We’ve all heard things like “All religions lead to God,” “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just that you’re sincere,” and “Religion is really just about living a good life, so all religions are equally valid.” This is the post-modern face of religious pluralism. I call it religious relativism because it attempts to relativize religion, that is, to strip it of any claims to absolute truth.
But the very nature of religion is that it makes some type of claim about the world, a claim it holds to be absolutely true. Even the Unitarian Universalists, probably the most relativistic religious group out there, have seven Principles, which they “hold as strong values and moral guides.” These absolute truth claims make it necessary to draw boundaries that divide their religion from others. And the thing is, that’s okay. They are called different religions for a reason.
Religious relativists seek either to blur these natural distinctions between religions and claim that they are all basically the same, or to say that they are all relative and thus equally true.
The first category of relativism is well-meaning but results from an ignorance of the religions it claims are really the same.
For instance, you may have heard before that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. From an outsider’s perspective this sounds plausible, but if you examine the two religions more closely, you will find dramatic divergence. A major example is that Christians believe that God is a trinity—one being, three persons (it’s complicated: read this if you’re confused). Muslims believe that God is one—one being, one person.
Try as you might, these different beliefs of who God is cannot be reconciled without making them into something else. To come to a compromise, it would be necessary to modify the absolute truth claim each religion makes and establish another absolute truth claim that would be rejected by orthodox members of both religions.
Attempts to emphasize common ground between religions usually end up stripping them down to fit an outside idea of what they should be. This leads me to the second kind of relativism: saying that all religions are relative and equally true.
This sounds conciliatory, but is actually conceited and self-contradictory. It is conceited because the person who makes this claim is saying that everyone who believes that their religion is objectively true (which, as I’ve argued, is most believers) is mistaken.
It is self-contradictory because when a person says that all religions are relative, they are really saying that all beliefs about religion are relative except their own. Everyone else’s religious beliefs are relative, but that person’s belief that “all religions are relative” is the only religious absolute. You obviously can’t have it both ways. It’s impossible to say that everyone’s beliefs are relative without including your own belief, which means that your assertion that other beliefs are relative is only true for you.
On the other hand, if you believe in absolute truth in religion, there is no inherent contradiction and you are not forced to say that all people who believe differently than you are completely mistaken. If objective religious truth exists, one belief may be nearer or further from the Truth than another, you can acknowledge and encourage the Truth that they do have. British scholar and apologist C.S. Lewis said on the matter: “[In religion] As in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some answers are much nearer being right than others.”
Since absolute truth claims about religion are unavoidable even when you attempt to do away with them with religious relativism, what should religious pluralism look like? It’s inescapable in our modern age because of the unprecedented mixing of cultures and people groups. Is there any way for religions to harmoniously co-exist?
I believe that there is. We need to bring to bear some of the same kinds of thinking we use in everyday life to religious knowledge. If a classmate tells me they are doing well in a class when I know they failed the last two tests, should I agree with them? Even if I don’t contradict them, I recognize two things: Firstly, they are welcome to believe whatever they want to believe about their grade and that I can’t force them to believe something else. Secondly, that their belief does not necessarily correspond to the reality of the grade. They can believe something sincerely but wrongly.
Since religion is of immeasurably greater importance than grades, applying this kind of thinking to it is only common sense. If we don’t want our classmate to be deluded about their progress in a class, how much more should we be concerned with them being deluded about the nature of reality.
You may object that it’s disrespectful to try to convince someone else to change their beliefs. After all, they probably have good reasons for believing as they do. In reality, expressing disagreement with someone else’s beliefs can be very respectful because you are showing that you view them as important enough to be a subject of discussion. As for the second objection, if the person you bring up religion with has good reasons for believing as they do, then they will have a chance to articulate them to another person and you will learn about something very important to them. If they don’t have good reasons, your conversation will hopefully spark them to critically examine their beliefs.
If a religion or belief system really holds that it has the truth about the world, and all do in some way or another, then its adherents should not fear the marketplace of ideas. Restricting intellectual exchange on the subject, whether through threat of force (as in many Islamic and communist countries) or social norms (as in the West) does no favors to religion. While it is easier not to have to articulate your beliefs, a lack of debate permits beliefs that would not stand up to scrutiny to remain unchallenged.
As a religious person and a believer in objective truth, I encourage you to step out and begin discussing your faith (or lack of it) in the public sphere. Think critically about whether the facts of the world line up with what you believe. Let the free exchange of ideas shine light on the merits and flaws of your ideology. And may the best beliefs win.