World Religions

World Religions

WORLD RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY


I want to give you statements from three theologians about this issue of Christianity in relationship with other faiths. 

First, from Rev Dr Wesley Ariarajah, who is Professor of Theology at Drew University School of Theology in the United States.  Wesley Ariarajah was born in Sri Lanka, and therefore grew up as a Christian in a multi-faith society.  I want to quote from some of his experience of the ways the Christian community in Sri Lanka related to the other major faiths - Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.  He says this:

 

"I was born in a country where over 90% of the people are either Buddhists, Hindus or Muslims. Of the 7.8% Christians, the Protestant variety of which I am a part, is only 0.4%.  This naturally meant I grew up with neighbors, classmates, friends and colleagues who were of other religious persuasions. I was one with them in the classroom, in the playing field and on many social occasions. The one area where we, as Christians, were not together with our neighbors (except as an exception to the rule) was religion.  Most of the time there was no animosity among us as religious groups.  But we were "separated" when it came to religion.  We engaged in no common religious activity, made no effort to know, participate or engage in any way in the religious life of our neighbors.

 

Christians of Sri Lanka are also taught from their childhood (through the Sunday School, sermons, religious talks and missionary activities) that ours was the only "true" religion that led all people to their "salvation". This meant that other religions were "false", "in error" or at least did not have the capacity to lead people to their desired destiny.  There was no active criticism or condemnation of other religions during my student days; it belonged to an earlier period. But we Christians were all made to feel that the Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims are pursuing a path that would not lead them to the truth. At best, sincere as they may be, they were misguided.

 

This could mean only one thing.  It was the responsibility of each and every Christian to help others to find the Christian way; in fact we owe it to our friends, neighbors and colleagues that they come to know the truth and find the true destiny of their lives.  My awareness of religious plurality and journey into the ministry of interfaith dialogue began with the question: Can this be true?

 

What do we make of the genuineness of the faith of our neighbors, of their experience of having been touched by the grace of God, of their highly ethical and moral lives that would often put us Christians to shame? 

 

So religious plurality challenged my faith as presented within my religious tradition. My religion was not able or was unwilling to take the religious life of my neighbors seriously. At times it trampled on that faith; often it misrepresented it; always it refused to face its challenge.  I felt that my faith was too narrow, my God - too small, and my life with my neighbors distorted and diminished by the outright and unjust refusal to take their religious life seriously." (Unquote).

 

Second theologian is Wilfred Cantwell Smith.  He has written several major books on world religions, and is probably the pre-eminent authority on world religions and their relations with other religions.  He says this: "The time will soon be with us when a theologian who attempts to work out his position unaware that he does so as a member of a world community in which other theologians, equally intelligent, equally devout, equally moral, are Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, and unaware that his readers are likely perhaps to be Buddhists, or to have Muslim husbands, or Hindu colleagues; such a theologian is as hopelessly out of date as one who attempts to construct an intellectual position unaware that Aristotle has taught, or unaware that the earth is a minor planet in a galaxy that is vast only by terrestrial standards."   

 

"However incipiently, the boundaries segregating off religious communities radically and finally from each other are beginning, just a little, to weaken or to dissolve, so that being a Hindu and being a Buddhist, or being a Christian and not being a Christian, are not so starkly alternatives as once they seemed." (Unquote)

 

My third theologian is Professor Kenneth Cracknell, from the Brite Divinity School of Texas Christian University.  He says this:

"I was born with some kind of theological gene.  I needed to know what the God who I knew as 'the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' was up to in allowing all the other religious traditions to exist?  Did this God not hear the prayers of Muslims and Hindus? Was this God really intent on the rejection of Buddhists and Confucians? Were only Christians going to be saved? What about all God's children who lived before Christ, and who never knew Jesus' message?  I long for 'justice, courtesy and truth' in all our Christian relationships with those of other forms of faith, and believe that everything we do is in order to develop friendship. I affirm a joyful theology of religious plurality, and I want to be part of the great dawn chorus of the new creation, where none shall be oppressed, none despised, none misunderstood."  (Unquote)

 

Finally, I quote from Sung-Hee Lee-Linke, who is a Korean theologian who works as a conference leader responsible for interreligious dialogue at the Evangelical Academy at Mulheim in Germany.

"Religious plurality is like the playing together of different musical instruments in an orchestra.  Regarding the future of this orchestra, the crucial question is what kind of music its members are willing to play? They can play splendid and harmonic music only if they accept and respect the tones of every colleague." 


​Rev Dr John Bodycomb

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