Talk:Religious pluralism/NOFR-Archive

part one

In my opinion, this article is not covering the topic well. All the information is all over the place and the article really needs manipulation of the outline, if not a complete rewrite of most sections. I have posted what I think could be a better outline here. If we could collaborate and get something going before the masses flock in after we get one more vote for the Improvement Drive, we could make this article accurate and literarally excellent. --Cormallen 20:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I quite like your new proposal for its greater clarity. What I would like to know is

- what would be your definition of religious pluralism: the fact that different religions are somehow on the same level (from the point of view of the state?), the fact that members of different religion are somehow living together, or the fact that there is dialogue between them, i.e., is religious pluralism for you the same thing as inter-religious dialogue? Actually, I'm thinking about renaming the whole article into something along the lines of "inter-religious dialogue/contact between religions"

- what it changes about the conceptual framework, the distinction from other concepts?

- if I get it right, the History section would rather be about the material and action side, i.e. the fact of different religions living together and getting in touch, whereas the "different religions' stances..." section would be about the ideas that they have about each other.

- within "Stances - Christianity", I propose there should be a section on what the scriptures have to say about inter-religious dialogue and the like.--Robin.rueth 18:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Thinking about it again, I would propose that, for rewriting the article, we should start from some basic assumptions and questions rather than from keyword headlines - I suppose it is a good technique to ask yourself, before writing an article, what you actually want to know from it. Here are some basic assumptions I would propose out of which some basic questions arise (My basic assumptions may be conceptually wobbly, if a philosopher could rework them, I would be very grateful!):

• All major religions are deeply connected to the notion of '''Truth''', and more specifically, absolute truth, i.e. a truth that is not man-made, that does not depend on human understanding but that has to do with the reality of life / of the world (sorry for being so vague here!) as opposed to a mere human perception of it. Followers of any religion generally claim that

- their religion gives them access to this Truth, that they can get in touch with it by worship.

- their theology tells them about the nature of this Truth, and that they get some reliable (and - possibly - absolute, if not complete) knowledge of this absolute Truth.

- they can live according to this Truth, that their religion gives them values and ethical standards that teach them to lead a righteous and truthful life.

- (other things they claim)

• Furthermore, at least Christianity and Islam (and to a lesser extent, Judaism) claim to represent universal Truth, i.e., a truth that is not just for their believers or for one special group, but for everyone, so they believe their theology their ethical standards (and perhaps also their forms of worship) to be valid for everyone, not just for members of one ethnic group or one religious community.
• At least in today's world, all religions live in a pluralistic world and often also in pluralistic societies, i.e. where different religions and value systems exist side by side, without one of them being considered superior to the others by a body that can claim authority over all religions, and often without one religion enjoying a situation of hegemony over the others.

Q: Has this been always the case, and how did this situation come about? – this is where the history of religious pluralism comes in.

Q: Have religions tried to gain hegemony over other religions, e.g. by subjecting them, by forceful conversions or by proselytizing?

In these societies, quite obviously, truth is a matter of your relative point of view: different people will have different concept of truth. This, however, does not square at least with a universalistic view of Truth.

Q: How do religions with a claim for universalism theologically deal with this “scandal” of religious diversity? (finding common ground, adopting a less literal point of view, resorting to relativism; adopting an inclusivist or an exclusivist stance)

On a practical level, even if they disagree, members of different religions have to get along with each other; often, they are led by other concerns (e.g. power) than doing what their scriptures tell them to do. Q: So what does the what does the practical action of the members of these religions look like?

• Philosophical and cultural developments have had their impact on the self-perception of different religions and on their interaction. Q: What has changed in their interaction through Enlightenment, Western secularization,...?
• The situation of a globalized world and pluralistic societies poses new challenges to all religions. Inter-religious dialogue can be a solution for this. How is this possible solution adopted by members of different religions?

Please add your own suggestions to this outline--Robin.rueth 11:55, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I have thought some more about this, and have come up with some "basic assumptions" about religious pluralism.

Religious Pluralism is the presence of multiple religions/worldviews

Each group has its own response to this pluralism

The response is dictated using opinions of truth, such as:

Relativism/Absolutism. (is everyone right?)

Inclusivism/Exclusivism (Is only one religion true?)

Literal/Spiritual Truth (is anyone more right than anyone else?)

Particularism/Universalism (Who are we trying to please?)

Also, Objective/Subjective Truth (How is truth defined?)

These factors each are influenced by general opinions of truth.

Can we know it? (Agnosticism.)

Can we discern it ourselves? (Humanism)

Is it revealed by a higher being? (e.g. Christianity, Judaism)

Outside influences factor largely also in this stance.

