Problem with Pluralism

I wanted to take a moment to step back and look at the project as a whole. To evaluate what we have done so far, and what we have discovered. Wendy Doniger wrote a book called The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth, where she looks at the definition of a myth, specifically a religious myth, and evaluates their purpose. She defines myth as: “A tool in the hands of human beings” and “reveals certain basic cultural attitudes to important (usually insoluble) questions”. Basically, a myth is a sacred story that tells us the deepest truths about every aspect of our lives. She means the fiction that makes reality real; a story that can bring reality into closer focus. These myths are acted out in the sacred rituals of each religion.

Each religion is designed to answer these basic insoluble questions; a few being the ones that we are asking in our interviews. Doniger describes this as looking at life through a telescope, seeing the broad picture and interpreting life through this lens. These are the questions that religious myths look at, and try to answer on the microscopic level, the more personal perspective. What we have seen through our interviews is that the answers to these telescopic questions are individual people’s microscopic perspectives influenced by their religious myths and acted out in their own religious rituals. Some of those religious myths are interpreted within a certain religion and believed by most members of that religion, but as we have seen commonly throughout our interview process, many of those myths (creation, for example) are becoming individualized to fit the belief systems of the individual and transforming to a deeper and more meaningful level for that individual. Roof discusses this shift from a religious community to individuality as we have discussed in previous posts. Robert Bellah, et al. also highlights on this theme in Habits of the Heart: Individualism and commitment in American Life. He claims that, “The American pattern of privatizing religion while at the same time allowing it some public functions has proven highly compatible with the religious pluralism that has characterized America from the colonial and grown more and more pronounced.” Bellah, 225.

This leads to a problem with that pluralism. If there can be more than one explanation to questions within a certain religion, and all the explanations are correct even if it is to the individual, then other religions and their explanations must be correct as well. However, we live in a world where there are competing claims of truth in religion; somewhere deep inside we believe that we are right, and there (logically) can’t be more that one right answer to a given question. If we did entertain the idea that another religion could be truthful, then we are betraying our own faith. Diana Eck discusses this topic in her book, Encountering God. She says, “To recognize this plurality of religious claims as a profoundly important fact of our world does not constitute a betrayal of one’s own faith. It is simply a fact among the many facts that emerge from the historical and comparative study of religion.” Eck, 14. What she is saying, is that when we look at other religions as being truthful, we are not denying the validity of our own, we are evaluating our own beliefs and relating the beliefs of other and of what we hear to what we already know.

Many of the people that we have interviewed agree with this idea. They can take what they have learned about other religions and get something out of it that they otherwise would not have been able to see. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, “I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. And wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power brazing and purifying humanity, know ye that I am there.” If we are so narrow-minded as to think that what we already know is the only thing there is to offer, then we are not only becoming more ignorant, but we are actually narrowing our faith and the possibilities of what God can become and how we can be impacted by our faith. As one Hindu said in Eck’s book, “[What kind of stingy God would that be] to show himself only once, to one people, in one part of the world, and so long ago?” We would be small-minded and self-centered to not even consider the idea that this might not be the case.

Our interviewees also agree that challenging what we believe is necessary in establishing what religion we believe in. “We need to acknowledge our own responsibility for the image of God that we are content to believe in.” Eck, 48. This “image of God” that Eck is referring to is our personal religious views of how we see God. Whatever religion someone is, they see the divine in a way that is personal to them. Their personal views are shaped by their religious myths microscopically, the culture they grow up in, and (should be) the pluralistic study of other religions to broaden their telescopic view of the world, society, and other religions.

Roof vs. Reality

In chapter 6 of his book Roof goes into detail about different types of Christians. One group he looks at is the born-again Christians. When I first read this, I thought it was referring to the people who practice evangelism whole-hartedly, which we touched on earlier. Many Christians do consider evangelism a strong part of their faith, but this is not the only aspect of their faith. This post will be looking at the make-up and values of the group. Here are a few quick facts Roof gives on the born-again Christians.

They make up nearly a third of the Baby Boomer generation. Many have had a memorable moment when they feel like they've "really become a Christian". The members of the group come from all different denominations and religious backgrounds and are bound together by a "spirituality combining the experience of a 'personal God' or a 'personal relationship' with Jesus Christ and Boomer culture and sensibilities". The transformation and spirituality is also highly individualistic.

