomena is the Holy Trinity. Interpretations which emphasize participatory aspects of quantum theory are especially congenial to an understanding of divine action which centers on the Incarnation. In this light, we examine questions about reality, knowledge of the world, the role of chance, complementarity, material identity, and the entanglement of systems” ( http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Philosophy/PSCF3-99Murphy.html ).

Religious Pluralism and its Enemies in the United States

In his landmark study Religious Pluralism in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), William H. Hutchison insists that at the present juncture in U.S. history "pluralism as tolerance and pluralism as inclusivity have by now, after long struggles, become intrinsic to the social covenant; there can be no turning back" (234-35). He argues that an even more evolved form of contemporary pluralism goes beyond inclusivity and becomes "mutually respectful and nonpatronizing" (235). This fully respectful pluralism rests in the realization that "if I do concede your right to hold firmly to your beliefs, it makes no sense at all for me to deny or compromise that same right in relation to myself. Pluralism in its leading contemporary meaning – support for group identity and the integrity of competing beliefs – emphatically does not imply ‘lack of all conviction,' either for historically dominant American faiths and their adherents or for the society at large" (235).

Despite Hutchison’s assessment, and the examples of inter-religious cooperation offered by Diana Eck in A New Religious America; How a "Christian Country" Has Now Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001), I am deeply concerned that the very structure of our nation is under attack by the alliance of the “theocratic right” with conservative political interest groups. “Anti-Liberals,” whether Republican or Democrat, appear to be unaware of the letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802, in which he assured a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, including the Baptist minister Nehemiah Dodge (an early supporter of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party which is now claimed as their progenitor by both modern-day Democrats and Republicans), that

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. (http://www.dodgefamily.org/DodgePublishing/Letter_To_Jefferson.shtml)

Politically astute and media-savvy representatives of the extreme Christian right range across the denominational spectrum and include the Rev. Tim LaHaye (founder and president of Tim LaHaye Ministries, the author of dozens of non-fiction books on Bible prophecy-related topics, the co-author of the phenomenally successful Left Behind fiction series and a founding member of the Moral Majority), the Rev. Pat Robertson (television preacher, the founder of the Christian Coalition, the founder and Chairman, The Christian Broadcasting Network, and a spokesman for charismatic Pentecostalism), the Rev. D. James Kennedy (pastor of the 10,000-member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida , from where he reaches millions all over the world with televised messages, the author of more than 40 books, and the founder of the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ), and Mother Angelica (the founder of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery near Birmingham, Alabama, and the founder of The Eternal Word Television Network that broadcasts conservative Catholic programming via satellite to millions of homes all over the world on cable, satellite, and low power TV).

In a 1992 newsletter Pat Robertson listed the groups he considered the “Radical Left,” the enemies of Christ. The list included the National Council of Churches, the National Organization for Women, the National Education Association, the Gay-Lesbian Caucus, along with People for the American Way, and Americans United for a Separation of Church and State (http://www.theocracywatch.org/introduction2.htm). In The Most Dangerous Man in America?: Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition (New York: Prometheus Books, 1996) Rob Boston quotes Robertson: "The strategy against the American Radical Left should be the same as General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific... Bypass their strongholds, then surround them, isolate them, bombard them, then blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand-to-hand combat. The battle for Iwo Jima was not pleasant, but our troops won it. The battle to regain the soul of America won't be pleasant either, but we will win it"(Ibid).

In the April 29, 2005 issue of the Online Journal, Bill Berkowitz identifies some of the odd entanglements of the inner workings of the Christian right:

Dr. Kennedy has been deeply embedded in Christian right politics: He was a member of the first board of directors of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and served on the initial executive board of the Coalition for Religious Freedom (CRF). The CRF was set up by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church when Rev. Moon was in prison in 1984. According to Sara Diamond's book Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right, CRF "was financed primarily by the Unification Church, which gave an initial donation of $500,000." CRF's executive board included such religious right heavyweights as Jerry Falwell, James Robison, Rex Humbard, Jimmy Swaggart, Kennedy and Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the wildly popular "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels. ( “Crusader for a Christian nation,” http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/042905Berkowitz/042905berkowitz.html)

Berkowitz concludes:

In The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail: The Attack On Christianity And What You Need To Know To Combat It, coauthored with Jerry Newcombe, Dr. Kennedy calls the wall of separation a "great deception [that] has been used to destroy much of the religious freedom and liberty this country has enjoyed since its inception."

