Apologetics: Multiculturalism & Religious Pluralism

Introduction: Our Multicultural Society

We’re talking about religious pluralism, among other things, which believes religious truths are relative to the cultures they were born and developed in. In the future we’ll discuss ethical relativism, which believes ethical truths are relative to either the groups or individuals that hold them.

You may be surprised to learn the umbrella of issues and objections we’re covering has come up in my life as frequently as the problem of evil. Many people who weren’t raised in a religious environment--a growing demographic--are kept from committing to a religion because of issues like these. I could speak to that hesitation myself. Others who were raised in an insular Christian home or community may go off to college, for instance, and be challenged by the alternatives presented in their classrooms, dormitories, and textbooks. They may leave the faith after being introduced to how other groups view Christianity.

Multiculturalism and religious pluralism are especially relevant topics for us to investigate in this course because it’s so definitive our own national culture. From the very beginning, we’ve taken our freedoms seriously. Our iconic Statue of Liberty welcomed millions of immigrants who came here seeking the economic and social opportunities our freedoms afford. Religion is no different. Remember the pilgrims came here in part to escape England’s state-sanctioned Anglicanism. America is one of the most religiously diverse nations ever because our laws protect the right to practice one’s faith even if that faith is obscure or unpopular.

Religious and ethnic diversity are facts of everyday life. We are constantly reminded of our diversity through exposure to other faiths in our cities and in news stories. In most metropolitan areas, you’ll pass by a synagog, temple, mosque, cathedral, and church by driving a few miles down any major thoroughfare. In each of those places, people believe as they wish about the nature of the universe, who we are, and who God is if he is at all. Even more varied than our religious backgrounds is our ethnic backgrounds.  Chinatown, Germantown, the French Quarter, Little Havana: America is full of nationalities. Where I work, one of our tasks is to assemble programs for naturalization ceremonies. The number of countries represented is astounding.

More than just allowing people to worship who or what they will, we believe that freedom is right and proper. We are taught from an early age that everyone should be able to believe as they wish. People in our country have always taken and continue to take advantage of that legal framework.

Our cultural makeup feeds some of the philosophical trends we discussed way back in the first week. Our multicultural country is conducive to postmodernism insofar as it provides us with so many worldview options. The trouble is fairly, impartially evaluating them. As you may recall, postmodernism has a low view of reason and is skeptical about the truth. Accordingly, it doesn’t think we have access to the truth because of our innate and incultured biases. Postmodernism denies any fair or objective foundations for knowledge because all of us have conflicted interests. We want to believe what promotes the groups we’re a part of. It follows, there are no fair or objective standards by which we in our conservative midwestern American culture can judge other cultures. We’re doomed to be ethnocentric.

Types of Pluralism

Now that we’ve introduced our topic of pluralism, let’s clarify our terms. There is a type of pluralism that is descriptive, meaning it says something about a state of affairs,  and a type that is normative, meaning it recommends or endorses a state of affairs.

Descriptive pluralism is an observation about a given society. It says, “There are many different views here,” or in our case, “There are many different religions and denominations here.” The remarks I made earlier were in the vein of descriptive pluralism. A society that is descriptively pluralistic is usually going to be multicultural as well, since a significant factor in religious affiliation is ethnic background.

Normative pluralism is a value judgment about a given sort of belief. It says, “There should be many different beliefs here,” or in our case, “There should be many different religions and denominations here because we can’t know religious truth.” My previous remarks about postmodernism relate to normative pluralism.

The former, descriptive kind of pluralism isn’t unique to our time. In fact, it has accurately described the societies within which Christianity has grown and been active since Jesus’ life. The early church was founded inside a culture that was descriptively pluralistic. Jews, godfearing gentiles, pagans, and atheistic religious adherents like stoics all mingled within Roman society.

As history shows, descriptive pluralism poses no threat to religious belief generally and to Christianity specifically. Christians need not be wary of or withdrawn from such a manifold society. God delights in diversity, so we shouldn’t be critical of cultural heterogeneity. In fact, there’s danger in too much similarity. The descendants of Noah were divided into tribes once they became so numerous and powerful they thought they could rival God. Although God clearly wanted them to remain peacefully associated, he did not want them to be homogenized lest they try to challenge him again. Since then, people have grouped together and become distinct from one another, to develop their own unique affinities in response to their own unique surroundings.

