Guardians of the Sacred Fires

[qatarperegrine]

I really like this article on religious pluralism in the most recent Zion's Herald. It's actually the postscript of a book called The Inn at the End of the World (Reflections on an Inclusive Faith) by a retired United Methodist minister, the Rev. Dr. Kent Moorehead.

Guardians of the Sacred Fires: The challenge of surviving in a world of many religions

My favorite paragraph:

The third posture [towards religious pluralism] is to seek to take the universals of each faith, the things we all have in common, and merge them into a world faith. This would be a new synthetic form of spiritual Esperanto. Esperanto was that attempt to create a new world language, which never really worked. People love their own language. An Italian who wants to speak to his beloved wants to be able to say amore. Most of us who love Shakespeare prefer to hear it in English rather than Esperanto. The universal ideals of the great religions, such as peace, are important, but people are attracted to a faith by the particulars. Take Moses and the Prophets out of Judaism, Jesus out of Christianity, Buddha out of Buddhism, and Muhammed out of Islam, and you have a kind of amalgamated religion that sounds a little too much like spiritual stew. It would be dull, dull, dull. Behind this idea of amalgamated religion is often the idea that all religions are really the same—that we’re all trying to go to the same place, just taking different paths. Can you imagine a young woman who has just fallen in love, saying "all lovers are basically the same," or someone else saying that Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, and Albert Schweitzer are "pretty much like anyone else?" The same is true for the great religions of the world. They are not the same. They have different views of God, history, evil, and morality. It is the distinctive elements of each religion that make them interesting and vital. Leave these out and we have lost too much.

Comments

Esperanto

[(Anonymous)]

"Esperanto's purpose is not to replace any other language, but to supplement them: Esperanto would be used as a neutral language when speaking with someone who doesn't know one's own language. The use of Esperanto would also protect minority languages, which would have a better chance of survival than in a world dominated by a few powerful languages."

http://www.esperanto.net

http://www.2-2.se

Re: Esperanto

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Good point.

This is somewhat off-topic, but I think then that the best analogy for Esperanto in the western attitude towards religion is Secularism. It's seen as a default, least-common-denominator worldview that diverse people can buy into, while still maintaining their allegiance to their religion of choice.

Living in Qatar has made me realize that I am more of a secularist than I ever imagined. :-)

Re: Esperanto

[y-pestis.livejournal.com]

But Esperanto isn't a neutral language - it's very very strongly romance-language biased, and as it was created before language study was much of a science, it isn't even as regular as it could be. It's not a natural language but it doesn't have any of the benefits of non-natural languages...

Don't get me started on the fact that it doesn't protect minority languages, as there's no model of sociolinguistics that would indicate any benefits to those languages with fewer native speakers.

Does that Secularism analogy still work? :-)

Re: Esperanto

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does. Secularism isn't a neutral worldview, it's very very strongly European-worldview biased. :-)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Since the link has been taken down, here is the article in its entirety.

Reflection: "Guardians of the Sacred Fires"
The challenge of surviving in a world of many religions
- Kent Moorehead

When Mark Twain made the caustic remark that man “is the only animal with The True Religion—several of them,” he inadvertently set the context for the encounter of the great world religions. People love the faiths that have given their lives meaning and hope, and if we want to take inclusive religion seriously, it is imperative that we consider these faiths. We are living in a new world order, and most of us in our lifetime will encounter Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and adherents to other vital but lesser known religions. It is difficult to read a newspaper or watch television news without hearing about followers of these religions. Walter Muelder once said that “anyone writing a descriptive story [about our age] would have to talk about the tremendous impact of religion upon contemporary society.” Of course, it goes without saying that the impact of religion can be positive, as well as destructive and divisive. How can these diverse traditions live together?

Douglas V. Steere, of the Society of Friends, in his 1971 Pendle Hill pamphlet titled Mutual Irradiation, suggested four possible postures the world religions can assume as they relate to each other. First, each religion can actively seek to triumph over the others, or at least take some measure of satisfaction if the others decline in strength. This kind of proselytizing posture usually involves some form of comparing the highest ideals of one’s own religion with the worst practices of another faith and then assuming that there is some Divine mandate to defeat the inferior religion. For instance, it has been said that Christianity is a religion of peace and Islam is a religion of violence. In reality, both Christianity and Islam have talked about the importance of peace but also have supported wars for centuries—and not just wars between nations with rival religions. Christian nations fought two bloody world wars in the 20th century, and Iran and Iraq, the only two Islamic nations with Shiite majorities, fought a protracted and horrible war against each other. Apparently, large numbers of Christians in this country believe that our attack and invasion of Iraq, in which it has been conservatively estimated that there have been 50,000 civilian causalities, is not only justified but is the will of God. In this regard, the great evangelistic task of the church is to Christianize itself: to liberate Christianity from its captivity to our “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” culture and challenge it to follow the way of Jesus. In like manner, Islam and Judaism have their own set of serious internal problems. It is possible for religions to self-righteously assume that they have, because of their superiority, the right to try to defeat the others, but this assumption is the height of arrogance and the antithesis of inclusiveness.

