Challenges to Pluralism

I’m studying religion in college at a secular university. As we all know, religion in America is increasingly a private and personal matter which can make even the most timid of people emotionally charged. As a student of religion and its social aspects, my experience probably already confirms what yours has: while we live in a majority Christian nation, most Americans are still somewhat spiritual and adhere to some form of nominally Christian pluralism or inclusivism.

For those of you unsure of what I mean when I say pluralism/inclusivism, I mean this. Pluralism is generally a movement that seeks to find good and truth in many or all faith traditions. Pluralism comes in many different forms. It could be that a pluralist believes all faiths to be equally true and valid ways of interacting with God and attaining salvation. It could also be the case that the inclusivist sees one faith tradition as more true than the rest, but still sees some value in the others and incorporates their practices, beliefs, and traditions into their own faith. At any rate, all forms of pluralism affirm this: that multiple faiths are valid ways of seeking God and salvation.

Time after time in I hear people tell me that they believe that all the religions are ways to reach God and it is ignorant to try and assert the superiority of one over another. In this way, American society attempts to keep religion a private thing by just assuming all religions are truthful and not asking questions. Well I have a few questions to ask, and these questions concern the epistemic foundations of religious pluralism.

My challenge to religious pluralism is to examine its foundation of knowledge. Namely, pluralists support the idea that there is truth in all religions. However, what is the basis of this knowledge? How does one know that all or some religions are true, even when the truth claims of each religion gravely contradict the others? On what authority does one presume to know that Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Buddhism and the rest are all equally true? To say it bluntly, where did you come up with this idea? My answer is that no authority can prove that fact. Most people just assume that all religions are true because they feel that saying that does not offend anyone. Others may appeal to reason to demonstrate that all religions are true.

In each case, these appeals to offensiveness and reason fail. As my campus minister is apt to point out, the unoffending pluralist project fails. In fact, inclusivism is probably the most presumptuous of all religious beliefs. In this case, the pluralist pretends to know more than the practicing Christian or Jew about their own religion. By affirming that all religions are true, one actually claims to supersede the beliefs, practices, and revelations of the respected traditions and assumes to have some special revelation that demonstrates that all religions are true. In the case of the appeal to reason, the defender of inclusivism is once again on shaky grounds. They tend to believe that they know better and more than the Bible, Torah, or Koran. In their case, the appeal to reason attempts to supersede an appeal to the revelations and scriptures of the different traditions, which contradict one another. This once again assumes that human reason is superior to God’s revelation and that human knowledge is better than God’s. In any case, attempts to establish forms of religious pluralism generally tend to favor approaches that put priority on human experience and knowledge at the expense of God’s.

While I may not have been able to discuss all the epistemological foundations of religious pluralism, I do hope that I have shown that it is incompatible with theistic revelation (particularly Christian revelation and Scripture) and is instead a product of human thought. As a student of religion, I have learned that it is best to leave human productions and creations out of religion and instead favor what God’s word says. We would do well to remember that.