The Supermarket Of The Gods
What we should and shouldn’t learn from the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
As this issue is being printed, an expected 5,000 persons of all faiths are converging on Chicago for the Parliament of the World’s Religions. The event marks the centennial of the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions—a landmark in interfaith dialogue and, in the view of many, the first-wave invasion of these shores by Eastern mystical religions.
The danger of such celebrations of spiritual diversity is that those who do not believe in something are likely to fall for anything. And the atmosphere of vague good will toward anyone “spiritual” may leave those who have clear beliefs and cogent reasons for their beliefs feeling leprously “intolerant.” We have found few evangelical Christians are inclined to attend this spiritual swap-meet (although CT has a reporter and friends observing).
Yet, keeping in mind the virtues of knowing what and why we believe, we want to point out the dangers of not interacting with other religions.
1. Without the careful study of other religions, we may fall for the simplistic notion that all religions reach for the same noble ideals. The traditional study of “comparative religion” tends to homogenize religion. But there are significant differences in belief systems that affect the way people relate to human need, to family structure, to human rights, to government, and to those who are outside their community.
We live in an era when non-Judeo-Christian religions are regaining political clout. The failure to comprehend how religions shape other cultures has resulted in foreign policy blunders and the inability to prevent human-rights abuses.
2. Without the study of other religions we shall not be able to talk to our neighbors. In recent years, we have encountered Buddhists, animists, Hindus, and Muslims in dominantly white middle-class suburbs. Some run donut shops, some are accountants, some are research chemists and physicists. All of those we have observed demonstrate stronger family structures than many of the Christian families we know. Not interacting with them would be a personal loss and a failure to live up to our calling as Christians.
3. Without the study of other religions we shall never recover the experience of the early Christians. They lived in a bustling marketplace of competing religions. To many in the first century, the followers of Jesus were just one upstart cult among many. But to the followers of Jesus, their religion was unique. Jesus embodied the fullness of divine self-sacrificing love, and in the light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, other truths were relativized, other ethical systems critiqued, all religions judged.
In that hostile milieu, the early Christians’ sense of election and their experience of fellowship blossomed into an ethic of purity and a spirit of humility. They did not seek to dominate the market, but rather to spread the good news. They did not compete for market share, but sought to witness.
The recent history of “Christian America” has left our churches soft, tubby, and at ease in Zion. Our first impulse when we experience religious pluralism may be to try to recapture our market share. But we may more wisely try to recapture the early Christian experience of being a lean, but not mean, minority called to a faithfulness toughened by adversity.
Knowing ourselves
Inevitably, we shall make friends with intelligent, good-hearted, well-educated devotees of other religions. They will teach our children, audit our books, and operate on our bodies. As we form bonds of friendship with them, it will be increasingly difficult to hold to negative stereotypes of other religions, and consequently it will become increasingly painful to believe that our well-intentioned friends are spiritually lost.
While soft-heartedness should always be with us, soft-headedness should be counteracted by studying our own Christian beliefs. In our therapeutic culture, many Christians have lost interest in the study of doctrine. Not truth, but feeling better matters to them.
To cope with the coming confrontation of religions, we must know what and why we believe. A few theological landmarks: God wants all to be saved. All who are saved will be saved because God graciously chooses to save them. No one who is lost will be unfairly condemned. While some theologians (Reformer Ulrich Zwingli, for example, and Baptist Augustus Strong) have taught that a few might be saved who have not heard the name of Jesus, no one should teach that non-Christians will be saved because of good works or noble intentions. All God saves will be saved through the atoning death of Jesus Christ.
Mining the meaning of these and other Christian beliefs will strengthen us in our own Christian identity and prepare us for a serious and loving encounter with those of other faiths.
By David Neff
Russia’S New Cold War
In 1992, I participated in a Christian arts festival in St. Petersburg. The purpose of the festival, in addition to cultural exchange, was to benefit local orphanages and to engage in evangelism. While many aspects of the festival were well-received, other parts embarrassed us—and offended our Russian hosts. I recall, for example, hearing of anger and bewilderment among some Orthodox Christians when they learned our festival was to sponsor a rock concert on the Orthodox Christmas Eve.
Many argue that these and other insensitivities are behind the July 14 decision of the Russian parliament to adopt more severe restrictions on religion in Russia. Article 14 of that piece of legislation has received the most international comment. It would end the work of foreign mission groups except when carried out under the auspices of indigenous religious groups formally registered with the government.
While Western groups scramble to discern how the new law might affect their work, they have practically ignored how the new restrictions will affect the indigenous groups themselves. For example, all Russian religious groups must reregister. They may be denied registration according to vague provisions in the new law. And they may be shut down prior to any judicial proceeding even if they have already been registered. Western mission groups who hope to stay in Russia by channeling their work through existing Russian church groups may be shut out entirely if their host churches are not registered.
On the surface, the new law seems to have been proposed as a way to deal with the flood of religious groups, including bizarre cults. But this legislation, for which the powerful Russian Orthodox Church has lobbied, also is clearly aimed at Western Protestants and Catholics. CoMission, the ambitious program of a consortium of mainstream evangelical mission groups to provide a Bible-based moral curriculum for use in public schools, is one of the targets.
Coercion over dialogue
Many Russians feel that not just their religion, but their entire culture is under attack, and in some cases, insensitive evangelical missions groups have heightened those fears. It is understandable that Russian Orthodox leaders would respond to the influx of other religious groups, especially when those groups have blurred the lines between evangelism and proselytism. What is dangerous is their almost instinctive resort to government intervention and control. They do not understand that free societies must tolerate minority views and that even wrong ideas must be countered by dialogue rather than coercion.
This apparent move back toward repression in Russia is not limited to the religious sphere. In the same month it adopted the new religion law, the reactionary Russian Parliament passed a flurry of other bills designed to undercut President Yeltsin’s strategies to move his country to greater economic and political freedom. Clearly, the emergence of a non-authoritarian democracy in Russia is in no way guaranteed.
Yeltsin neither signed nor vetoed the law, but sent it back with suggested changes to guarantee human rights. This short-term reprieve was achieved through the pressure and advice of German, American, and British diplomats. But the future of religious freedom in Russia remains uncertain. American Christians must continue to pray for Russia and to urge their members of Congress to join Senator Richard Lugar in his efforts to oppose any “centralized, state-controlled apparatus for directing religious activities.”
At the same time, Russia’s misguided efforts to deal with unwanted religious groups and activities ought to be a sobering lesson to all Christian groups with ministries in former communist countries. In our zeal to make up for the past 76 years we must remember that we are ambassadors, not crusaders. Sensitivity to local customs and an appreciation of the centuries-long religious culture in Russia would ease interchurch tensions and produce a more effective witness.
The habits and institutions of liberty are not established overnight; there will be backsliding as well as progress in the former communist countries. But even when taking a patient view of this region’s struggle to free itself, the international religious community must register its strong concern about the new religion laws. Nothing is so central to liberty as freedom of conscience, the cornerstone of all human rights.
A government which restricts religious faith cannot be expected to respect other liberties. This won’t be the last crisis in the transformation of Russia’s political system. But it could be the most important.
By Diane L. Knippers, president, lnstitute on Religion and Denwcracr.