Recently Dr. Kennedy's mission turned another corner: The Center for Reclaiming America's Dr. Gary Cass has unveiled four new ambitious initiatives intended to expand the impact of its work. The initiatives include the establishment of Liberty's Voice, a lobbying office in Washington; the development of a Strategic Institute, a think tank that will "add intellectual muscle" to the center's pro-family efforts; the launching the National Grassroots Alliance, an initiative to boost the center's existing grassroots network of 400,000 evangelicals up to one million; and Reclaiming America Media, an effort aimed at better communicating the Center's message. (Ibid.)

A “Shining City on a Hill,” a “Light to the Nations”

Almost four hundred years ago, in Hugo Grotius’ Holland, religious and political issues were intermingled and the province shifted overnight from a tolerant society into a theocracy in which the “other” became a mortal enemy to be imprisoned or even executed (Grotius was sentenced to life in prison, and his friend and patron, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Prime Minister of the United Netherlands, was sentenced to death for rejecting Calvin’s doctrine of total human depravity, unconditional election, and limited atonement, and instead following Arminianim, according to which all human beings have free will and can be saved if they choose to accept Christ’s redemption). Those who believe that religious pluralism is somehow part of a demonic plot to destroy this nation or Christianity and are therefore prone to make political decisions based on emotionally appealing hot button issues – such as sexual ethics, pro-life vs. choice, creation vs. evolution, women’s rights, gay marriage, welfare, the status of illegal aliens and attitudes toward immigrants in general – should keep William H. Hutchison’s observation in mind that “the pluralist is on firm ground in pointing out that in the Judaic, Christian, and other traditions ‘only God is God'; all apart from God is penultimate – less than absolute. Given that theological stance, neither ‘we' nor ‘others' can claim that our institutions embody final truth” (236).

In other words, religious pluralism is fully compatible with all religious traditions and none, and Christians can certainly be both religious pluralists and faithful followers of Christ. In fact, to be truly moral, motivated by genuine other-regardingness, Christians may well have to learn to be religious pluralists. In this way Christians can serve as models for adherents of all religions and ideologies, and the United States can truly become a “shining city on a hill,” a “light to the nations,” as the Very Rev. Nathan D. Baxter, Dean, Washington National Cathedral, citing Ezekiel, put it in a sermon he preached on September 8, 2002 in response to the President’s call for a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance”:

We are a sign and symbol to each other and also to the world of freedom, justice, and compassion, and not just a symbol of economic success, cultural dominance, and overwhelming superior military power. … [W]e are called by God as a nation to be a symbol of diversity—diversity of race, abilities, nationalities, colors, ethnicities, cultures, and even religions. “E pluribus unum,” from many, one! … Our society is based upon a “theology of democracy,” understood primarily through Judeo-Christian belief systems but open to the faith of all, including those of no religious faith but whose spiritual values and commitment embraces “liberty and justice for all.” … [W]e are called by God to be a nation of diverse people who live not just for ourselves but for the community—including those who disagree with us—and for the world. We are reminded that no matter how good our state of living may be, capitalism is not democracy. … Democracy does not depend solely upon a market place economy, military domination, or a sense of cultural superiority. Rather it most depends upon individual devotional acts of voting, public service, and religious and cultural tolerance. It also depends upon our willingness to make our voices heard for justice and to make use of our resources to demand equal rights not only for ourselves but for others and in the cause of peace. (http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/worship/ndb020908.shtml).

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This article was published in: Crosstimbers: A Multicultural, Interdisciplinary Journal, Spring/Summer 2005 (Chickasha: University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. 2005), 1-16.

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