Religious Pluralism: A Christian Analysis

In “An Interpretation of Religion” Hick argues how all religions are ambiguously and culturally designed to answer all of life’s questions. A renowned theologian, philosopher and religious pluralist, Hick firmly agrees world religions are diverse paths to meet the “Real” or “Truth”. David Nah’s Christian Theology and Religious Pluralism: A Critical Evaluation of John Hick criticizes Hick’s hypothesis & discusses how the Christian theology uniquely differs from world religions. The New Age generation has made religious pluralism a pivotal acknowledgement for society as it continues to omit the fundamental factors of the Christian doctrine, an evident study that already answers life’s toughest questions. The world’s most commonly followed religions & its path to truth consists:

The evidence that exists to prove the diversity of the early Christian community is the many other writings which have been discovered by historians from the same time period (Harris 2014). In addition, the writings reveal that each separate group of Christians from this era had their own understanding of what Jesus was teaching His followers. The “fifth gospel” of Thomas paints the picture of Jesus as a guide towards His disciples by enlightening them with the message that God’s Kingdom already rules, but many people would not believe him. The portrait that Thomas provokes is an example of the diversity of the early writers and several of his ideas are similar to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Harris 2014).

“Pluralism is the granting of equal support, acceptance, or influence in decision-making to more than one religious group” (Segal and Oxtoby). Secretary Kerry is, in my opinion, a religious pluralist. I believe this because throughout his speech, he spoke about his efforts to understand all types of religions, united religions by talking about their common fundamentals, and called others to build relationships with people of all types of religions in an effort to create a community of peace and acceptance.

My knowledge of religious pluralism has expanded and has helped me to look at religion in a different way. Religious pluralism is something that I believe my generation will further continue to enforce. On page 5 of the introduction, Eboo gives a great example of what pluralism stands for: “Religious pluralism is neither mere coexistence nor forced consensus. It is a form of proactive cooperation that affirms the identity of the constituent communities while emphasizing that the well being of each and all depends on the health of the whole. It is the belief that the common good is best served when each community has a chance to make its unique contribution.” I think that quote perfectly describes the multiple themes that both Patel and Brown hold in their

For most of the 20th Century, America’s Faith Community enjoyed the luxury of reposeful sanctuary within their Houses of Worship. Such places were considered “off limits” for acts of crime and mayhem by most Americans. Reality often mirrored this anticipation. Even the criminal element looked with great disdain upon those victimizing churches and synagogues. However, immunity to the problems slowly began to deteriorate. The lawless began to view holy and sacred locations as merely wealthy soft targets overseen by the forgiving and the naive. The general respect that was once accustomed from American culture started to erode as well; only exasperating the situation. By 2001, the reality that world level terrorism could also

Better. This is a quality that everyone seeks to achieve. Day to day life in society is geared to improving one’s life to the best of one’s abilities. Even though people gear their life in this way, it doesn’t mean that becoming a better person is any bit easy. Karen Armstrong’s essay “Homo Religiosus,” discusses the role of religion and its underlying arts and disciplines. Oliver Sacks’ essay “The Mind’s Eye” analyzes the lives of several blind individuals. Sacks' essay goes through how several individual continues to live his or her life despite being blind. The practices of blindness enact the arts and disciplines of religion because they allow an individual to become a better person.

. Religious diversity in America alone is too great to justify one sector determining the lawfulness or morality of anyone else’s beliefs. There are several practices that are not allowed by various religions, yet they are not outlawed. For example, The Jewish and Muslim faiths do not permit the consumption of pork, but anyone can still go to the supermarket and buy bacon. Catholics are not allowed by their faith to use contraception but condoms and birth control pills are still available to whomever wants them. So, many views of human cloning are influenced by

The South has been experiencing a lot of religious diversity. Specifically in Tennessee, there has been a lot of religious diversity. There have been protests to prayers before football games and bans high school banners with Bible verses on them. Religion experts say that the South is just now catching up to the religious diversity that the rest of the world has been experiencing. The amount of Muslim families has increased a significant amount in the past 46 years. There are many other religions in different parts of the world that people have inherited from family members and continued on with religious family traditions and passing it on from generation to generation.

Pluralism is a worldview in which the society members structure their culture based on acceptance and diversity. These common traits all strive for the common good of all and also realize there is some truth in other beliefs (Pluralism, 2015). This worldview stresses the importance of tolerance of other religions but does not however deviate from their own beliefs.

Pluralism is the idea that in the world we have a free market of many ideas, religion, and philosophies. It also mean that there is not just one certain idea, religion, philosophy, or interpretation. Pluralism can be seen throughout the 1st century. In the 1st century there were various religions with all different beliefs, that can be observed in the New Testament. These religions can be generalized into five groups. There are the Graeco-Roman Pantheon, philosophies, worship of the occult, mystery religion, and emperor worship. I found it interesting to learn about different kinds of religions.

monotheistic beliefs, which means that they believe in more than one god or that more than one

Pluralism is the claim that all the religions in the world are equally valid in their truth. Also, this view accept that there are multiple ways of having relationship with God and ways for salvation. Exclusivism, on the other hand, is the claim that only one religion is exclusively true and this religion alone offer a way for salvation. Exclusivism also states that if claims of other religions contradict this one “true” religion, then those claim must be false. John Hick advocated for pluralism. He claimed that knowledge of God can only be known as it is being perceived by the believer and thus claims about God are really claims about perception of God. He further went on to say that knowledge is influenced by experience, which is influenced

In “On Religious Diversity,” Robert MacKim categorizes approaches to the variety of religious belief in three directions, such as Inclusivism, Exclusivism and Pluralism. Exclusivists believe that only their religion is the accurate one, and every other religion is inaccurate. Exclusivists believe that one set of beliefs is accurate and other ones a partially accurate. Pluralists believe that more than one religion is correct; they accept numerous passageways God. Pluralism is an exceptionally, strange concept. If there are multiple processes to reach God, and it does not matter what religion the person is, then why would there even be a religion, and so many disagreements between religions. Because most religions believe that their religion

In the Jewish religion, there have been many occurrences of pluralism and many movements throughout the timeline of its history, from the very beginning of Creation to this very moment. Pluralism has been an important dimension of Judaism. There have been past, present and there will be future movements of this religion because it is ever evolving and growing for and to most. In each period of Judaic history, there have been several moments of pluralism at its finest and examples of different movements. Each period, Biblical Period (Creation, Themes of the Torah, Prophets and Writings), Christianity and Judaism, medieval mysticism and philosophy to the modern movements (Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform and Holocaust and Redemption Jews) gives prime examples of pluralism.

If a person were to juxtapose the western religions that exist in our society today, a vast amount of people would conclude that a major similarity between them is that they are all monotheistic. There is a multiple amount of religions in this world today, but a few are monotheistic like the western religions and then there are the polytheistic religions, which tend to be more along the eastern side. Monotheism can be straight forward with its definition; however, there are certain concepts that need to be known in order to completely understand the true nature of monotheism in today’s western religions. These concepts can be comprehensible by exploring a few themes within monotheism.