I have described these in greater detail on this page.

Cormallen 20:49, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

What I would propose now as a general framework (integrating what I have written so far and also the others' contributions) would be the allong the following lines:

• General: What is Religious Pluralism (Presence of multiple religions/worldviews within a state or a society - without any value jugement, without any implication for the interaction of these groups)? This concept should be delimited from interaction between denominations within one religion, although the borders are fuzzy, especially in the practical domain (cf. Christians leading religious wars against Christians, such as the 30 Years’ War or the Northern Ireland Conflict)

(the following section about the state might not be that fundamental, it should perhaps go a section further down, where - one day - questions such as religious persecution, established churches and the like are discusses..)

a state can react to this situation in different ways

a state with an established religion, which is - at least nominally - privileged as opposed to the others

a pluralistic state (which does not discrimnate in favour or against any religious group);

a laicistic state (according to the French model - religions have to keep out of State affairs)

religious persecution by the state

religions can react to this situation in different ways

tolerance or intolerance of a religion towards others

cooperation or conflict / competition for hegemony between these religious groups

• Philosophical and Conceptual Section: Why do religions often have problems with the presence of other religions?

Something about what religion is all about (see my above explanations): worship, theology and ethics – all three being linked to the concept of Truth.

Here, I think it would be useful to account for factors that are really inherent to the religions as a such and rather secondary considerations (group identity, pragmatic interests); it might be interesting to add here what Henri Bergson had to say in his book “Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion” (the following ideas are of course very schematic and may be inaccurate– I think here it would be good to have someone who is really into Bergson). Taking into considerations the three functions of religion that I named, a dynamic religion boils down to

tradition and ritualization in worship

a theology limited to human understanding

ethics: narrowing your horizon to the interests of your own group

whereas the dynamic side is rather connected to things like

mystical experience / revelation in contact with the Divine

a theology that casts into doubt the human moulds of understanding

a call for universalism, opening your horizons

This would take us to a discussion of in how far universalism (care for everyone, vocation to get in touch with everyone) and particularism (care only for the affairs of one’s own group) are responsible for conflict or for cooperation between different religions

• Doctrinal Section: What do religions teach about the relationship to others / how do they cope theologically with the challenge of religious pluralism (it should have been shown in the preceding section why this is actually a challenge).

This could then be the appropriate space for introducing the other concepts in Cormallen’s list, with a somewhat changed definition

Inclusivism/Exclusivism (Does only one religion show the right path in matters of worship, ethics and theology?)

Relativism (Does religion give access to absolute truth?) – I don’t really know what absolutism should be, if that concept officially exists

I don’t really get the exact meaning of the following points, and what the questions in brackets have to do with the preceding terms

Literal/Spiritual Truth (is anyone more right than anyone else?) – “spiritual truth” somehow connects with a dynamic religion

Also, Objective/Subjective Truth (How is truth defined?) – “subjective truth”, in my opinion, is the same thing as relativism…

Then, of course, after all these definitions, there should be concrete opinions from the different religions (huge lot of work in my opinion), what actually was their doctrinal stance on other religions

This could also be the space to discuss the relationship between religions and non-religious worldviews (agnosticism, secular humanism…)

• Practical / Historical / Political Section: After looking at the theories that different religions brought forward, not it is time to see how members of different religions actually interacted with others

How did situations of religious pluralism come about (this could be the right space for introducing the India section)

How did politicians, religious leaders, and perhaps the ordinary people cope with that situations (things as the Islamic dimma, coexistence of Christians and Jews in Europe, to name a few examples)

• Inter-Religious Dialogue as a way of coping with situations of religious pluralism; here, there should be a reference to ecumenism

Doctrinal section (once again)

Practical section: examples of inter-religious dialogue, such as

Francis of Assisi

Hans Küng

The Assisi Peace meetings

sorry for making it so long, but I suppose it is a really encyclopedial subject, and we’d better get things sorted before the crowds come flocking here and editing around.--Robin.rueth 19:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

NOFR - take 2

Well - I appreciate all the time you have put into this, Robin -- but how actually does that make a better article? The current article does not attempt to systemise the issue for good reasons - a metasynthesis of religious pluralism can only be reductive and biased, which opposes the spirit of the article itself. I do agree that some individuals find it hard to distinguish between religious pluralism and religious syncretism - but your entire emphasis is Ibrahimic in structure - for instance, read the Buddhism section of the current article, and take a moment to reflect on how your discourse doesn't really accept it as a plausible view. In fact, to me your structure indicates a defensive stance on the issue: to the point where it almost suggests that religious intolerance is (or has been) an universal aspect of religious praxis. Your structure also attempts to tackle concepts for which there cannot be any concensus, but worse, most of your structure is adequately dealt with on wikipedia elsewhere - including state persecution, etc.

