The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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Vatican Council – and specifically the declaration, Nostra Aetate, on the relationship of the Catholic Church to Non-Christian Religions – to provide the momentum for a more open and dynamic approach to inter-religious relations. That hesitant statement, originally intended to address the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism, soon became a sort of ‘inter-faith charter’ for other Christian churches – many of whom have produced their own statements, such as Generous Love, published by the Anglican Consultative Council in 2008. In its wake have come two important initiatives from other faith communities. A group of influential Jewish academics in the USA produced Dabru Emet (‘speak truth’ from Zechariah 8.16), a brief yet generous statement on the state of Jewish-Christian relations (published in the New York Times on 10 September 2000). On 13 October 2007 a group of 158 Muslim leaders and teachers sent a more challenging letter called A Common Word to major Christian leaders throughout the world. Reacting originally to the Pope’s Regensburg lecture, 12 September 2006, this remarkable statement has since led to a number of responses – including high-level meetings between Catholic and Muslim theologians in the Vatican and an important letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Although not coming from ‘official’ authorities these two initiatives show how much the inter-faith climate has changed in recent years. They also witness to a growing consensus among theologians and thinkers across the religious spectrum that normative pluralism fails to reflect the lived reality of the faith communities themselves. While Hick’s hypothesis has attracted some important support from outside the Christian tradition (Aslan 1998; Cohn-Sherbok 1994), others have voiced strong reservations. Muhammad Legenhausen, for instance, an American Shi’a theologian who teaches at the Imam Khomeini Institute in Qom, Iran, thinks Hick’s normative pluralism a distinct improvement on prescriptive exclusivism and inclusivism (1999). But in his opinion it betrays a set of moral and political values and philosophical principles which are at odds with the mainstream of Islam. Legenhausen objects to the validation of religions in terms of personal religious experience – the argument that since all religions express a single interior truth it makes no difference which is followed. He finds Hick’s account of Islam both ill-informed and patronising. From the beginning Islam has always allowed the message of Jesus while finding its theological elaboration in terms of the doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity objectionable. However, the normative pluralist case ends up reducing both traditions to something less than the single authentic revelation which Islam traces through the entire line of prophets, from Adam to Muhammad himself – the final Seal of the Prophets. It is not that Islam relativises all the previous prophets. On the contrary, the demand that the Holy Qur’an be accepted as the perfection of God’s revelation validates rather than annuls all that has gone before.

Legenhausen agrees with Hick to this extent, that Christian theology needs to be rewritten in favour of the message of the original forms of Torah and Injil as God delivered them, not the adulterated forms in which, according to Islam, they are found today. But that does not imply that it makes no difference which religion is followed or that human beings should ever rest content with what has been bestowed by family and culture. This reads at first like the rigid form of exclusivism to which Hick so strongly objects. The reality is rather more nuanced. Distinguishing between the more spiritual perception of the Sufi and the task of the theologian, the one more attuned to the insights of other religions, the other more concerned with doctrinal detail, Legenhausen argues that both in their different ways hold that Islam brings to perfection all that was contained in the previously revealed religions. Non-reductive pluralism, as he calls it, comes close to what Christians have recently retrieved from an earlier tradition: that it is possible for a person to be saved by the grace of God even though what

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both traditions would uphold as the strict obligations of faith and practice are not fulfilled. The principle that no one can place any limit on the extent of the grace of God, common to both Catholic Christianity and Shi’a Islam, has about it a universalist generosity towards the other which makes the strictures of the threefold paradigm feel distinctly otiose.

Buddhism, as a non-theistic tradition, works with very different principles from those found in Christianity or Islam. Nevertheless similar religious instincts towards the other are discernible within both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. In her account of Buddhist attitudes to religious others, Kristin Beise Kiblinger outlines various moves and strategies which illustrate a typically Buddhist form of accommodation to the religious claims of other traditions (2005). The Buddha himself warns against ‘unskilful’ forms of dogmatic attachment; other ways and practices are to be judged by what is ‘profitable’ or ‘unprofitable’ for enlightenment. No absolute distinction is possible, therefore, between the Dharma taught by the Buddha and what other teachers may say. In so far as their teaching coheres with the values inherent in the Noble Eightfold Path they are approved. The Buddha’s teaching is always adapted to the needs of particular individuals. The famous boat metaphor, in which religious doctrines are likened to a raft which should be dumped once the river has been crossed, is a reminder that the form which Buddhist teachings takes makes them, as Paul Griffiths neatly puts it, ‘instruments for transformation’ rather than ‘descriptions of reality’ (1990b:137). The key is the concept of upaya, ‘skilful means’, that form of wisdom- and-compassion which the Buddhist cultivates in order to adapt the Dharma to different circumstances. Such an enlightened one can turn ‘other’ ideas and concepts, stories and parables, from their original context to some sort of preliminary to the fullness of the Dharma. Thus other ways can be considered as temporary stages, to be ranked like so many further lives which lead eventually to the final Nirvana. Just as the teachings of Upanisadic sages about ethical responsibility may be accepted, so the theistic teaching ofÂIslam or Christianity may be approved as a proximate, if ultimately inadequate, version of Dharma. In the language of the Samaññaphala Sutta, the ‘fruits’ of other ways form a sort of hierarchy as the seeker after Dharma moves closer to the goal.

