The realities of the pluralism that exists and is going to be increasing over time are a challenge to missional Christians. These are those with a desire not to pass up that segment of society that lives in our cities in their efforts at sharing the life of Jesus with others. The urban environment is like none other. Proclaiming the unique message of the Lordship of Christ in that environment effectively and with understanding means that we need to study and understand that environment and the forces at work on people who live there. There are differences from city to city and country to country but some common factors are probably present across the board. But first things first.
In order to proclaim Jesus as Lord we who want to live missionally must hold Jesus as Lord ourselves. It is not a given that as believers we do that adequately. We believe in God and Christ and Christ’s sacrificial death and life- imparting resurrection. We say we desire to be led by God but are we on our faces before him on a regular basis, unwilling to move until we hear from him about our day, our relationships our inadequacies and desires. Do we, like Jesus, take ourselves off and spend long hours with our Lord, our Father, because it is only from Him that we can learn to see correctly and have true understandings. It is only from him that we access the power of the Spirit to help those desperately in need of the kind of healing and peace he has to give.
So my call to us all is not to move ahead without that crucial orientation of our hearts and lives. Not one plan should be made, not one step forward should be taken outside such a position of abandonment and uncompromised commitment to the One who is our life and who we hope to represent and introduce to others. We need to go to the mat before we go to the marketplace.
With that said and done day after day, we can begin to examine some of the things we encounter in the city. A key dynamic that I will focus on here is the public/private divide. The issue of what is public space and what is private is a central element of what it means to live in an urban environment. Some activities almost always take place in the public sphere – shopping, moving around from one place to another, seeking out services and resources and some social engagements are a few of them. Other things are reserved for our private spaces. It has been noted by those who study these dynamics that the greater the concentration of people – the higher the population density – the greater the need for clear lines of demarcation between public and private in our lives. In order to live successfully, to thrive in a densely populated city we need to know we have a place or places where we have control and can shape our environment or be in a predictable environment that affords us space to carry on the personal aspects of our lives safely and undisturbed by the unpredictable and uncontrollable events and encounters outside in the public spaces.
One of the elements of city existence that gets acted out and reinforced within the private sphere is our closely held culture and beliefs. This is the place where we can be who we are in our distinctness that doesn’t have to be conformed to the forces out in the public arena. Our religious beliefs are some of these distinctives. Our personal practices of devotion take place here. And even our communal gatherings for worship, religious teaching and social connection with our fellow believers take place in an essentially private zone. Even though a church isn’t absolutely closed off to the public arena, because it is a gathering of in-group people for the most part, it acts like a private setting.
There are other places that are more neutrally both public and private such as cafes and restaurants. Here interactions that could include expressions of beliefs could take place. But there are obvious limitations here as well.
So, given this dynamic of public and private, how can we find ways to effectively bring the message of hope to people in city environments? What are the best places in which to engage people about these deep belief issues. What are the places that are natural for individuals and that are appropriate and conducive to gathering groups of people. Initial contacts would often happen in places in which a deeper, more lifestyle-challenging process would not work well. If we are to confront people’s deeply, maybe even unconsciously, held belief structures we must eventually cross over that divide into people’s areas of privacy.
Maybe this means we create our own private spaces that we invite folks into. Maybe we will at some point get invited into theirs.
So how do we bring our singular message into the plurality of belief structures that are nurtured and developed in the private spaces of people’s lives? Other things are nurtured there as well. Fears, hatreds, racism and prejudices of every kind are there.
People in urban neighborhoods are open to some public displays of religion like parades or concerts and festivals. These are things that can be experienced but where no commitment is involved. Also participation in community efforts by those from a religious affiliation is seen as acceptable and welcome. Here is where initial contacts are possible that may eventually lead to other more substantial contacts and relationships. This is the way that Serve The City serves our efforts.
But how can we bring our message more thoroughly to groups of people holding a range of core beliefs and worldviews. How can we create an environment with the safety of the private sphere but the reality of the public one. How can we air out people’s beliefs? How can we engage people on a level where in honest thought and discussion and observation, the power of the love of Christ is able to rise up and shine in its uniqueness of grace and hope?
I’d like to consider a starting point informed by The Pluralism Project at Harvard University. They have determined to view religious pluralism according to four precepts.1
1. Pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. Today, religious diversity is a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement. Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will yield increasing tensions in our societies.
2. Pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.
3. Pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.
4. Pluralism is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both common understandings and real differences. Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one another. Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table — with one’s commitments.