The most useful part of this current page is that it gives space to detail specific value systems on a per religion basis. I object to the project of synthesis of ideas for this article on the grounds that synthesis is new research. And also that synthesis is merely a reinvention of institution: It does not remove POV, but merely changes the POV. (20040302)

Talking about POV, I am wondering how to somehow unite your point of view and mine into a better version of this article, because I'm still convinced that

• the article - at least in its Christianity section - is lacking conceptual clarity and that at least for this section, it would be useful to have some general concepts at hand that could be applied to the diverse points of view of different theologians, which, otherwise, would just be mere anecdotes coming one after the other, like on a string of pearls. I mean concepts such as universalism vs. particularism, exclusivism vs. inclusivism and the extreme form of relativism. If these concepts do not apply to Buddhism or other religions, then it would perhaps be better to put them into the Christianity section. If, however, concepts could be found that can somehow be applied to all religions (just as ethnologists describe totally different cultures in the same terms - but I'm not an ethnologist, so I don't really know what I'm talking about) this would allow to compare these religions and to see differences and commonalities, and perhaps to notice that in a way, many religions are somehow facing the same problems and questions in matters of inter-religious contact.
• the interaction between different religions, at least in Europe, which is what I know, has been - alas- greatly marked by inter-religious conflict, intolerance and even violent conflicts, and that often, civil powers played a role in this area. A modern-day example of this is the alleged Clash_of_Civilisations. This also implies that

• I would like to have an explanation in there why religions so often conflict with one another. (which is the first section in my outline - so far, admittedly, it is very POV-lopsided; I think other explanations, such as the Clash of Civilisations theory or an Enlightenment point of view have to be inserted; I'm going to do that)
• I would like a practical / political section that, beyond the beautiful or hateful words of different theologies shows how interaction between different religions actually happened. This could be one general section, which is what I would prefer, or there could be a practical subsection in every religion.
• At any rate, there is the need for a detailed section on inter-religious dialogue.

If most of what I wish is dealt with elsewhere, we should at least insert the links.

Unfortunately, I don't get the point of what you say about POV - trying to find common terms and a unifying structure, in my opinion, does not imply taking one special point of view. It is always a daunting task to find a structure that is able to integrate everyone's point of view, but I'm dreaming, if not of greater religious unity, then at least of greater unity in the description of the religions' concord and discords.--Robin.rueth 14:59, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok - by all means, look into the Xian section - and if it gets long, then you can always author Religious pluralism (Christianity), and keep a summary here.

Regarding the last thing - on POV - I find it interesting, nay amusing, that you cannot see the problematics of 'finding common terms and a unifying structure' for an article called 'pluralism'. IMO, religious unity is religious syncretism under a different name, and ceases to celebrate the distinctions and differences that religions have. Moreover- the ideal of iconising religions into simple categorised socio-political structures is a necessarily reductive approach. Take e.g. voodoo, or the spell-culture of the Yanomami - there is no way to synthesise these ideas - and why need to. It is like saying "Let's all interbreed until we have gray skin, so there won't be any racism" or whatever. Far better to celebrate distinction - and enjoy the variety of nuance available in religion. In so many ways, we cannot systemise or contain the various expressions of religious experience - but why should we? What is the purpose of the project? Friends of mine say "Football is my religion" - if I challenge them and tell them they are being allegorical, they deny it. They have a religious experience based on football. Who am I to deny it? On a plural ground, who has authority? No-one. It is a marketplace to share ideas, not some ivory tower based upon abstract notions of the absolute.

For me, the project that you appear to seek can only be found in terms of the celebrations of difference; and embracing the wonder of variety. Attempts at integration are normally only successful when ruthlessly dictated by cultural monopolies. A good question that you ask is why do people fear the other, and what constructive values can we find for that in the rapidly shrinking world we live in? But these questions are far broader than the inter-religious platform.

If you wish to build towering edifice, then please do it somewhere else; but if you wish to find a way of laying out the marketplace, I am interested. (20040302 18:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

We're treating two questions here, one of views concerning religion, one about what an encyclopedia article should look like (and I think we should keep them apart as far as possible).

