The real question, which has echoed time and again through the corridors of history, is whether we can find ways of living together, despite the fact that we can’t find ways of believing or worshipping together.
That is what the Bible teaches in its very first chapter, when it says that we are all, every one of us, in the image of God. Our love of God must lead us to a love of humanity.
I find it extraordinary that in an age in which globalization is forcing us together, all too often, across the globe, faith is driving us apart. We should be fighting environmental destruction, political oppression, poverty and disease, not fighting one another, least of all in the name of God whose image we all bear.
That is why I believe the time has now come, even in Britain, to bring a message of religious tolerance into the public square. For if the voice of reconciliation does not speak, the voices of extremism will.
It is the fact that Jonathan Sachs is Britain’s Chief Rabbi that makes this plea for religious tolerance striking and significant. And he is clearly appealing for “moderate” voices to speak up in the spublic square, lest “the voices of extremism” prevail unopposed.
Of course, this is a familiar, vexing problem that has long haunted western societies. And in Europe, where historical memories are longer, the immense bloodshed and turmoil of ugly periods like the infamous “Thirty Year’s War” that devastated much of Europe from 1618 to 1648 provides a strong impetus toward the secularization of public life, despite the presence of state churches (or their empty shells).
All I’ll say for now is that this op-ed piece on BBC reminds me of what a famous agnostic Englishman, the great historian Edward Gibbons, concluded in a typically witty but cynical summary about a parallel time in the history of the early Roman Empire (before Constantine’s conversion). In his classic work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbons wryly noted that in the highly pluralistic and syncretistic Roman Empire:
“To the masses all religions were equally true.
To the philosophers, they were equally false.
And to the politicians, they were equally useful.”
Well, it appears that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Today, most people likewise have fallen for the pleasant delusion that all religions are equally valid (so let’s live and let live). The smart ones realize that with their mutually exclusive truth claims, that really means that all religions are equally false. But the kicker is that it’s still true that to politicians on the campaign trail and all those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, all religions are equally “useful.”
And ultimately that’s what pluralism leads to in the end, cynicism and nihilism.
Alas, we won’t respect “the image of God” in each other, if we can’t agree which “God” we are made in the image of. For it makes all the difference in the world if that God is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, or the remote, inscrutable Allah of the Koran, or a Hindu god like Vishnu, the Destroyer.
David Handy+
Is the good Rabbi will willing to admit that his religion is false and idol worship is Ok?
Or is YWAH the God of the Jews only? How does he read the Shema?
This is a collection of platitudes and cliches that are, as they always are, thought substitutes. In short, this is feel-good writing that shows the writer is of the highest moral character. The writers above in fact point out how ill thought out this piece is. The ideas, in short, do not stand scrutiny (as cliches never do) but this was not published to be scrutinized, but to be a testimonial for the writer – by the writer.
Larry