Diversiteit in religie
Sommige implicaties voor monotheïsme
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY:
SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR MONOTHEISM
by Rita M. Gross
Coming to terms with genuine pluralism is the most important agenda
facing religious leaders.
RITA M. GROSS is author of Buddhism after Patriarchy, Feminism and
Religion: An Introduction, and most recently Soaring and Settling: Buddhist
Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues. This essay first
appeared in Wisconsin Dialogue: A Faculty Journal for the University of
Wisconsin-Eau Claire 11 (1991): 35-48, and is reprinted by permission. It is
dedicated to the memory of Howard Lutz, Professor Emeritus of History,
whose loving companionship during the time in which this article was
written is greatly appreciated.
Clearly, the diversity of religions in the world has been a fact throughout
the entire history of all the world's major living religious traditions.
Nevertheless, this diversity has been made the basis for contention rather
than community in many cases, and the monotheistic religions have often
been among the worst offenders on this score. The strong tendency to
display hostility toward different religious positions is connected with a
strong tendency toward xenophobia and ethnocentrism. This reaction
seems to be built into conventional human responses and has even been
included among the major responses of religious people to their
environment by the great historian of religions, Mircea Eliade. He
hypothesizes that homo religiosus strives to live at the center of his
mythological universe, which is felt to be a cosmos, organized space
inhabited by human beings. Beyond that space is chaos, whose
inhabitants are felt to be demonic or subhuman.(1)
Because the tendency to be hostile to people who are different is so
strong, it is an important religious problem. This essay will systematically
consider the dynamics of religious pluralism and propose techniques for
dealing with diversity. Religious diversity is an important component of
cultural diversity, which educators are now taking seriously in their
pedagogies. However, cultural diversity and religious diversity are often
evaluated quite differently. In our society now, there is at least a polite and
superficial consensus that cultural diversity is here to stay and may enrich
life. Minimally, people realize that cultural, ethnic, and class chauvinism
create problems and are inappropriate, though they may be difficult to
overcome. Regarding religious diversity, quite a different evaluation is
often employed. Many people value the feeling that their religion is indeed
superior to others and regard such religious chauvinism as a necessary
component of religious commitment, or even a virtue to be cultivated
,among the faithful. In their official theologies, most religions have dealt
with religious diversity only in a cursory or inadequate fashion. Frequently,
religions have encouraged mutual hostility by teaching that foreign
religions are not only different, but also demonic, or at least inferior.
The ethical problems with such a position should be obvious. The position
is clearly inadequate in any age and place; in the global village of the late
twentieth century it is also dangerous. Nevertheless, it continues to be
popular in many religions and is at least partially responsible for many of
the numerous conflicts currently disrupting our world. In this essay, I will
explore more ethically sensitive and intellectually satisfying ways of
combining commitment to a specific religion with the reality of religious
diversity than the conventional ones outlined above. I will direct my
comments mainly at monotheistic religions for two obvious reasons. Most
readers of this essay will come from monotheistic backgrounds. And
monotheistic religions have had the most difficult problems in resolving
the issue of religious diversity.
All religions produce a kind of elementary religious chauvinism because of
universal human weaknesses. However, only the monotheisms raise this
homegrown psychological hostility to diversity into a theological principle.
It is very tempting for one who believes that one universal deity created
and controls the entire cosmos to assume that this deity wants only one
religion to be practiced by all humans. That religion, of course, is "ours,"
which leads to the rather absurd situation of monotheists condemning
each other to oblivion for following the wrong kind of monotheism. Many
monotheists also assume, mistakenly, that nonmonotheistic religions are
equally exclusive in their claims and that all religions feel certain about
their position as the "one true faith." The creators of monotheistic symbol
systems could, with equal logic, assume that the universal deity gave
humans many religious paths, as s/he gave them many cultures, skin
colors, and languages, but this has not been the dominant monotheistic
position historically. This position is now becoming more prevalent among
segments of leadership of monotheistic religions, however, and it has long
been the position of nominally polytheistic, but essentially monistic,
Hinduism.
My method for this essay is that of a trained historian of religions, deeply
interested in both normative and descriptive dimensions of religious
diversity. Because I am summarizing immense amounts of information and
comparing the world's major religions with one another to propose some
philosophical positions on religious diversity, I presume elementary
knowledge of world religions. My generalizations can be understood
without such knowledge but cannot fruitfully be debated if one is familiar
with only one religion.
Students of religion have long recognized that the world's religions can
be divided into two groups in terms of their attitudes toward other
religions. Some religions, often called "universalizing" religions, have a
religious message and set of practices that could be universally relevant,
, true for all people regardless of culture, for all time. These religions
sometimes develop strong missionary movements which attempt both to
undermine other religions ideologically and to convert members of other
cultures to the supposedly universally relevant and true set of religious
beliefs. Often such conversion attempts are motivated by the conviction
that those who lack the proper religious perspective are in serious danger
of long-term malaise. Additionally, such religions are often relatively
uninterested in culture-bound practices and habits having to do with diet,
social customs, family law, purity and pollution, or the minutia of daily life,
et cetera. The individual's mind state and belief system are usually
considered to be far more important than conformity to behavioral norms.
This kind of religion is also far more familiar to most people in Western
cultures than is its counterpart.
Nevertheless, for most of human history most religions have not presumed
to possess universal significance. This position is not taken out of
ignorance of the existence of other religions, but out of a judgment that a
specific religion has, at most, a claim on those who belong to the culture in
which that religion is found. To be born into a culture is to inherit a religion;
to be born into a different culture is to inherit a different religion. To
change religions is to change cultures, to change lifestyle and identity, to
be adopted by the culture whose religion one adopts. However, such
adoption is not encouraged or expected, since no one presumes that
members of other cultures are inherently deficient; they are merely
different, and unless hostility develops over an economic matter or an
issue of prestige, there is little reason to disparage a different culture and
its religion. Furthermore, though there is a clearly developed system of
belief, myth, and ritual in this kind of nonuniversalizing religion,
membership is more often measured by conformity to cultural mores and
by participation in important group activities than by orthodoxy of belief.
Because they present obvious and intimate connections between religion
and culture, such religions are often called "ethnoreligions."
Classical monotheism in its stereotypical form clearly assumes a
universalizing stance. However, monotheism did not emerge into history
full-blown in this form. A brief sketch of the emergence and development
of monotheism can help locate monotheism's particular difficulties with
religious pluralism.
It seems safe to say that the earliest "monotheism" having long-term
historical consequences, early Judaism, probably better labeled as "ancient
Israelite religion," actually had most of the characteristics of an
ethnoreligion. In early Israelite history, only Israelites were expected,
indeed privileged, to observe Israelite beliefs and practices. Certainly there
was no major effort to spread these practices and beliefs to non-Israelite
people; it was sufficiently difficult to cajole the Israelites into retaining
them. However, in this phase of Israelite history, certain attitudes
regarding foreign religions were prevalent. These attitudes, which are not
especially characteristic of ethnoreligions, were critical for the long-term.
Monotheism, for early Israelite religion, probably meant that Israelites
