The Age of (Religious) Pluralism
Given that our century is only seven years old we may still think of ourselves as being twentieth-century people. From the standpoint of our subject it is vital that we do because so much happened in those hundred years. Three things must be taken into account.

Socio-Political Trends
Both Britain and the USA have had a long and intertwined history of honorable (and not so honorable) activity outside our own geographical borders by way of exploration, commercial expansionism, and military intervention. As a result our countries had become havens for a considerable influx of peoples before the dawn of the twentieth century. But at that time the number of immigrants from Europe had greatly slowed in America and only fairly small communities from the Indian sub-continent, Africa, and the Caribbean could be found in England.

This changed around the middle of the century. A significant relaxation in immigration controls was introduced by both our governments. Fuelled by post-war difficulty, there was an influx of Asians, Africans and Caribbean folk into Britain. Sooner or later of course children want to come home to mother because home is best, and with immigrants come their religions. This post-war trend was greatly increased by a socialist administration in the 1960s. The situation has of course continued and is becoming more challenging due to an increasing number of member nations in the European Community (now at 24 member nations) and its open borders policy. That results in a floating population of around 400 million. Attendance at Roman Catholic churches is greater in the UK than in Anglican churches largely due to the number of Polish immigrants. The greatest threat of course lies in the increase of Muslims. There are now some 1,350 mosques in Britain and 26 Islamic seminaries supported by the government. Half of these are run by a hardline Islamic sect.

Something similar happened here in the US with the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act that abolished the previous quota system and gave considerable opportunities to Asians with generous provisions for families. The ethnic diversity that resulted was of an entirely different order to reconciling cousins that had been at war in the eighteenth century. David Wells quotes R.W. Emerson in referring to America’s ethnic diversity as “the smelting pot” and Diana Eck, who pointed out that this influx has a multi-religious dimension and referred to “the religious traditions of the world—Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, African, and the Afro-Caribbean.” David Wells himself makes the comment that,

The arrival of old, non-Christian religions in America and the emergence of more recent spiritualities that are not religious, and often not institutionalized, are a new circumstance. This means that the relation of Christ to non-Christian religions, as well as to these personally constructed spiritualities, is no longer a matter of theorizing from a safe distance but rather a matter of daily encounter in neighborhoods, in schools, at work, at the gas station, and at the supermarket.

On October 2, 2007 the House of Representatives accepted a resolution recognizing the holy month of Ramadan and expressed “the deepest respect to Muslims in the US and throughout the world” by a vote of 376-0. We can therefore say that the greater the plurality the more virulent the pluralism is likely to become. To review this story we must step back further in time.

Religio-Ecclesiastical Events
On 9/11 but in 1893 a Parliament of World Religions was held in Chicago. Theosophists and Unitarians were to the fore in this with some Liberal Protestants, and representatives of Asian and African religions also participated. No further meeting was held for one hundred years but it has met every four to five years since. One has just been held in Monterey and the next is planned for Melbourne. Between 1893 and 1993 the pluralist cause was taken up within the churches by the World Council of Churches.

The phenomenon that we are considering had roots in the work of Madame Blavatsky who was instrumental in the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875. In Britain, Sir Francis Younghusband, a British soldier, explorer and diplomat in the Indian sub-continent was an influential figure. India was both Hindu and Muslim at the time and Tibet to the north was Buddhist. In a moment of mystical illumination in Tibet he recorded how he had “visions of a far greater religion yet to be and of a god as much greater than our English god as a Himalayan giant is greater than an English hill.” In 1934 he engaged in a lecture tour of the States under the auspices of the World Fellowship of Faiths that had been founded by a Hindu and a Communist ten years earlier.

This organization has continued and flourished. Politicians and United Nations personnel have seen its potential for a stable international society and they been prominent in it. Indeed, whenever gatherings or world organizations take place an inter-faith religious service is usually held in places like Westminster Abbey in London, the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and the Cathedral St. Pierre in Geneva. At the Diamond Wedding Celebrations of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip last November, there was a re-run of their marriage service in Westminster Abbey—except that it was now multi-faith.

Philosophico-Theological Emphases
This pluralism is being supported from within all church traditions even the Roman Catholic. The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions went far beyond the notion of Baptism by Desire. It opened with the words Nostra Aetate which mean “In our age.”

It declares,

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may be saved.

Three not unconnected emphases are detectible in pluralistic thinking and theologizing. They are a concentration on God, on Christ, and on the Spirit–and all to the diminution or exclusion of Jesus. I want to say a little about each to make clear what is being referred to.