Nevertheless, this is very far from a Buddhist version of the systemic ‘inclusivism’ which normative pluralism attributes to Catholic Christianity. Kiblinger shows that there are any number of versions of what is, more exactly, an expression of the Buddhist conviction that all positions are ultimately ‘empty’. The Middle Way avoids all extremes and all dogmatism. But that is not to say that Buddhism is just one teaching among others. Rather it transcends all views with ‘a qualitative leap’ (2005:52). In the light of this logic even the Dalai Lama, who often appears like a genial pluralist, is committed to the ultimate superiority of Buddhism (his ‘pluralist-exclusivism’ is analysed with great clarity in D’Costa 2000:72–95). Only the one who follows the teaching of the Buddha to the end can reach final enlightenment. In the final analysis, the Buddhadharma is non-negotiable and may not be reduced to the level of other teachings. For all its ethos of anti-dogmatic benign accommodation, Buddhism has its own specificity or ‘difference’.

Non-reductive pluralism

In this chapter I have tried to make two main points. The first is to note the disconnect between theory and practice. Normative pluralism claims to provide a comprehensive yet tradition-neutral account of human religiosity, but fails to address the key question of the part religion plays in achieving a sense of self, let alone in maintaining identity under pressure from

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the other. Its rhetoric underscores the neuralgic points in interreligious relations but provides few resources for addressing them; tolerance alone is surely not enough to promote proper understanding of different faith communities or overcome the legacy of centuries of religiously inspired violence. I have, therefore, shifted attention to the communities of faith themselves and argued, with examples from the three great ‘world religions’ (those which are consciously concerned with promoting a truth for all people) that it is not just mainstream Christianity which is concerned to safeguard and articulate its sense of identity. This is the second point: a plea that outsiders (whether students of religion or practitioners from another faith tradition) try to understand religious traditions as the insiders view them. Islam and Buddhism as much as Christianity have few doubts about their own primacy over other traditions.

Is this just proof of religion’s imperviousness to reason – the inevitable result of human intransigence? Is it likely to decrease with the growth of a globalised secularism? Will the harsher edges of religion be softened by the more acceptable forms of ‘spirituality’? Or will harder economic climes cause religious communities to withdraw further into themselves? These are questions which are touched on elsewhere in this book. One thing is clear. Religions have been around for centuries and have constantly shifted and changed as they interact with each other. Alongside the virtues which have grown from a sense of loyalty and faithfulness to tradition, religion has developed less defensive strategies which seek to accommodate and adapt to the world of the other. With its focus on values of respect and openness the pluralist move has made its own contribution in this direction. The problem, however, is that it does little more than impose an artificial unity on an area of human endeavour and interaction which steadfastly resists such reduction. The alternative is to return to the wisdom of the religions themselves. As Jonathan Sacks puts it, in arguing for the ‘Dignity of Difference’, the remedy for tribalism does not have to be a bland universalism (2003). A dialogical non-reductive pluralism, which takes the truths and values of different faith communities with the utmost seriousness and seeks always to learn from them, may offer a better way forward.

Summary points

This chapter raises the following issues:

•â religious pluralism as a normative and philosophically coherent account of the diversity of religions and cultures;

•â the plausibility of the normative hypothesis and its presuppositions;

•â the danger of reducing ‘religion’ to some generic essence and the obscuring of the complexity and richness of ‘the religions’;

•â the impossibility of a comprehensive yet neutral account of religious diversity;

•â a ‘tradition-specific’ account of the significance of religious pluralism and the meaning of what is ‘other’;

•â the response of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism to other communities of faith;

•â a practice of various forms of dialogue rooted not in a priori theory but emerging from practice and spirituality.

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D’Costa, Gavin (ed.) (1987), John Hick’s Theology of Religions, a Critical Evaluation, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

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di Noia, Joseph (1992), The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.

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——(2002), Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Fitzgerald, Michael and Borelli, John (2006), Interfaith Dialogue: a Catholic View, London: SPCK. Ford, David (ed.) (1997), The Modern Theologians, Oxford: Blackwell.

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Foucault, Michel (1972), The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York: Harper and Row. Griffith-Dickson, Gwen (2005), Philosophy of Religion, London: SCM.

Griffiths, Paul (1990a), An Apology for Apologetics: a Study in the Logic of Inter-religious Dialogue, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

——(1990b), Christianity through Non-Christian Eyes, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

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Halbfass, Wilhelm (1988), India and Europe: an Essay in Understanding, Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Hick, John (1973), God and the Universe of Faiths, London: Macmillan. —— (1977), God and the Universe of Faiths, London: Fount.

