The historical Buddha, the man Gautama is, in this doctrine, a Transformation Body (or Apparitional Body, Nirmanakaya) of one of these, as are other Buddhas in time and space. The Global Religious Landscape | Pew Research Center (On the majority inclusivism, see section 4b below.) Religious Pluralism: Generic, Identist, Deep., Griffin, David Ray. Second, the claim that meaningfulness requires the possibility of empirical verification has little to recommend it, and is self-refuting (that is, the claim itself is not empirically verifiable). A core pluralist claims that all religions of some kind share a common core, and that this is really what matters about the religions; their equal value is found in this common core. A more inclusive and equitable workplace can lead to increased employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity. marriage and civil partnership. First, we have the protected characteristics, such as race, age, gender and sexual orientation. The basic idea is that the inclusivist grants more of the values in question to religions other than the single best religion more truth, more salvific efficacy, more veridical experience of the objects of religious experience, more genuine moral transformation, and so forth. A similar pluralism is advanced by Japanese Zen scholar Masao Abe (1915-2006). (Krkkinen 2003, 197-204, 309-17). It would seem that that, for example, a Christian to accept this ultimist pluralism, she will have to reinterpret what many Christians will regard as a core commitment, namely, that the ultimate reality is personal. It attracted widespread discussion and criticism, and Hick has engaged in a spirited debate with all comers. (Smart 1996) Religious traditions differ along all these dimensions. pregnancy and maternity. These are the undisputed facts of religious diversity. (Long 2011) Still, some Hindus object to various kinds of pluralism. The term exclusivist was originally a polemical term, chosen in part for its negative connotations. Concept and Characteristics of Diversity: Linguistic, Regional & Religious (Sharma 1999, ch. However, God has ordained Nirvana as a goal suitable for some non-Christians to both pursue and attain. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, including the U.S. 70% of Americans attend a religious service monthly. (Burton 2010). (1995, 2004) All the major religions are equal in that they (1) refer to and facilitate cognitive contact with a single, transcendent reality, (2) each offers a similarly moral- and eternal-oriented cure, and (3) each includes revisable and incomplete accounts of this transcendent reality. This view has not been widely accepted because the Process theology and philosophy on which it is based has not been widely accepted. Again, if a Christian diagnosis is correct, that humans are alienated from and need to be reconciled to God, yet some manage to attain Nirvana, they would still lack the cure, for it is no part of Nirvana that one is reconciled to God. RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY. Heim strenuously objects to pluralist theories that they impose uniformity on the various religions. Beyond this is infinite, unlimited Being (also called Absolute Truth, the True Reality, the Absolute, God). The formation and development of religious diversity is a manifestation of the free expression of human thought, belief, and practice, as well as a historical premise and ideological condition for the gradual recognition and integration of modern religions into modern political values. Thus, in experiencing what they call Emptiness or the Dharmakaya (truth body), Mahayana Buddhists really do perceive what Cobb calls Creativity (or Being Itself), as do Advaita Vedanta Hindus when they perceive Nirguna Brahman (Brahman without qualities). Hicks claim that no human concept applies to the Ultimate Reality has been criticized by many, whove pointed out that Hick applies these concepts to it: being one, being ultimate, being a partial cause of the impersonae and personae, and being ineffable. Religious Pluralism., Schmidt-Leukel, Perry. A common strategy here is to simply ignore disreputable religious traditions, only discussing the prestigious ones. These ideas, and the fact that religious belief is strongly correlated with birthplace, convinced him that the facts of religious diversity pose irresolvable problems for any exclusivist or inclusivist view, leaving only some form of pluralism as a viable option. His critics, he argues, are merely asserting without reason that there cannot be a transcategorial reality. It is difficult to make a fully clear distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist approaches. 1919) In his view, the common core of religions is a tiered worldview. This in some sense manifests as, acts as, and is not different from a host of Enjoyment Bodies (Sambhogakaya), each of which is a Buddha outside of space and time, a historical Buddha now escaped from samsara and dwelling in a Buddha-realm. (Legenhausen 2006, 2009). Email: filosofer@gmail.com The degree of religious diversity in the US is also reflected in Americans' core social networks. Reimagining Religion: The 10 Qualities of Creative Communities Or what sense would it make for an Orthodox Jew, whose religion teaches him to be fruitful and multiply, to employ the Buddhist practice of viewing corpses at a burial ground so as to expunge the unwanted liability of sexual desire? al. For example, all non-Christians go to hell, or all non-Buddhists fail to gain Nirvana, or to make progress towards it. From African Americans to Russian Americans . This sort of core pluralism was propounded by some members of the Theosophical Society such as co-founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91) in her widely read The Secret Doctrine (1888), and by French convert to Sufi Islam Ren Gunon (1886-1951) and those influenced by him, such as the eclectic Swiss-German writer Frithjof Schuon (1907-98). Recently called restrictivism, this position insists that explicit knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, and there is no hope for those who die without having heard the gospel. All religions are equal? For example, millennials, GenZers and GenXers can coexist in the same workplace. Perhaps these are the angels, devas, and heavenly Buddhas of the religions, great but nonetheless finite beings. All the theories discussed in this article are ways that (usually religious) people regard other religions, but here we discuss them abstractly, without descending much into the details of how they would be worked out in the teachings and practices of any one religion. 