The latter, normative kind of pluralism takes aim at particular religion in favor of general, amorphous religiosity. Because there are so many options, people are tempted for reasons of politeness and for the sake of peace, to de-emphasize differences between religions. In this way, multiculturalism inspires religious pluralism. Religious pluralism is a belief in the approximate truth of all religions, or at least in their truthful equality.

As I said, the tendency to disbelieve objective truth claims has become prevalent in what we have referred to as our post-Christian society. That’s not to say ours is the first or only society to encourage a diversity of beliefs but that such encouragement is particularly distinctive of our contemporary context. Often, whenever the topic of religion arises in conversation, especially among people under 40, we’ll encounter a position that says divergent beliefs ought to be respected because they could each be possibly true. What this proposition entails, and what we need to clarify, is that each set of beliefs is actually false in the way the believers understands them. Religious people do not understand themselves to be committed to a system of half-truths, so the attempt to accommodate diversity implies an unspoken rejection. The current virtues of tolerance and respect for others’ views tends to promote abandoning unique, core beliefs and pushes people towards a common religious denominator.

We’re not going to quibble with any claims about descriptive pluralism. That’s a matter that can be satisfactorily settled by demographics and census data. Instead, our focus will be on multiculturalism and normative pluralism and how those schools of thought can be problematic for adherents of a singular faith like ours.

Here, as elsewhere, it’s important to know your audience  Postmodernism can support irreligion, where you think all religious people are wrong, and religious pluralism, where you think all religious people are right in a few basic, common areas. So, a person can object to Christianity because of other religions on secular grounds or on religious grounds. He or she may think all religions are true in some sense or all religions are false. Both are hindrances to Christian belief, so we’ll address.

The Objections:

Arrogance

One of the central tenants of normative pluralists is that religions teach the same truths using different metaphors and stories. One of the most significant figures in the pluralist school of thought is John Hick. According to him and other normative pluralists, religions are culturally conditioned responses to Ultimate Reality. We never know or experience Ultimate Reality as it is because it’s beyond our comprehension. None of our categories of thought apply to Ultimate Reality either by approximation or analogy. That’s why we have the variety of religions that we do: because no one can figure out the whole truth about Ultimate Reality. All we can be certain of is that, by looking at various religious teachings, we’re supposed to move from self-centeredness to Ultimate-centeredness and we are to affirm the goodness of Ultimate Reality.

Most world religion courses in academia emphasize the overlap and suggest that all religions are similar in their other-orientedness. They talk of making basic divisions between the sacred and profane. They use words like the “Ultimate” to describe that which is to be most revered, whether that’s God, the world, or the human spirit. The normative pluralist account takes this as evidence of a deeper, shared truth beneath the superficial, parochial beliefs of a given religion.

The existence of world religions is taken as undercutting Christian claims such as Jesus being the way to salvation. A common pluralistic objection to Christianity is that, in the face of various alternative religions, Christianity’s exclusive truth claims are problematic. As soon as Christianity disagrees with or delegitimizes others religious claims, we are faced with a choice. Either the other religious claims are false as the Christian asserts or the Christian is false for making such an assertion as the pluralist asserts.

You can see how this philosophy would take as arrogant any group who would say that their religion is the correct one. They’d prefer to say to each his own. We have someone in our family who has said that everyone takes a different path to the same end. This is a popular notion in eastern religions that has been grafted into our own culture. Regardless of its origins, though, we need to address it.

Ignorance

We can take the spirit of this objection a step further and question not just the proposition that there’s one true faith but state that no faith can be taken seriously at all, not even an amalgam of faiths. This most completely postmodern stance doesn’t take Christianity’s truth claims seriously. It doesn’t want to even ask the question whether or not religions are true.

Let me give you an example from my life. A friend of mine once liked a meme--a picture with text overtop--on Facebook that showed Willy Wonka with a grin. It said, something to the effect that, “Of all the religions in the world, the one you believe in is the true one.” along the top and along the bottom it said, “How convenient!” Hundreds of thousands of people liked that photo. Snarky though it is, that’s how many people view us. They think we must be ignorant.

Everyone believes such different propositions. How can we be serious?

Intolerance

Multiculturalism clashes with Christian doctrine in another concern. Judgment and hell frequently enter into discussions of world religions. We’ll reflect on hell at length in our last class, but we should make a relevant remark here. Some would say Christians are intolerant in that they condemn others. God is called unjust because some people who could be consigned to hell for failing to confess Jesus as their Lord and Savior never had a chance to hear or understand the Gospel. People at the very least wonder why God doesn’t do more to save everyone.

