How does a religion teacher get an invitation to appear, in June, on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report? By writing a book saying that Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and others have preached about the shared, benign beliefs unifying all great religions ”” and then dismissing that message as garbage.
Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, which hits bookstores today, argues that the globe’s eight major religions hold different and irreconcilable assumptions. They may all push the Golden Rule, as progressives like to point out, but no religion really considers ethics its sole goal. Doctrine, ritual, and myth are crucial, too, and on these, writes the College of Arts & Sciences professor, there is no meeting of the religious minds. For example, Christians who think they’re doing non-Christians a favor by saying they too can be “saved” ignore the fact that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucians either don’t believe in sin or don’t focus on salvation from it. (Hinduism, Daoism, and the African religion Yoruba round out the eight.)
The notion of “pretend pluralism,” as Prothero derides it, may be nobly intentioned, but it is “dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.”
The author’s premise should be obvious, but sadly to liberals, it is not. Unitarian universalists and liberal Episcopalians, etc., believe themselves to be intellectually superior and yet they push silly syncretism and moral relativism which is illogical at its core.
Christianity is unique among the religions – really quite crazy. All the other religions say do this or that to earn your way to heaven or nirvana or ultimate peace or whatever. In contrast, Christianity says, “Forget it, You can’t earn your way to heaven, so God, through the sacrifice of His Son, will give you a ‘free’ ticket.” The thief on the cross next to Jesus did nothing to earn his salvation but Jesus told him that he would be with him in heaven simply because of his faith.
I was taught Old Testament (and New Testament, for that matter) by Brevard Childs. My memory is that Childs refused to use the term, “the Hebrew Scriptures”, because the Christian Old Testament is not the same thing as the Tanach. Of course the texts overlap, but the hermeneutics are fundamentally different. Yet Childs also schooled himself in Talmud, Midrashim, Maimonides, modern Jewish exegetes, etc., with a good faith effort to attend them on their own terms. In [i]Jesus of Nazareth[/i], Pope Benedict engages Jacob Neusner with the deepest regard and respect, and taken together they clarify the real choice between Judaism and Christianity without needing to belittle either practice. Recognition of real differences makes honest, substantive engagement possible. Prothero is clearly right; yet the empty chair metaphor at the end is counseling despair. On the other hand, I confess that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; on that basis I can give an account of the hope that is in me and, at the same time, engage and learn.
Regarding the empty chair image (like the altar to the unknown god?), it seems to undercut what the rest of the article says. Having that at the end seems to imply that Prothero advocates that we move toward the very “pretend pluralism†he rightfully derides. I wonder whether that’s really the case with him.