Is it possible to live our lives, create forums, initiate dialogues in such a way that this approach to pluralism can flourish? Can we articulate our beliefs well enough to engage someone else’s adequately within an atmosphere of understanding and honest comparison and respect? Would such encounters that began in a public sphere cross over into the private one, to where we really engage our core views with one another? Can this lead to sharing life on a level where Jesus becomes clearly evident to these others? This then could lead to Jesus being revealed not just in the private forum but brought back out into the public one by people whose lives are transformed.
It may be a stretch to think we will find many people willing to engage on this level. Won’t we more likely find people who have been discipled by their culture to the point of intolerance to even engage in honest discussion of the kind I have described? Won’t we more than likely run up against the predominant view of secularism that bridles at any encounter with a religious frame of reference so that we aren’t dealing with pluralism anymore but the dictatorship of the secular?
However that may be, I am convinced that we need to be listeners to and respecters of other’s beliefs. And at that point of understanding and knowledge we need to be able to articulate and support our belief in a way that draws others into the dialogue and conversation. The care and concern for others that is Jesus-originated in us needs to be able to come to play within an environment of agreeing to disagree and must not be diminished because of the disagreement. The honest disagreement should be part of an authenticity of character that pulses with the love of Christ that is at the heart of who we are because we are committed to Christ who is Lord and whose love extends to all people.
- 1. Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Director, The Pluralism Project – Harvard University.
Re: Pluralism and the public space
Dave,
Your call to truly live under the lordship of Christ before we start proclaiming Him to others has challenged me deeply. I want to commit to joining you on the prayer mat, before moving to the marketplace mission field.
I really appreciate your thoughtful article, motivated by your desire to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord in the cities of the West, and to do so as effectively as possible. Your writing has provoked much thought, and I would like to share some of it here.
1. Private and public spheres. You make here an insightful observation of life in the cities, certainly true of our city, Madrid. That faith is normally relegated to the private sphere of contemporary European life seems clear. However, is that desirable and is that consistent with our Christian faith? Probably not.
Its important to note that it was modernity, not postmodernism which effectively relegated religion and God to the private realm of faith, barring it effectively from the public realm of “facts,” and “real,” scientific knowledge accessible to us by reason. It seems clear to me that this assumption is still largely taken for granted in our supposedly postmodern world. As I have argued elsewhere, contemporary western culture is complex and varied and does not fit into the often assumed mold of postmodernism. Missionary approaches should take full account of that complexity, as well as of the biblical mandate to bring every thought captive to Christ. When the Spanish (Catholic) Episcopal Conference published their 2007 document aimed at reminding Catholic voters of the fundamental issues of faith, issues that they should weigh carefully before reaching the voting booth, the response of the Government and Government- friendly media was nothing short of outrage. How dare the church speak out in public in the context of a national election? Mind you, the church was not explicitly endorsing any of the candidates, but merely restating once more the Christian view on the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, the social dimension of the gospel and the needs of the working poor, the right of parents to educate their children on matters of morality etc. Should the church, should Christians speak their faith in the public sphere of academic life, political debate, the business world? We should, in both deeds and words.
Leslie Newbigin was, I believe, one of the sharpest Christian missiologists of the past century (his life spanned almost the entire XX century) and few understood better than him both western culture and effective missionary approaches to that western culture. He called western Christians to refuse to be relegated to the private realm of an untestable, irrelevant faith and “claim the high intellectual ground of our western culture” in the local congregations, as well as in politics and society, where we have to live out, as well as proclaim the gospel of the crucified and risen again Jesus.
2. Religious pluralism. It seems to me a definition of pluralism is needed before we decide if it is a desirable goal and one compatible with Christian faith, especially the Great Commission.
Wikipedia provides a useful range of possible current meanings:
“Religious pluralism is a loosely defined expression concerning acceptance of different religions, and is used in a number of related ways: • As the name of the worldview according to which one’s religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth, and thus that at least some truths and true values exist in other religions. • As acceptance of the concept that two or more religions with mutually exclusive truth claims are equally valid. This posture often emphasizes religion’s common aspects. • Sometimes as a synonym for ecumenism • And as a synonym for religious tolerance “
The Harvard group, whose position you are summarizing, is right in differentiating diversity and pluralism, as well as in suggesting diversity and tolerance alone do not necessarily lead to a cohesive and peaceful society. Therefore, further steps seem desirable. Is religious pluralism of the type suggested by the Harvard group an approach consistent with biblical Christianity? It seems to me their explanations of the term are not sufficient for me to make that judgment: “Not relativism but…An encounter of commitments…. in the form of mutual understanding and dialogue…”
Mutual understanding and dialogue with other religions is, in principle, a positive thing. John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio that we should indeed explore what elements of truth are present in other religions, more so the more these are rooted in our shared humanity. However, the proclamation of the Christian gospel, both humbly and boldly, is something different, and that, I believe, is what we are called to do, today, as in the first century.