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Christianity and Other Religions: Selected Readings, London: Fount.

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Hick, John and Knitter, Paul (eds) (1987), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, London: SCM. Jackson, Roger and Makransky, John (2000), Buddhist Theology, Richmond: Curzon.

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O’Leary, Joseph S. (1996), Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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—— (2004), Prophetic Humour in Buddhism and Christianity, Colombo: Ecumenical Institute. Ramachandra, Vinoth (1996), The Recovery of Mission, Carlisle: Paternoster.

Rowe, William (1999), ‘Religious Pluralism’, Religious Studies, 35; pp. 129–150. Sacks, Jonathan (revised edn 2003), The Dignity of Difference, London: Continuum.

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Smith, Jonathan Z. (1998), ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, Chicago: Chicago University Press; pp. 269–284.

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Sullivan, Francis (1992), No Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response, London: Chapman.

Surin, Kenneth (1990), ‘A Certain “Politics of Speech”: “Religious Pluralism” in the Age of the McDonald’s Hamburger’, Modern Theology, 7.1; pp. 67–100.

Swidler, Leonard (ed.) (1987), Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

——(ed.) (1990), Death or Dialogue? From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue, London: SCM. Talal Asad (1993), Genealogies of Religion, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Toulmin, Stephen (1990), Cosmopolis: the Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Tracy, David (1981), The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, London: SCM.

——(1990), Dialogue with the Other: the Inter-religious Dialogue, Louvain: Peeters Press; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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Troeltsch, Ernst (1921), The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, SCM: London. Wainwright, William (2nd ed. 1999), Philosophy of Religion, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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Yandell, Keith (1999), Philosophy of Religion, London: Routledge.

Suggested reading

Barnes, Michael (2002), Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Outlining the terms of a theology of dialogue.

Cheetham, David (2003), John Hick: a Critical Introduction and Reflection, Aldershot: Ashgate. Accessible, straightforward yet judicious overview of Hick’s philosophy of religion.

Clooney, Francis (1993), Theology After Vedanta: an Experiment in Comparative Theology, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

One of the first examples of the author’s approach to comparative theology with excellent introduction.

Cottingham, John (2005), The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Values, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A refreshingly different approach to the ‘traditional’ topics of philosophy of religion.

Dupuis, Jacques (2002), Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

Catholic theology of religions.

Griffiths, Paul (1990), Christianity through Non-Christian Eyes, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Invaluable collection of texts on Christianity from other faith perspectives.

Griffith-Dickson, Gwen (2005), Philosophy of Religion, London: SCM.

Unique approach to philosophy of religion from a consciously interreligious angle.

Hick, John (1989), An Interpretation of Religion, Basingstoke: Macmillan. The most important of all Hick’s texts on religious pluralism.

Part 3

Religions in the modern world

Chapter 26

Religion and politics

George Moyser

One of the most interesting features of the study of religion in recent years has been the resurgence of interest in its relationship with the political world. Many scholars now recognize that earlier assumptions, at least in Western academic circles, about the fading of religion from political life have not been borne out (Westerlund 1996). To the contrary, instead of a gradual marginalization and privatization of religion, in many parts of the world the opposite has occurred. Even in the West, religion has retained or even reasserted its presence in public debate, not least in the United States.

The result has been a substantial reassessment of the relationship of religion and politics in the modern world. Studies have appeared examining the way in which religious phenomena

– ideas, symbols, individuals, institutions – influence the whole system of governance at local, national and international levels. Equally, attention is now being given to the ways in which the political system – leaders and institutions – respond to these religious claims. In short, the issue of the relationship between religion and politics is now a matter of serious academic attention. There is a growing recognition that religion and politics are not now, and in fact never have been, separate and hermetically sealed spheres of human thought and action. In the modern world, albeit in different ways from earlier times, religion and politics continue to combine in important ways to shape the public arena in which the many issues about the human predicament are debated and acted upon.

‘Religion’ and ‘politics’

The intertwining of religion and politics, both as a descriptive reality and as a subject for prescriptive reflection, has an exceedingly long history that extends back to the earliest eras of intellectual discussion. This reflects the inherent qualities of ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ that seemingly inevitably drive them together into a complex, varied and dynamic relationship. From an historical point of view, as Finer points out, in the earliest times, religion formed part of a ‘vast cosmology … into which all things are fitted’ (Finer 1997: 23). This cosmology included matters religious, having to do with the divine, and matters political, having to do with the exercise of power. Within this context, those who monopolized political power also typically claimed religious authority. This arrangement appears, in various forms, in many ruler cults and sacral kingdoms across the ancient Middle East, Asia, and South America, as well as in Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome. In this way, a pattern evolved bringing religion into the most intimate association with politics, the two forming a single or monistic whole.