We live in a world where we are no longer the same. And in fact, we never have been, though our homogenous microcosms sometimes led us to believe we were. And while this pluralism might frighten some, it is even more dangerous to think you’re living in a bubble. In his book To Change the World, James Hunter writes, “Pluralism in its most basic expression is nothing more than the simultaneous presence of multiple cultures and those who inhabit those cultures….Pluralism, in fact, has existed for millennia all around the world” (199).
This past week I had the privilege to hear Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, speak at Princeton Seminary. During his lecture he retold the story of the Good Samaritan. In this well-known story Jesus is talking to one religious community about a person of another religion and tradition. This Samaritan is the inter-faith other, and while our naiveté can easily lead us to oppressively ignore or ignorantly include them, this pluralism exists. It is nothing new to our 21st century “modern” society (though increases in communication heighten our awareness and access to ideologies and individuals of other faiths) but is a reality that has always existed. And in this story that Jesus tells we see a story of interfaith cooperation, working together across religious lines.
Patel articulates the need for a theology of interfaith cooperation: how does your religion relate to the world? I heard once that the “classic” dichotomies of Palestine vs. Jew, Christian vs. Muslim, etc. are no longer applicable. Instead, we live in a world with a single dichotomy: pluralist vs. extremist. Do you recognize and respect other religious traditions or do you extremically (and often violently and oppressively) defend your religion over and against all others? There are pluralist Christians, Jews, Muslims, and more, just as there are extremic Christians, Jews, Muslims, and more. It is no longer an “us vs. them” but a self-destructive “us vs. us.”
As our social and religious contexts overlap and intersect, they inevitably create something different. Hunter writes that “Catholicism is different because of its encounter with Protestantism. Evangelicalism is different because of its encounter with Judaism. Christianity is different because of its encounter secularism. Syncretism is something that occurs in degrees, and while in theory it may not be inevitable, the pressures towards at least some assimilation are enormous” (203). Within the church, especially its evangelical expressions, we raise our defenses against the religiously different (or indifferent) “other.” And in doing so, the expressions of our faith become watered down. “Interfaith,” however, does not mean “faithless.” It requires one to be faithful to their own religion and tradition while simultaneously respecting the faith and religious tradition of another, living faithfully as a person of faith in a world of many faiths.
The irony is that in our hyper-religious reality, “pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability” (202). Faith can either be a barrier of division, a bomb of destruction, or a bridge of cooperation. As we move forward, holding (and being held by) our faith across this “bridge of cooperation” we invite the possibility for God to be truly inevitable. For it is our extremic and oppressive actions that create barriers of division and bombs of destruction, making “my God” inaccessible and unwanted by the pluralistic world around me.
