Religious Pluralism

In 1965, America's immigration policy underwent a dramatic change. Tight restrictions on immigration from non-European areas of the world were lifted, threatening the comfort zones of most America-First types. For the rest of us, the change opened untold positive possibilities for inter-cultural and inter-religious experiences and dialogue, and a widening sense of what genuine community could be in an increasingly pluralistic society.

That same year, Paul Tillich, one of the most influential theologians of the last century, died. Prophetically, Tillich's last book, on the future of religion, argued that in the generations to come, people of vastly different religious persuasions will gradually reject the time-honored strategy of imposing their beliefs upon one another by various forms of coercion, and begin to support dialogue that leads to greater tolerance and mutual understanding. The dialogue for which he hoped has in fact steadily generated momentum since his death. Most people who participate in it come to appreciate more, and not less, their own religious traditions.

In many areas of the world, we still must be able to make a credible case for the gospel of Jesus Christ to people of no religious sentiments whatever. At home, however, we find ourselves talking with people who already have a lively faith of their own, quite different from ours. We no longer converse just with Protestants of other denominations, with the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, and with Orthodox, Conservative, and Liberal Jews. There are also increasing numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims to be heard from, not to mention those who keep alive the Confucian and Taoist traditions. Also prominent in the conversations are the voices representing Native American religious belief and practice.

As Diana Eck brings out in A New Religious America, the motto of our country, E pluribus unum ("From Many, One") is taking on rich new meanings. Our manyness now encompasses far greater differences, and our oneness far more layers of complexity, than could have even been imagined by the Founding Fathers. In this book, Eck, a Harvard professor of comparative religion, and a life-long Methodist to boot (some wags might regard this as a potentially devilish combination), discusses thoroughly and brilliantly how this is happening in the religious sphere of our common life. Her study is worth a close reading.

A lot of good Christians I know take great offense at the notion that they should pay any heed at all to other religious traditions. If Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, they tell me, then we have no business spending much time with people who are on their way to perdition. We should just tell 'em all where it's at. A billboard I once saw on the front lawn of a church sums up this outlook rather well. In bold letters, it read: Hey people, come to Jesus! Or go to hell.

Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that hell is other people. I think he got it partially right. It is truly hellish to be in the company of people for whom the human family is made up of those like them and those unlike them, and for whom the second group doesn't count.

My One-Way-Or-Else friends in the church understand correctly one very important thing about religious dialogue: it does indeed involve a commitment to respect both one's dialogue partners and the views they want to share as potential sources of new discoveries and insights that we are not likely to come by all on our own. Dialogue involves listening, questioning, and reflecting. Most of all, it presupposes a desire and willingness to learn. Some Christians believe strongly that there is nothing anybody from the outside can possibly teach us. By contrast, Paul Tillich trusted that inter-religious dialogue will make people better representatives and practitioners of their own particular faiths. Tillich's trust was well placed.

"Pluralism" is a hard word to be neutral about, just like "conservative," "liberal," and the really explosive one, "relativism." (More about the latter later.) The last three members of this volatile mix are somewhat different in function than the first. Conservatism, liberalism, and relativism all suggest outlooks or attitudes toward the facts of experience that we can choose to accept or not. Pluralism suggests a realm of fact itself. We may choose to ignore it, but we cannot deny it. Religious pluralism is an especially important fact about life in America today. We will be much the worse off spiritually if we do not embrace it gratefully.

Getting Left Behind When the Rapture Comes

A good friend once told me of a terrifying experience that soon followed his becoming a "born-again" Christian. Late for what he thought was a Gideon ministry breakfast at a local restaurant, he opened the door to the meeting room and found no one there. "Leroy," he went on to tell me, "the first thing that came into my mind was that the rapture had come and I was left behind. I ran to the phone to call my wife, and when she answered, I didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed."

It was by God's help alone that I avoided saying something inane in response. I only asked my friend to tell me more about what getting left behind would have meant to him. His answer then, and this was many years ago, is the same answer that I keep getting nowadays from yet another generation of the rapture-possessed.

The one thing that we don't want to happen to us in this life, their message goes, is to be caught unaware when our Lord returns on the clouds in glory to usher in the end of the world. Here is how the scenario plays out: first, those who have died in the faith will be raised from their graves to meet believers still alive on the earth; then, both groups will be lifted into the air together ("raptured") to meet Christ on their way to heaven; finally, everyone left behind will suffer horribly, as the world comes to its divinely appointed, cataclysmic end. The point of the prophesy is that we must work really hard at being a strong enough believer to be taken up, rather than left behind, by Jesus when the end-time comes.

Ever since my friend shared his terror with me, I simply have not been able to get out of my mind the words I was thinking at the time, but refrained from saying: He's got to be kidding me. Now, when people tell me how much the books of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins mean to them --- the theme of all ten (!) is the rapture --- the same thought keeps popping into my head. I am aware that rapture talk is right there in the Bible, with a no less credible figure than St. Paul himself standing behind it. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) But what Paul said about the rapture back then (it has been a long time coming, hasn't it?) is not the same thing as what the don't-get-left-behind crowd says about it today.

Paul's vivid word-picture of our being raised up to meet Christ in the air was clearly intended to answer a different question than ones we now bring to it. Rather than speaking to questions like What's the second coming going to look like?, or, Who makes it through and who doesn't?, Paul is answering people who are uncertain about whether believers who have already died can share in the blessings of a second coming yet to occur. (4:15) By means of his picture, he answers this question, and no other, and he does it with a resounding YES.

Clearly, there are ominous rumblings in this part of Paul's letter. By concentrating his attention here only on the destiny of believers, dead and alive, he cannot help but suggest (a) that non-believers who have died will not be raised up at all, and (b) that non-believers who are alive at the time of the second coming will be left behind to experience the world's destruction. The trouble comes when we give more importance to the unstated implications of Paul's account than we do to the main point it conveys.

The image of "meeting the Lord in the air" does indeed suggest a process of ascending into heaven with Christ. But it also points to an encounter with Christ that comes to completion with the return of all his followers to earth with him, preparatory to his enthronement there as Lord over all. Which meaning did Paul have in mind? We cannot know for sure. What we can know is that he wanted most especially to reassure his readers that they --- and we --- shall always be with the Lord, no matter what.

Sometime after my friend told me about his panic-attack over missing the rapture, he shared with me what got him over it: knowing that God was still with him, even as God was present in that empty Gideon meeting room, and that God would continue to be with him, and with his wife, and with the world, for a long time to come. Hearing him say this made me feel just a twinge of rapture myself. Enjoying together a moment with God, we were both snatched up into His presence.