To take another instance from my life, a nonChristian couple we’re friends with asked what happens to people who have never heard the Gospel. Behind this question was a concern that Christianity asserts all pygmies and aborigines are going to hell because they haven’t confessed the name of Christ. They are rightfully aghast at that merciless proposition. That’s how many people view us. They think we must be intolerant.

Responses to Arrogance:

All Religions Are Not Basically The Same

Simply put, the claims of religion pluralism are false. All religions are not basically the same. There are radical, incommensurable differences between religions. God is or isn’t. We have souls or we don’t. Salvation is obliteration or reconciliation. It can’t be both.

Christianity is unique among the world’s religions in a number of aspects. We believe in a God who became incarnate. We believe in a God who is three persons in one substance. We believe in a God who suffers. None of these are true of other religions, yet they are distinctive of Christianity in such a way that if you cut them out, you have no Christianity left over.

I want to offer a word of caution lest we become too antagonistic in the face of these objections. There’s nothing controversial or heretical with saying we agree with Jews and Muslims about God being the creator of the universe or with Buddhists that compassion is a chief ethical commitment. We have nothing to fear in ecumenism or interfaith dialogues. If, as we stressed in the early weeks of our course, we can stand with atheists and agnostics on certain positions, we certainly can stand with Mormons or BaHa’is on other positions.

It’s a false dichotomy to assert that either you accept religious pluralism or your embrace an arbitrary claim the Christian experiences of God alone are reliable and that others are wholly illusory. Christian can allow non-Christians are capable of experiencing God truly but partially while disagreeing with specific claims. We have an account of just that fact. O’Connor explains in his essay, “Religious Pluralism,” “sin has not entirely eradicated this natural affinity for our Maker, nor has God abandoned those who have yet to come to understand his purposes and offer of redemption through Christ.” This will be important to our later response to condemnation as well.

To go even further, Christians should be the most constructive constituents within a multicultural society. As Tim Keller points out in his treatment of this topic, Christianity has the power to fight against the divisiveness that is so common with religion. God encourages us to cooperate with all kinds of unbelievers because they still bear the image of God. Christ was kind and gracious to all people groups, especially the ethnically oppressed and marginalized. Following his lead, Christians have been able to establish a track record of peaceful coexistence which is in stark contrast to, for example, the polytheistic Greco-Roman culture.

To summarize, religions essentially differ. Any interpretation to the contrary is a fabrication and does not do justice to individual religions. While we should not be so bold as to say all religions besides Christianity are erroneous in all that they hold, we are committed to disagreement when Scripture teaches something else.

Why Can’t There Be Just One Way?

We may ask, in response to normative pluralism, what is it about religious belief that is uniquely unknowable? Timothy O’Connor, in his essay “Religious Pluralism,” points out that we aren’t pluralists when it comes to scientific truths. We have no qualms about divergent hypotheses. We’re comfortable assuming that one of them comes closest to the way reality is. Would we be comfortable saying there’s no best course of action for our city because a democrat and a republican disagree, for instance, on mandatory minimum sentences?

The answer, I’d offer, has to do with our reticence to commit ourselves to metaphysical claims because, while we think lowly of reason, we think lower still of faith. But, faith is unavoidable. We need to illuminate that inevitability.

As Tim Keller points out in his book The Reason for God, it’s not a self-evident universal truth that everyone with working rational faculties accepts. Keller states it succinctly when he relays that, should a person go to the Middle East and assert, “There can’t be just one true religion, nearly everyone would say, “Why not?”.

Moreover, claiming there can’t be just one true religion is itself an act of faith. No one can prove that claim empirically. There is no way to falsify it, no way to scrutinize the material world for conclusive evidence in support of that hypothesis.

The pluralist makes difficulties for him or herself. If we agree with the religious pluralist that no religion has access to the full truth, how can we claim the the religious pluralist view has that same access? Are we using the same faculties to form that view? Why are they more attuned to reality when they deny particular religions?

Christians can be more intellectually honest and have more integrity than those who would presume to be neutral. Unlike the pluralist who says he or she can stand apart and judge religions, we can say as Christians that we’re in the same mire as everyone else. We have the same impulses and inclinations to overcome. But we grab hold of the truth God has revealed to us in his word and through his Holy Spirit.

