Interfaith Dialogue [T]here are several different ways in which people of different religions may relate to each other. Diana Eck is one of the scholars who have observed that there are three responses to contact between religions.   Exclusivism One is exclusivism: “Ours is the only true way.” Eck and others have noted that deep personal commitment to one’s faith is a foundation of religious life and also the first essential step in interfaith dialogue. Inclusivism Eck sees the second response to interfaith contact as inclusivism. This may take the form of trying to create a single world religion, such as Baha’i. Or it may appear as the belief that our religion is spacious enough to encompass all the others, that it supersedes all previous religions, as Islam said it was the culmination of all monotheistic traditions. In this approach, the inclusivists do not see other ways as a threat. Some Sikhs, for instance, understand their religion as actively promoting interfaith appreciation and thus propose that their holy scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, could serve as a roadmap to harmony among people of all religions, without denying the right of each religion to exist as a respected tradition. Pluralism The third way Eck discerns is pluralism: to hold one’s own faith and at the same time ask people of other faiths about their path, about how they want to be understood. Uniformity and agreement are not the goals — the goal is to collaborate, to combine our differing strengths for the common good. From this point of view, for effective pluralistic dialogue, people must have an openness to the possibility of discovering sacred truth in other religions. (Living Religions, 504-5) Part V: Religion in the Twenty-First Century 15 points Write an essay-style response to the following  question.   Diana Eck speaks of three responses that may be adopted when one comes into contact with religious traditions other than one’s own: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Describe these three responses, noting what you regard as the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Identify the response that most closely approximates your own perspective on the question of religious diversity, justifying your answer in terms of the strengths and weaknesses referred to above. How does your perspective on religious diversity affect your ability to study and learn from religious traditions other than your own? Provide at least one example from the material covered in this course to illustrate your answer. Conclude your essay with a paragraph on what you have learned about the study of religion in this course.

 

Is the Mountain One or Many? At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. ... The most popular metaphor for this view portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain. “It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge,” writes philosopher of religion Huston Smith. “At base, in the foothills of theology, ritual, and organizational structure, the religions are distinct. Differences in culture, history, geography, and collective temperament all make for diverse starting points. ... But beyond these differences, the same goal beckons.” ... According to Mohandas Gandhi, “Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions,” so it is toward this one God that all religious people are climbing. ... Like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama affirms that “the essential message of all religions is very much the same.” In his view, however, what the world’s religions share is not so much God as the Good — the sweet harmony of peace, love, and understanding that religion writer Karen Armstrong also finds at the heart of every religion. ...     This is a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue. For more than a generation we have followed scholars and sages down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which all gods are one. This wishful thinking is motivated in part by an understandable rejection of the exclusivist missionary view that only you and your kind will make it to heaven or Paradise. For most of world history, human beings have seen religious rivals as inferior to themselves — practitioners of empty rituals, perpetrators of bogus miracles, purveyors of fanciful myths. The Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century popularized the ideal of religious tolerance, and we are doubtless better for it. But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naive theological groupthink — call it Godthink — has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us worldwide. It is time we climbed out of the rabbit hole and back to reality. (God is not One, Introduction)