• views on religion: I do embrace difference, and I would be happy if different religions always managed to live side by side, like on a marketplace; there need not be a towering edifice that can comprise all religions.
• I think any encyclopedia article needs a clear structure with clear concepts, because these permit you to compare things and thus "embrace the wonder of variety". And I'm not talking about comparing religions as a such, which are a great mystery (in the original sense of the word) to me as well, but just their way of viewing and treating other religions
• "A good question that you ask is why do people fear the other, and what constructive values can we find for that in the rapidly shrinking world we live in?" Could this be part of the common ground to build a new version of the article on? Please explain the last sentence "But these questions are far broader than the inter-religious platform."
• Is it sensible in this case to ask someone else to mediate this conflict, lest the whole thing gets out of hand, newcomers to this page are discouraged from contributing (as is, quite obviously, User:MisfitToys), and we only spend our time writing talkpages as opposed to articles?--Robin.rueth 19:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Leaving aside all the basic assumptions about religion that I have proposed, which were perhaps too detailed, certainly badly explained (for the case of Bergson, at least), and maybe foolish, could we agree on the following basic structure of the rewritten article? (I'm not talking about what goes into this structure, but I think we do need one, as User:Cormallen pointed out, before the crowds come flocking in here from the Article Improvement Drive page. It contains - to take up your words, a "towering edifice" part (1-3, perhaps 7), which is more about fundamental and systematic questions (which, I think, have to be treated, perhaps more competently and less Ibrahimitically than what I tried before), and a "marketplace" section, with things just side by side (4-6 or 7). Each section should answer one or more questions.

1. What is Religious Pluralism? (perhaps: How can members of a religion (and - perhaps - authorities) react to a situation of religious pluralism?

2. Definition of some basic concepts, which are needed for the rest of the article (just as - in many programming languages - you have to define your variables before the actual text).

3. Why do situations of Religious Pluralism often lead to conflict? (with different explanations from different points of view)

4: How did situations of religious pluralism come about? (India could be an example, this could also go in to section 6)

5. What do different religions teach about Religious Pluralism and what is their "theological" view of religious diversity. This would have to be on a per-religon basis.

6. Historically, how did different religious groups act in situations of religious pluralism? This would also have to be very specific, perhaps on a per-epoch, per-area and per-religon basis.

7. Which solutions are proposed to the challenges created by situations of religious pluralism? (Inter-religious dialogue, accepting diversity, syncretism and the like) - at least inter-religious dialogue cannot be put into the other sections.

This is as NPOV as I can get it.--Robin.rueth 19:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay :-) I also don't want this to get out of hand, and I appreciate the concern and energy you are putting into this article. I have no objection to sections 1,5,6,7 Though I think maybe (5,6) should be unified - I am unsure about entertaining the 'edifice' of a teaching/acting dichotomy - especially concerning those religions which have no didactic structure. So maybe that dichotomy could be embedded within the same section. Section 4 also, I would run into [5,6] where appropriate and clear. The problem of 4 for me is that it attempts to address causality on a socio-political scale - something which I personally feel tends towards views and away from experiences. I feel 2 could be included - but as a launchpoint for affiliated articles that take on the role of definition more thoroughly. Religious tolerance, Ecumenism, Syncretism, Pluralism, Religion, Religious authority, Interfaith, Culture etc - already have (or should have) their places. Lastly I feel that section 3 may be unanswerable from a universal POV. If you don't mind writing some sort of paragraph that expresses your meaning, maybe I could see what you mean by that - but as you point out, different explanations would be needed.

I feel that it is a 'good' idea to keep each 'market-stall' in one place, rather than having to repeat the pattern across different themes.

So - How about (I don't want to be seen as merely reactive..) (RP=Religious Pluralism)

1. RP - A couple of introductory sentences. (definition and bounds) especially distinctions from Religious tolerance, Ecumenism and Religious Syncretism. (Syncretism has a section on Syncretic Religions)
2. Ideas and concepts to be discovered in RP (teaser rather than thesis)
3. Current concerns within interfaith dialogues (news rather than thesis)(better on interfaith)
4. Your section 7
5. The marketplace subsectioned:
   1. Link to a detailed article of religious pluralism for X - eg Jewish RP
   2. Basic introduction of RP in X
   3. Historical development of RP in X (your 4)
   4. Doctrinal support of RP in X (your 5)
   5. Activities of RP in X (your 6)
   6. Intra-X RP
   7. Anything in X considered pertinent to RP by X-members

And for each X, the above needs to be reasonably short - and not all points need to be addressed. Anything more than a paragraph or two should be moved to a distinct article; (hence the first item). What you think of that? (20040302 20:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

Looks like we've almost reached an agreement, wow! Some amendments:

• I still would put in my section 3 on reasons for inter-religious conflict precisely because it cannot be answered from a NPOV: I think at least the issue needs to be talked about, because it is one of the hottest ones in international politics and the like (Mr. Huntington has a pretty well-developed theory on this, his Clash_of_Civilisations theory, which is soo influtential now, almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, but there are others, like the [Bergson]ian one. So this would be multi-POV rather than NPOV (if such a thing exists; I'm a relative newbie to Wikipedia).
• After your religious marketplace, I would put in a historical marketplace, so we can look at different historical situations, for example

• religious pluralism in India,
• coexistence between Christians and Jews in Europe,
• coexistence between Muslims, Jews and Christians in Muslim-dominated countries

I think it would be confusing to put this into the religious marketplace, because there are always several religions concerned.