Responses to Ignorance:

Exclusivity Does Not Entail Falsity

Just because other, relevantly informed and reasonable people of good will disagree with Christianity doesn’t provide a compelling basis for rejecting Christianity’s exclusive truth claims. It certainly doesn’t make us irrational. Different people groups joining or adhering to different religions doesn’t imply that all religions are equally valid. The task here as elsewhere is to weigh their claims rather than throw them out.

Suspending judgment in disagreements isn’t possible. The person who says he doesn’t seriously consider Christianity because he knows devout Hindus and Sikhs is suspending judgment regarding religions but isn’t suspending judgment regarding religion. What he’s really saying is that he believes all three groups of people are mistaken. What we should say is that in religion, as well as in other arenas of life, we must make judgments as best we can. We must ask whether it is true, not whether it is open.

Whether or not it is arrogant or mean to disagree with someone else’s beliefs is besides the point when considering its truthfulness. So, too, for that matter, is the sincerity with which the belief is held by others. If being convinced of a proposition is all it takes for it to be regarded as true, then we wouldn’t be able to be critical about any topic.

Pluralism Pluralizes Itself

I urge you not to be flippant here. There’s much more to say than “There are no absolute truths is an absolute truth.” Be that as it may, your audience is going to yawn or roll their eyes when you say that because I assure you they’ve heard it before. Let’s convey the argument, not just the conclusion.

One of the points we can make now we’ll make again under a different guise later because it addresses that relativistic core. Namely, if the objection can’t stand when turned against itself, we have reason to conclude it’s flawed.Insisting that another person is arrogant for trying to convert others is, in many contexts, an arrogant attempt to convert others to a secular worldview. If the criterion for truth is having a belief that no one disagrees with, then pluralism fails by its own standards. Many reasonable people, some of whom are in this room, disagree with pluralist arguments.

Keller does this magnificently time and again in his chapter titled There Can’t Be Just One True Religion. To say doctrines don’t matter is a doctrine in itself. To say that religions don’t teach the whole truth is inconsistent insofar as it claims to see the whole truth. Most damaging to contemporary objections, to say that all religious belief is culturally/historically conditioned and therefore not true is itself a culturally/historically conditioned claim.

There’s a deeper point here that has merit. The time, as well as the space, in which one lives limits one's propositional choices. Allegiance to science, which is the preferred alternative to religion, is not uniquely contemporary. There have been many people who turned to empirical study to answer life’s questions throughout the ages. At various points in modern history, science has taught gravity is a force, lead can be--at least theoretically--turned into gold, phlogiston is the fifth element, the continents do not move, randomness has no part in the material world, the universe is static, the universe is expanding, and nothing can travel faster than light. That is to say, scientific understanding is fallible. It has progressed.

It's a fact, albeit an unsavory one for scientifically-minded religious critics, that smart, well-read, and well-educated people denied the truth of plate tectonics, for example. That evidence was too scant to establish. 19th Century scientists believed there was no force sufficient to move the earth’s crust. So, the irreligious believer has problems with incongruity, too.

The point is: ideas fall into and out of fashion. When an idea is thoroughly in fashion, it’s difficult to question our assent to it. Most of our fellow citizens now go around believing in, for instance, freedom of speech. They feel like they have an inalienable right to say whatever they want. But when pressed about what exactly a “right” is, how they “have” it, and where they come from, they’re at a loss. This does not mean, of course, that rights don’t exist in some meaningful way. It means that some propositions are so common, have been uttered so frequently (beginning in elementary school), they are unreflectively adopted.

The critic makes at least one valid point. The basic availability of propositions is not a good reason to believe them. A kid shouldn’t be a Christian simply and solely because their parents were.

More importantly, though, the propositions we have access to and the extent of our access to them are influenced by our historical and geographical situation. It's easier to be convinced of a proposition you've heard a thousand times than it is to be convinced of one you've never heard. What is heard most is most often believed and what is not heard at all is rarely conceived, let alone believed.

However, as illustrated above, religious circles and the people reared therein are not the only groups influenced by disproportionately available systems of belief. In multicultural environments (such as our own), irreligion is the dominant viewpoint of media since it has the greatest sellability. Swaths of the market are not cut off through offending listeners/readers with a preference towards one of the perceived cultures. Instead, the media establishes itself as the voice of the objective common ground of non-culture (which is, of course, its own culture rife with its own oft-uttered propositions). These factors need to be accounted for in auditing our assent to propositions.

