Pluralistic Society and Religions

The world has always been a very religious place, and, by all appearances it will continue to be in the foreseeable future. That is not what some of the great figures of European modernity expected, though. Worldwide, the fastest-growing overarching perspective of life is not secular humanism. If half a century ago secular humanism seemed to be the wave of the future, it is because in many places it was imposed from above by authoritarian & totalitarian governments -- in the Soviet Union & Eastern European countries, in China & some Southeast Asian countries. As the mention of Christianity & Islam signals, the world is not just a religious place. It is a religiously diverse place. And for centuries, Western Christianity itself was divided, or, in sociological speak, internally differentiated. Slowly, but steadily, the swath of that common religious culture is diminishing. Christianity is still by far the predominant religion here, but others have significant presence, too. The religious diversity of Western countries increasingly mirrors religious diversity in the world as a whole. Liberal democracy emerged in the West as an attempt to accommodate diverse religious perspectives on life within a single polity. But when religion leaves the public square -- or is driven from it -- the public square does not remain empty. Instead, it becomes filled with a diffuse phenomenon called secularism. The pluralist account of relations among religions fits rather nicely into the role assigned to religion by liberal democracy. The main trouble with the pluralist account of the relations among religions is that it tries to reduce religious diversity to an underlying sameness. But religions simply do not have a common core -- a crucial claim that must be left undefended here. Still, the dynamic character of each religion & the overlaps between them give some reason to hope that the perspectives of various people of faith need not always clash & that, when they do, they need not clash permanently. To speak in a Christian voice is to speak out of these two fundamental convictions: that God loves all people, especially the transgressors, & that religious identity is circumscribed by permeable boundaries. Adapted from the source document.