A second posture, says Steere, is to pursue a relationship of coexistence, which either makes no attempt to challenge or influence, or just ignores the other. Steere tells of a party at which the father of the girl who was having a birthday was doing tricks and acting silly. As the children were leaving, the father said to one of the children, “I bet you think I am a silly old man,” to which the child responded, “I never think of you.” Some report that when they played hide-and-seek as children, there was something worse than being found, and that was not being sought after! To say to someone, “I am not interested in your life journey, your dreams, your attempt to build a better world,” and to disregard what may be the most important elements in that person’s life, just may be the ultimate insult. It either says, “I don’t care about you and your faith,” or “I am so insecure in my own life or faith or so self-centered that I don’t want to talk about such things, and therefore I never think of you.” This is no longer possible—no longer a viable option for the religions of the world as they relate to each other.

[continued]

[qatar.livejournal.com]

[part 2]

The third posture is to seek to take the universals of each faith, the things we all have in common, and merge them into a world faith. This would be a new synthetic form of spiritual Esperanto. Esperanto was that attempt to create a new world language, which never really worked. People love their own language. An Italian who wants to speak to his beloved wants to be able to say amore. Most of us who love Shakespeare prefer to hear it in English rather than Esperanto. The universal ideals of the great religions, such as peace, are important, but people are attracted to a faith by the particulars. Take Moses and the Prophets out of Judaism, Jesus out of Christianity, Buddha out of Buddhism, and Muhammed out of Islam, and you have a kind of amalgamated religion that sounds a little too much like spiritual stew. It would be dull, dull, dull. Behind this idea of amalgamated religion is often the idea that all religions are really the same—that we’re all trying to go to the same place, just taking different paths. Can you imagine a young woman who has just fallen in love, saying “all lovers are basically the same,” or someone else saying that Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, and Albert Schweitzer are “pretty much like anyone else?” The same is true for the great religions of the world. They are not the same. They have different views of God, history, evil, and morality. It is the distinctive elements of each religion that make them interesting and vital. Leave these out and we have lost too much.

The fourth posture is what Steere calls “mutual irradiation.” This means creating settings where each faith can bring its highest and best ideals, as well as what makes them unique, into a dynamic encounter and then trust the Spirit to lead us to higher ground. Thus, a committed Muslim would not need to say, with some kind of pseudo civility, that Jesus is a prophet. That is fine, but we really want to know why the Muslim is a Muslim and what excites him about his faith. Tell us why prisoners who embrace Islam tend not to return to prison once they are released. We want a committed Jew to tell us why she follows her faith. Don’t patronize us—tell us about Moses, the Prophets, the healing power of Sabbath, and the Jews’ secret of survival through centuries of persecution. Christians should give an account of why they believe Jesus is unique, what is behind his amazing influence, and what hope he offers.

A good model for the dialogue of the world religions can be found in the encounters that Jesus had during his brief ministry. They were lively, challenging, and at times humorous. There was a repartee that was energizing and exciting. He did not seek the middle ground, asking “what can we all agree upon?” He encouraged others to state their convictions, and in the case of a rich young man, he said he was not far from the Kingdom. There was no condescending or patronizing attitude in these encounters, but there were great moments of candor. When a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought before him, he reminded the men who were ready to stone her that it takes two to commit that act. He dealt with their hypocrisy by asking those who were sinless to cast the first stone. Then he released the woman, not condemning her, but with a frank warning to change her life. In hearing these stories, we get an exciting sense of openness, dialogue, and challenge. Remember, there was no Christianity or Islam, and Jesus probably never met a Hindu or a Buddhist. His dialogues and meetings were adventures in truth seeking and in warnings about the misuse of faith and the danger of attitudes that destroy the human soul. People of diverse faiths are strong enough to have this kind of dialogue.

[continued]

[qatar.livejournal.com]

[part 3]



The key to honoring the great religions of our world is to accept, even while acknowledging mutual imperfections, that each has a sacred mystery and a sacred fire. Just as we are called to be the guardians of the sacred fire in each human being, we are also called to be guardians of the sacred fires of each religion. This means finding ways to release the highest wisdom and the deepest witness of each faith. There is a new world being born before our very eyes. There is no such thing as a Buddhist sky, a Muslim moon, a Jewish ocean, or a Christian earth. God is not the exclusive property of any one faith. We are not going to be able to destroy or ignore other faiths, and no one really wants religious stew, or the lowest common denominator. We need exciting, fresh fires of truth to burst upon this tired old world, and all of us are called to be the guardians of those sacred fires.