Now for two aspects of this group of Christians in general that I don't necessarily agree with. Roof states that narrowminded exclusiveism and rigid moral laws that are usually associated with this group are disappearing with the Boomers. He later goes on to say that " half of all Boomer Evangelicals agree that the religions of the world are all 'equally true and good'". From what talking to the people I know that would fit under this category, they are fairly closeminded and believe that their religious views are the only right way. One male student I recently interviewed said that he believed only Christians who believed in Jesus and did not do evil could go to heaven. Everyone else was to go to hell. He didn't say it in quite those terms, but that is the gist of it. What happened to the loving God who sent his son to save all of mankind? I don't believe that God could comdemn anyone to an eternity of hell, but that's getting way too into my own opinion, so I'm stopping now.

As for the end of exclusiveism, I could believe that it has stopped in the sense of the church welcoming everyone into it and not turning anyone away, but if you (in the end) don't believe what they believe, you cannot be correct.

By no means I am saying that members of this group are bad people, their hearts are in the right place and they do many good things, but I think they could be more sensitive to other Christians- and non Christians- whose beliefs differ slightly from their own.

This post was a little harsher than I meant it to be. At the end of the day we must remember who Christians really are and remove any steriotypes that are associated- they are simply people who stand firm in their faith and believe that it is right for them to spread it to others.

A Closer Look at Judaism

This week I had the opportunity to attend a reform Jewish Friday service with Kelsey, one of the students that I interviewed earlier this semester. The experience was not what I was expecting...

The temple was small, but enough people came so there could be a minyan (ten Jewish men), so all the prayers could be recited. The Rabbi had an acoustic guitar that he played while the prayers were being chanted, all in Hebrew, and one of the young boys in the congregation who was practicing for his Bar Mitzvah led us through the prayers. The Arc was opened, but the Torah was just prayed and bowed to, not taken out and read. We recited prayers (that were available in the prayer book for those in the congregation that needed them... aka me... but it was hard to follow because it was all backwards) then the Rabbi spoke for about ten minutes. He was really excited about the new prayer books, so actually spoke on the development of the prayer books, how they were first oral traditions, then written down, then condensed, then rewritten again, then modernized, and finally re-traditionalized to what they now have today. He compared this to baseball.

The entire service lasted about 45 min.

Afterwords, everyone gathered together in another room and ate a ton of food (after it was prayed over, or course!) I had the opportunity to talk to the Rabbi for a minute about the project. He said something to me that I was shocked to hear come from a Rabbi's mouth.

"I don't care what religion you believe in as long as you hate it. Every religion has bad things about it, but they all have good things about them too." Um, that seems a little confusing. Why should you have to hate your religion?

Wow. This was someone who has dedicated their life to this one religion, memorized a BUNCH of prayers in another language, practiced traditions, lived in guidelines, and says that he hates his religion. Why practice it then? Why devote your life to something you hate? This is very backwards from all the people who have told us that they find their religion a place of comfort and calm. How could you have find comfort in something that you hate and why you continue doing it?

I think that we need to take a look back at one of the differences we have encountered in Judaism. A person can be Jewish by religion and by heritage, so being Jewish does not necessarily mean that you practice it, or even believe in it. I would expect someone who is a Rabbi to be more than just a cultural Jew, but because this was a reform temple I guess even the Rabbi doesn't have that strong of a religious affiliation. I wish I had thought to ask him why he was a Rabbi, but I was so taken aback by what he said that I didn't think to ask anything else. I think that he is a Rabbi because he gets something out of practicing the prayers. Maybe he likes being a "teacher" (because that is what the word "Rabbi" means), and he just wants to convey the important moral aspects of that religion, and not so much the religion itself; what he would call the "good things" about the religion. These are only speculations.

I can also interpret this as one of the many signs of religion shifting from a restricted and organized group practice to a more personal spiritual experience. He chooses to be a Rabbi and teach, while hating the idea of his religion.

On the other hand, this can also be interpreted another way (as pointed out to me by Jonathan...) Hating your religion mean that you have thought about it and you have seen that the religion itself has to be more than just what you are raised with, more than what you have been taught and say. It has to be what you believe and what fits your worldview. I don't think that if you actually think about any religion there isn't some aspect that you don't understand, something you can't think about, and something you can't disagree with. It just matters that it's you thinking about it. Because what is the point of just doing religion if it is lip service? People that just do that are doing nothing. If it is suppose to mean something then you should think about what you don't agree with and come to terms with that. Think about why it is said and why you disagree. Religion is not all bad and you should not look at them to see only what you don't like (because religion offers more than just debate topics), but they are set up to be a framework of guidelines and not concrete rules. I wish more people saw them as such.