Author: Gustav Niebuhr
Publication: The New
York Times
Date: September 17,
2000
How should religious
believers respond to the plurality of faiths around them? It's a question
that has grown in urgency as waves of immigration and emigration around
the world have brought people of very different theologies into the same
work places, schools and neighborhoods.
The question becomes
especially pointed when it comes to a faith with a missionary imperative,
like Christianity, whose gospels teach that salvation comes through faith
in Jesus.
In many areas around
the globe, Christians continue to follow Jesus's command, recounted in
Mark 16:15, to preach the gospel to every living creature. (That
this can cause great tension is evident these days in India, where Hindus
have accused Roman Catholics of proselytizing, and in Latin America, where
Catholics have complained of similar pressures from evangelical Protestants.)
At least since the 1960's,
many of the big, news-making events involving different religious groups
have been two-party affairs. Theologians from one group sat down
with those from another, and, sometimes after years of discussions, reached
tentative agreements about what they could say together. That process
produced some truly historic breakthroughs, like a pact between the Episcopal
Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that brought eight
million Protestants into full communion. More breathtakingly still,
years of high- level official dialogue between Roman Catholics and Jews
reached a climax last March when Pope John Paul II journeyed to Israel
and prayed at the Western Wall.
Recent events have illustrated
the conflicting responses that pluralism can arouse.
Three weeks ago, a meeting
at the United Nations brought together hundreds of religious leaders from
every inhabited continent to talk about how their diverse traditions can
help the cause of world peace. Among those attending was Cardinal
Francis Arinze, a Vatican official who specializes in interfaith work.
A week later, the Vatican
published a statement by an even higher-ranking Vatican official, Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, saying that the church is the guardian of religious truth
and that the ultimate aim of interfaith dialogue ought to be conversion.
It was only a month earlier
that an international gathering of 10,000 evangelists, who had been meeting
in Amsterdam under the auspices of the Rev. Billy Graham's organization,
released their own declaration, which dealt partly with the issue of pluralism.
(A statement last week by Jewish scholars and rabbis urging Jews to relinquish
their fears of Christianity dealt less with issues of ecumenism than with
dogma long seen as prejudicial.)
The two recent Christian
statements shared the view that only through Jesus Christ is salvation
possible. "Jesus is, in fact, the Word of God made man for the salvation
of all," Cardinal Ratzinger wrote. The authors of the "Amsterdam
Declaration" agreed: "The only way to know God in peace, love and joy is
through the reconciling death of Jesus Christ the risen Lord."
And, like Cardinal Ratzinger,
the evangelists reaffirmed the necessity of conversion: "As we enter into
dialogue with adherents of other religions, we must be courteous and kind.
But such dialogue must not be a substitute for proclamation."
Some might argue that
interfaith dialogue need not be an either-or proposition, a choice between
a defense of the claims of one's own religion or a mushy relativism.
Instead, the search for common ground may be undertaken for goals as readily
understood in a secular sense as they are in a sacred one.
That seemed to be the
message of the Millennium Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, the
remarkably diverse gathering at the United Nations that produced a document
signed by several hundred religious leaders pledging them to work for world
peace, against poverty and for the protection of the environment.
The underlying idea in
that statement was more or less described in a brief speech made during
the event by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, who said
that religion has an influence that goes beyond mere political power.
"Politicians sign peace
agreements, but it is our people, out there, on the ground, who will determine
whether peace is real, or just a breathing space between wars," he said.
One of those present
was James Kenney, international coordinator of the Council for a Parliament
of the World's Religions, a Chicago-based organization that has twice convened
large-scale interfaith gatherings in the last seven years. The Millennium
Summit had its share of tensions between faith groups, but, he said, "it
was a very good symbolic moment, and I'm really a believer in those."
At the same time, Mr.
Kenney remains a critic of what he calls "lightweight pluralism," the desire
to claim that all religions are really the same, and that differences do
not matter.
As a counter to that
tendency, he said, as awareness of global religious pluralism has increased,
there has developed also "an increasingly articulate body" of religious
believers, especially among Christians, who appear ready to grant that
enlightenment can be found in other faiths, while still affirming their
own religion as utterly unique.
But the recent statements
by the Vatican and the evangelists' meeting strongly suggest that such
an approach is a long way from displacing Christianity's view of its exclusive
claim to salvation. Instead, as the world grows smaller and as more
and more people have increasing contact with those of other faiths, the
debate over how to respond to religious pluralism is likely to be just
beginning.
