Rita Gross

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR MONOTHEISM by Rita M. Gross
Coming to terms with genuine pluralism is the most important agenda facing religious leaders. RITA M. GROSS is author of Buddhism after Patriarchy, Feminism and Religion: An Introduction, and most recently Soaring and Settling: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues. This essay first appeared inWisconsin Dialogue: A Faculty Journal for the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire 11 (1991): 3548, and is reprinted by permission. It is dedicated to the memory of Howard Lutz, Professor Emeritus of History, whose loving companionship during the time in which this article was written is greatly appreciated. Clearly, the diversity of religions in the world has been a fact throughout the entire historyof all the world's major living religious traditions. Nevertheless, this diversity has been made the basis for contention rather than community in many cases, and the monotheistic religions have often been among the worst offenders on this score. The strong tendency to display hostility toward different religious positions is connected with a strong tendency toward xenophobia and ethnocentrism.This reaction seems to be built into conventional human responses and has even been included among the major responses of religious people to their environment by the great historian of religions, Mircea Eliade. He hypothesizes that homo religiosus strives to live at the center of his mythological universe, which is felt to be a cosmos,organized space inhabited by human beings. Beyond that space ischaos, whose inhabitants are felt to be demonic or subhuman.(1) Because the tendency to be hostile to people who are different is so strong, it is an important religious problem. This essay will systematically consider the dynamics of religious pluralism and propose techniques for dealing with diversity. Religious diversity is an important component of cultural diversity, which educators are nowtaking seriously in their pedagogies. However, cultural diversity and religious diversity are often evaluated quite differently. In our society now, there is at least a polite and superficial consensus that cultural diversity is here to stay and may enrich life. Minimally, people realize that cultural, ethnic, and class chauvinism create problems and are inappropriate,

though they may bedifficult to overcome. Regarding religious diversity, quite a different evaluation is often employed. Many people value the feeling that their religion is indeed superior to others and regard such religious chauvinism as a necessary component of religious commitment, or even a virtue to be cultivated among the faithful. In their official theologies, most religions have dealt with religious diversityonly in a cursory or inadequate fashion. Frequently, religions have encouraged mutual hostility by teaching that foreign religions are not only different, but also demonic, or at least inferior. The ethical problems with such a position should be obvious. The position is clearly inadequate in any age and place; in the global village of the late twentieth century it is also dangerous. Nevertheless, itcontinues to be popular in many religions and is at least partially responsible for many of the numerous conflicts currently disrupting our world. In this essay, I will explore more ethically sensitive and intellectually satisfying ways of combining commitment to a specific religion with the reality of religious diversity than the conventional ones outlined above. I will direct my comments mainlyat monotheistic religions for two obvious reasons. Most readers of this essay will come from monotheistic backgrounds. And monotheistic religions have had the most difficult problems in resolving the issue of religious diversity. All religions produce a kind of elementary religious chauvinism because of universal human weaknesses. However, only the monotheisms raise this homegrown psychological...