That’s a good way to look at it but I prefer Frank’s way (that what is meant by Christ isn’t necessarily the same as the historical particularity of the man Jesus). I hear your concern for the distinctiveness of the truth claims of the different religions, but I am unashamedly a postmodern child of the Enlightenment (I am after all a Wiccan Unitarian animist) so I’m happy with relating one thing to another thing – though I am uncomfortable with extreme forms of relativism, i.e. the view that says “it’s all relative so values and truth don’t matter”. To me, my personal finite perspective is just that – local and particular, and less than the infinite perspective we attribute to the Divine. But I am in relation with the Infinite – it is all around us – so I can access that consciousness, without knowing it fully.

–GF
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Being Gracious to Other Religions

September 11 brought homes the importance of knowing about, and relating to, other faiths. Popular proposals about how to do this go in two directions.

On the one hand, we are advised that, at bottom, the great world religions are all the same. Each puts its believers in touch with the holy or the good, doing so in its own way, some through Jesus, others through Moses, others through Mohammad…. “Affirm those different than yourself because they hold to the same thing, doing it in their own words, with their own traditions and religious heroes.”

On the other hand, it is argued that no one knows, finally, how the deep things of the world work. We’re all locked into our perspectives and prejudices and therefore shouldn’t lay our religious trips on others. “If your faith ‘works for you,’fine, for the test is its practical value not its claim to be true to reality. Jesus may be OK for Christians, but Moses can be OK for Jewish people, Muhammad for Muslims…..”

These views– modern in the first case, and postmodern in the second–are everywhere, “different strokes for different folks” theories for interfaith generosity. The trouble with them is that both are a put-down of the other religions that these views say they want to respect.

For example, let’s say a Christian wants to speak a good word for Muslims in these times of rancor against Islam because of Osama bin Laden, and does so because “every sincere believer holds to the same thing” (view 1), or because “Jesus works for me” while “Muhammad works for him” (view 2). The outreach is just right but the reasons are dead wrong. They are wrong because they deny to the Muslim the very thing that makes a Muslim a Muslim, the conviction that Mohammad is the defining prophet of God, not just one more voice in the religious cacophony who is either saying the same thing as others, or imposing what works for him on everybody else.

The modern and postmodern proponents who appeal for generosity on the basis of their relativist view of world religions impose with great irony and subtlety their own absolute, a creature of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment times.

How then be gracious to other religions? Let’s say, for a Christian. For one, honor the other religions’ right to make universal truth claims for their faiths (Islam is true for all, not just true for Muslims, etc.) by affirming your own universal truth claim: “Hey, the rest of you are missing something. Come over here and see this pearl of great price.” For another, “speak the truth in love,” not in hate, and with a willingness to hear out the other when they utter their truth in love. Of course, there are places of convergence of religious teaching as well as divergences (“common grace” in the Christian tradition) that make for collegiality in key struggles for justice and peace. Thus there is a hospitality that honors the commonalities, and at the same time respects the particularities so that each may joyfully throw its faith in the air for all to see.

Gabriel Fackre

To my mind, the scandal of particularity is twofold:

1. The idea that Jesus is the only way to the Divine;
2. The fact that he appeared in a particular place and time, and therefore not everyone can hear his message.

As a Wiccan Unitarian animist, I would answer the scandal of particularity thus:

1. There are many ways to the Divine;
2. The message is everywhere – upon the lips of Gandhi, the Buddha, Rammohun Roy, Michael Servetus, Jan Hus, St Francis, Krishna, Aradia, Martin Buber, etc etc – and the message is “why can’t we all be nice to each other for a change?” (and the Pagan understanding of ‘each other’ includes all our relations – animals, birds, trees, ecosystems…)

In fact Jesus gives his own answer, in John ch 14 – the very chapter in which he says he is the only way to the Father. Thomas asks “what about the people who don’t hear the message?” and Jesus says that God will call the righteous out of all the nations, or words to that effect.

I wholeheartedly agree with shelfing/shelving the term Christian. When I was a teenager, I used to wear the ever popular Christian tees. One day (a few years later!), I got the revelation that Jesus didn’t go around wearing a t-shirt saying: “Hey! I’m the Messiah!” or “Hey I’m God! Listen to me! Do what I say!” Jesus lived and did the things that His Father wanted Him to do. So, I’ve come to that understanding in my life that I really want to live Christ and not just talk about Him or judge people or tell them what they are doing wrong. I want to love them and let God do the rest. And man, is that a load off my shoulders……..loving is a lot easier to do than judging……He’s the saviour, I’m not!