In February of 1998, I returned to the wintry campus of St. Olaf College, a small Christian liberal arts school in rural Minnesota, after a five-month global study trip. It was a bewildering reverse culture shock back into my Norwegian Lutheran heritage; the familiar had changed. I longed to have the world back at my frozen fingertips.
I eagerly enrolled in a world religions course taught by Dr. Anantanand Rambachan, who would later become the first non-Christian (Hindu) chair of the Religion Department. For course curriculum, he was using a CD-ROM (yes, that was cutting edge technology in 1998!), On Common Ground: World Religions in America, produced that year by The Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Sitting at a clunky green Mac in the basement computer lab, I discovered that the religious landscape of India was also now at home in Minnesota…Montana…and Massachusetts! For a course assignment, I made my first field visit to a religious center in the U.S. As I traveled down a dusty gravel road, just miles from campus, I saw the Munisotaram Temple, a Cambodian Buddhist Temple rising out of the cornfields. It took me a moment to realize where I was. My experience of religious pluralism had come home.
Encounters like these bring certain realizations that can shape our religious identities and how we choose to relate to the religious “other.” The unique hospitality I experience in relationship to Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs gives me pause to consider the hospitality to which Christ calls me as a Christian. The way we define our theological boundaries can also change. Where do we place the religious “other” in our eschatology? What impact does that have on our daily living in multi-religious communities?
My parents’ concern that I would return home from my semester abroad having lost my faith in God was completely misplaced. Daily encounters with religious diversity—particularly in the context of India where our studies focused on world religions—heightened my sense of awe and devotion to the God of mystery. Demanding theological questions took the place of doubt, and continue to inspire my own formation and orientation as a religious leader.
In 1998 my notion of “home” forever changed; today we call it “global citizenship.” This story is my vivid memory of that change in myself, but we all have these kinds of stories to share. In the coming months, the Pluralism Project will be seeking stories of interfaith engagement as leadership formation. We invite you to share yours with us. Let me start with a deceptively simple question:
When has religious pluralism come home for you?
Kathryn M. Lohre is the assistant director of the Pluralism Project, and president elect of the National Council of Churches USA.
As a Humanist I am ambivalent about the concept of religious pluralism. What I understand to be the most common model of religious pluralism, that of John Hick, pretty much excludes atheists by definition. This article, although it is beautifully phrased, itself seems to suggest that becoming a naturalist would be an undesirable outcome:
“My parents’ concern that I would return home from my semester abroad having lost my faith in God was completely misplaced…”
I struggled with this issue all through a workshop on “Faith and Leadership in a Fragmented World”, in which sometimes I felt like a valuable voice in the discussion, and sometimes an unwanted outsider.
I mused on this question here: http://goo.gl/W20R7
I don’t know, ultimately, whether the tabernacle of “religious pluralism” is big enough to house atheists within it.
James,
Could you say more about your ambivalence? Is it based on the idea that God undergirds pluralism altogether?
With thanks,
Josh
Well, I said this at length in my post on the subject, but I think it is more that certain assumptions, which I consider theological in nature, seem to undergird discussion and not be open to critique themselves. So, for example, in the Faith and Leadership workshop I attended (4 whole days of interfaith discussion!) it was fine to discuss how and in what ways faith should play a role in leadership, but people were extremely concerned when I raised the question of WHETHER faith should play any role at all.
The challenge, as I see it, is that the tradition of free thinking of which I consider myself apart sees religious faith per se as a problem to be challenged. And that’s just too far beyond the pail for any notion of “religious pluralism” I have seen described. And so I feel like I have to leave one of my most important commitments at the door.
There may be other notions out there which I don’t know about, and I’d love to see them!