1933) and English convert to Islam, Martin Lings (1909-2005) who was a biographer of Muhammad. How could a perfect being fail to be available to all people in all the religions? Religious diversity is the coexistence of more than one religion in the same setting. All such religious mystics really perceive a personal, supreme God, understood panentheistically, as being in the cosmos, akin to how a soul is in a body. This encompasses the idea that physical reality, the terrestrial plane, is contained within and controlled by a more real intermediate plane (that is, the subtle, animic, or psychic plane) which is in turn contained and controlled by the celestial plane. Monotheists, after all, take the ultimate being to be a personal god while others, variously called ultimists, absolutists, or monists, hold the ultimate to be impersonal, such as the Dao, Emptiness, Nirguna Brahman, and so forth. The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity Religion, Politics and Society. Diversity, Divisions, Religion, Caste On the other hand, others seem to make little or no sense outside the context of the home religion, and others are simply incompatible. Spiritual and Religious Diversity Religious and spiritual beliefs can be a personal determinant of enablement. One of Lucy's patients is a Buddhist man whose family immigrated from China before he was born. (Plantinga 1999, 288-303), Subsequent papal statements have moved cautiously in Rahners direction, affirming the work of the Holy Spirit not only in the people in other religions, but also in those religions themselves, so that in the practice of what is good in those religions, people may respond to Gods grace and be saved, unbeknownst to them, by Christ. However, such a person is probably only thinking of large, respectable, and historically important religions. Some have urged that it be replaced by the more neutral terms particularism or restrictivism. (Netland 2001, 46; Krkkinen 2003, 80-1) This article retains the common term because it is widespread and many have adopted the label for their own theory of religious diversity. (Dupuis 2001, 86-9), However, what about Jews, pagans, unbaptized babies, or people who never have a chance to hear the Christian message? Morales, Frank [Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya]. Judaism and Other Faiths., Datta, Narendra [Swami Vivekananda]. Other Buddhists experience Amida Buddha, while Christians experience Christ, and Jews Yahweh, Hindus Isvara, and Muslims Allah. All the major religions, then, are really oriented towards, and involve the experience of some reality regarded as ultimate (Creativity, God, or Cosmos). What are the 7 key areas of diversity and their characteristics? According to Pew, it has a Christian majority (52% of the population), while the other half of the population is formed by two sizeable minorities: Hindus (close to 20%) and Muslims (about 15%). While Smiths view rests on belief in an impersonal Ultimate, other versions of core pluralism rest upon monotheism. (Cohn-Sherbok 2005). In contrast, any non-pluralist theory of religious diversity is associated with many arguably bad qualities. (Netland 2001, 23-54) Theories of religious diversity have largely been driven by attacks on and defenses of such claims, and discussions continue within the realm of Christian theology. People over age 40 are more likely to identify with a religion or engage in religious practices. And secondly, we have all the different: Experiences Talents Skills Opinions Personalities These differences, for example employees' talents, are less obvious and require the organization's effort and proactiveness to shine. (Long 2005), Building on the speculative metaphysics of Alfred North Whiteheads (18611947) Process and Reality (1929), and work by his student Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000), theologians John Cobb and David Ray Griffin have advocated what the latter calls deep, differential, and complementary pluralism what is here described as ultimist. (Cooper 2006, ch. (Dupuis 2000, 161-5) Some Catholic theologians have seen the seeds or even the basic elements of inclusivism in these statements, while others view them as within the orbit of a suitably articulated exclusivism. If, for example, in his view Allah, Vishnu, and Yahweh are all real and distinct, is Hick thereby committed to polytheism? 1928) and Paul Knitter (b. Importantly, he construes the various religious goals as experiences obtaining in this life and continuing beyond. Appropriating Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian language, Smith says that this spirit is the Atman that is Brahman, the Buddha-nature that appears when our finite selves get out of its way, my istigkeit (is-ness) whichwe see is Gods is-ness. (Smith 2003 ch. Must the Mahayanist make any significant revision to accept the proposed threefold reality of Emptiness, gods, and lords? It has been objected that this theory is not promising because it is hard to see how we could ever have sufficient evidence for some of its claims, while others are implausible in light of the evidence we do have. Heim suggests that we should instead assume that other religions both pursue and achieve real and distinct religious salvations (goals or ends). The context of this statement was not a discussion of the fate of non-Christians, but rather a political struggle between the pope and the king of France. (Morales 2008), Within the pluralistic mainstream of Hinduism, a popular slogan is that all religions are true, but this may be an expression of almost any sort of positive religious pluralism. These connections between theory and character which are believed by some to provide practical arguments for or objections to various theories need to be argued for. If the core is true teachings, theyll all be true (to some degree). (b. Instead, it is the view that all religions are valid, meaning that they have some degree of (some kind of) value. Now that the time is right, the truth may be told, that is, Mahayana doctrine, superseding the old. Appropriating Immanuel Kants distinction between phenomena, how things appear, and noumena, things in themselves, Hick postulated that the Real is ineffable and is not directly experienced by anyone. These are called protected characteristics. (Burton 2010; Kiblinger 2005; and section 4c below) But in modern times, some have constructed a novel and distinctively Buddhist pluralism using the Mahayana doctrine of expedient means (Sanskrit: upaya). Thus, Christian exclusivists usually allow that those who die as babies, the severely mentally handicapped, or friends of God who lived before Christian times may avoid hell and attain heaven despite their not being fully-fledged, believing and practicing Christians. In modern times, it tries to equalize other religions in the same ways it equalizes the apparently contrary claims and practices internal to it. Diversity is the differences in colour, ethnicity, abilities, age, gender, beliefs, interests, socioeconomic (class), marital or partnership status, sexual orientation, geographic, academic/professional backgrounds, opinions, backgrounds, thinking, experiences and many other characteristics. Further, it is really Creativity that is ultimate, and it is embodied in and does not exist apart from or as an object in addition to God and the Cosmos. Facts and Theories of Religious Diversity Scholars distinguish seven aspects of religious traditions: the doctrinal and philosophical, the mythic and narrative, the ethical and legal, the ritual and practical, the experiential and emotional, the social and organizational, and the material and artistic.
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