To apply this point, invite the person who thinks we’re ignorant for believing ourselves to be right to consider what beliefs he or she holds that he or she thinks is wrong. If he thinks that religious belief is a product of indoctrination, ask them how they came by their own irreligious beliefs.

Responses to Intolerance

Since God is accused of intolerance and we are guilty by association, the best defenses will draw from God’s true character.

God Is Just

God is just. It follows that He judges in light of the extent of one's knowledge. Those who are more knowledgeable will be held to higher standards because responsibility increases with understanding. Jesus illustrates this point in an exchange with the Apostle Peter. He tells Peter punishment will be less severe for people who knew God's will for humanity less. (Luke 12:35-48). The parable's emphasis is on the consequences for people who have heard God's Word. Jesus concludes his story with these words of caution, "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more." (Luke 12:48) This principle is in keeping with fairness and does not affront our conscience. Later, the Apostle James warns teachers of the gospel will "be judged with greater strictness." (James 3:1) We see from these repeated emphases people who have heard are not let off easy for their exposure to the gospel.  On the contrary, they are more culpable for their sins.

Furthermore, God’s knowledge may extend to the hypothetical. He could know what we would do if given an opportunity. Jesus demonstrates this sort of knowledge when he castigates the residents of one city for their skepticism. He assured them, had the same works been performed in the presence of other cities, its citizens would have repented. (Luke 10:13) It follows that God could know how a given person would react upon hearing the gospel. God could know that there are people who, if they heard of Jesus, would immediately believe, others who would hear and immediately disbelieve, others who would be skeptical and wrestle with belief for years and, in the end, assent, and still others who would undergo the same protracted, sincere struggle and ultimately reject. This means that God's just judgment of people is not based on accident such as location, but on essence, on whom a person most sincerely has been, is, and would have been.

God Is Evident

This objection presupposes that those who haven’t heard verbally don’t have access to the information to be saved. It may be, however, that the necessary information can be gathered in nature through effort on their part and grace on God’s. God does not solely reveal himself through his word, after all. Although revelation in the Bible is the fullest, most complete and direct vehicle of the knowledge of God, it is far from the only means. The wider world he created proclaims him in its beauty, design, and majesty. Humans, his prized creation, are pulled toward him in all their capacities—their appetites, passion, and reason (both practical and theoretical).

General revelation guarantees everyone can know that God is powerful, moral, and has designed the universe. This accounts for the Apostle Paul’s statement in Romans 1:20, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

What we need to make clear is that the human problem isn’t one of unawareness of God. It’s more that we try to suppress that knowledge. We Christians can attest to that fault.

God Is Inclusive

We must reject the assumption that God plays favorites. Despite our apparent diversity, we are essentially alike. Biblical language is frequently universal in its scope, referring to the sum of humankind. All members of humanity have a privileged place in the universe. The triune God resolved at the beginning of creation, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Genesis 1:26) Each individual is bestowed dignity from his/her divine semblance. We are able to relate to our God because of the germ of similarity.

Since God has invited so many, we shouldn’t be arrogant because of our personal invitations. We know that grace is a gift and that God is especially inclined to call the poor and foolish. We know that it’s not because we are special or worthy that we’ve been extended God’s favor, so we shouldn’t hold ourselves in higher esteem and scoff at members of other groups, religious or otherwise.

Christ’s healing of the rupture between God and humankind enables humankind to be unified as well. Christians should be agents of this reconciliation in the societies they've been placed. We are told to be welcoming and hospitable to others as our Heavenly Father is. Paul in his first letter to Timothy tells his audience to pray for all people, within and outside the faith. He explains that doing so pleases God, "who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time." (1 Timothy 2:3-6)

God Is Missional

The objection makes it seem as though humans care more about others’ salvation than God does, but we must say that’s not the case. Scripture make clear that our God is a missionary God. He sent His son to us, to a specific place and time to blaze a path of salvation. He is concerned about every tribe and nation, which is why He promised that everyone will hear the Gospel preached in their own tongue on the Pentecost.

Since then, God has sent us out as well. We are commissioned to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We Christians bear our share of the blame for Scripture’s global circumscription. That the Gospel has failed to reach certain regions is the church’s failure for reluctance. In the records of the early church in Acts and elsewhere, the Gospel was spread against Christians will as it were. Only after being captured, did the word go out.

That Jesus has not yet returned demonstrates God is granting his church more time to spread the word. Peter writes, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) Until his second coming, we must be diligent in our witnessing.

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