I am afraid that the subtext of these Harvard paragraphs is something along the lines of the second Wikipedia definition above, that is, that none of these “commitments” can claim to be absolute or exclusive in themselves, and certainly not, involve an only way, only truth, only life.
A recent CNN documentary is illustrative, it seems to me, of this issue of religious pluralism as widely understood today, especially by academic and media elites. Christiane Amanpour is CNN´s Chief International Correspondent. In her 6 hour long CNN special “God´s Warriors” she portrayed “religious fundamentalism” as seen in the Muslim (including muslim terrorists), Orthodox Jewish (including the man who murdered Yitzak Rabin) and Christian (the late Jerry Falwell etc…. poor Jerry!) faiths. For Amanpour, “God´s warriors” in all three faiths have in common their belief that faith has an absolute value and that it impacts all of life including politics. “They believe modern society has lost its way…and they say God is the answer…their battle to save the world has caused anger, division and fear,” she warns in the intro.
Similarly, New York Times columnist and best selling author Thomas Friedman wrote that, in our post 9/11 world, the real enemy is not terrorism per se, but religious fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. “The opposite of religious totalitarianism is an ideology of pluralism — an ideology that embraces religious diversity and the idea that my faith can be nurtured without claiming exclusive truth…can we have a multilingual view of God — a notion that God is not exhausted by just one religious path?’’ asked Rabbi Hartman. Many Jews and Christians have already argued that the answer to that question is yes, and some have gone back to their sacred texts to reinterpret their traditions to embrace modernity and pluralism, and to create space for secularism and alternative faiths.”[my emphasis] Thomas Friedman, “The Real War,” New York Times, November 21 2001. All roads lead to Rome is cool. The crucified and risen again Jesus calls all men and women to repent, believe and follow Him, exclusively, ain´t cool. I am personally unwilling to go back to my normative text and reinterpret it so as to embrace pluralism and secularism. I am unwilling, however offensive it may be to Amanpour, Friedman, and Harvard University, to soften the words of Peter via Luke in Acts 4:12: “ There is salvation in no one else, nor is there any other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.” Friedman is a brilliant and insightful man (The World is Flat etc) but he shows little understanding of his own Jewish faith. Enshrined in the Basic Laws of Israel is the belief and commitment to the sanctity of every human life, a belief rooted in the Torah, and of God´s making man in His image. Committed as practicing Jews are to the observance of the ceremonial and ritual laws, the rabbinical commentaries are clear: “You shall live by them, you shall not die by them.” Human life is sacred and even the law can be put on hold in order to save a life. Judaism and Christianity are different from Islam in fundamental ways, but this is often missed in religious pluralism conversations. Absolute criteria and reference points are missing and thus we are left with equally valid “commitments.
Dave I appreciate your penultimate and last paragraphs of page two, which strike a note of realism and wisdom, it seems to me. First, you suggest that “we need to articulate our beliefs well enough to engage someone else´s adequately.” There is a huge need in our churches for biblical and theological education for the layman. We can hardly engage in dialogue with others if we don´t understand our own faith. Secondly, you wonder if we will not in fact “run up against the predominant view of secularism that bridles any encounter with a religious frame of reference so that we are not dealing with pluralism any more but with the dictatorship of the secular.” It seems to me that religious frames of reference are not problematic in our culture. What is problematic and branded as dangerous fundamentalism is any claim to absolute, final, exclusive truth of the type of Acts 4:12.
For another time perhaps remains a conversation about pluralism in the New Testament, as Jew and Gentile are first addressed by the same gospel and race and cultural barriers are broken down in and through the cross of Christ, and how this biblical pluralism may shed light on today´s cultural challenges.
I will close with a final thought of a purely pragmatic nature. What do contemporary men and women actually long for? I believe authenticity is the answer. As I wrote in my last newsletter, “What contemporary men and women long for is not more of the same playfully eclectic relativism, but to be shown authentic truth by people who are actually living that truth in their own lives.”
How about this other concluding thought from Newbigin:
“There is no such discontinuity between ‘science’ and other kinds of knowing as our culture supposes. But this split also runs through the Christian community in the division between those who label each other as ‘liberals’ and ‘fundamentalists’. Both suppose that there is available a kind of certainty which admits of no possibility of doubt. The former draw the conclusion that Christian faith cannot be a matter of public truth because it is not indubitable knowledge. The latter seek to maintain the truth of the Gospel by denying the possibility of doubt, and, in support of this, develop a hard rationalist theology which is remote from grace. Both are victims of the assumptions of our culture.” Newbigin “The Gospel and Modern Western Culture”
I am thankful for the biblical balance that I see at Mountainview and its pastor and elders, you included Dave.