Talking about the Interfaith and the Religious_tolerance page, I do indeed feel we have to link them better with ours, and perhaps take a look at them as well in the process, given that the Interfaith page is very lopsided, with a lot of text about Sikhism, and little on anything else, and that the Tolerance page is POV-disputed and tagged as being in need of an edit. This demands an awful lot of coordination, I reckon.

Once we have resolved this dispute, I propose we should clean up the Talk page / transfer part of it to the archives so newcomers are not discouraged from entering. --Robin.rueth 07:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Robin, I think your section 3 is very interesting (who doesn't) but I increasingly feel it needs to be addressed in it's own article. As you point out, it has strong ties with IR and Huntington and others have had a lot to say about this stuff within the sociopolitical arena. I would be willing to help flesh some of that out (though my knowledge is limited) - but I feel that RP has enough to deal with just being a well-written set of links to greater details. I feel that this area is particularly concerned with religion as a political power. Have a look at eg. the Inglehart chart

I am wary of opening up a historical marketplace here as well - I am aware that there could be an almost 'league table' of RP issues and histories - but the issues are going to be hard enough - especially as Xianity (reading this discussion) appears to have many difficulties identifying itself as a single religion (something which it shares with the other large religions) especially concerning it's stance on RP. I Feel that several of the histories that you are interested in should be best addressed in Religious conflict or maybe History of inter-religious activity (!), rather than RP. Certainly it would be good to learn from example - and to see what sort of approaches to RP have been explored and established; for instance the Kumbamela celebrations generally have forced many opposing factions into a small space every twelve years - with a sort of consequence of some sort of "peace at the waterhole" that is not always successful, so I get your point. (Hinduism is a large enough collection of different traditions and doctrines to really be identified as a bundle of religions - and Kumbamela is as much RP as it is intraRP) But I wonder if most of these historical developments cannot be mentioned under the various religious headings. Or within the context of another article altogether.

Maybe the best thing regarding the RP historicity issue is to put it to one side until the rest of the article is shaped - and then act according to necessity.

I also agree that - from among the other articles cited above, I don't really feel that the RP article warrants much criticism. It may be good to start pulling these articles together - and attempting to delegate information and areas of concern among them. From my POV, Interfaith appears to be concentrating on a quasi-political movement of some substance - it is certainly a loaded term. Also, from my limited understanding Ecumenism has always struggled to pull itself cleanly away from Xianity, and more often than not seems to represent an intra-christian RP movement, rather than a universal RP movement.

I guess my objection to running the history market here is an argument of simplicity - one article should be doing one job. If needs be we could split this into fractions and turn it into a disambiguation page - though I am rather loathe to do that. (20040302 08:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC))

O.k., there are lots of truly voluminous subjects in this RP area, that will definitely make many sections of the RP article burst into all directions, but my proposal is still that somewhere, there should be a common framework where all these questions are at least referred to (and with links to the other relevant articles). And I think that the concept of Religious Pluralism is so broad and general that the concerned article can serve as this framework. Quite obviously, we will have to look for co-operation in many places. Looks like a pretty daunting task if we really want to get into it.

You can see, that may be my "towering edifice" philosophy: "One article should do one job", that's o.k. with me, be he should also tell which other articles do another related job, and perhaps offer a summary of them.--Robin.rueth 09:39, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

My point is that, hopefully, this page is getting increasing attention because it is nominated for Article Improvement Drive, so we need a clear, easily understandable and comprehensive overall structure into which anybody interested in the subject (which is indeed a very broad one - and I would not limit it) can put their contributions.--Robin.rueth 09:49, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah - I agree. I feel that the right movement is a closer-knit set of articles that address this rather voluminous subject. And definitely they should have reciprocal links - and allow for fluid navigation through the many fascinating areas of this subject. So - for the benefit of all (as we are both rather verbose in discussion - you want to have a go at the initial final format) -- and I will attempt to agree! (20040302)