An intentional, engaged response to the reality of religious plurality (the presence of multiple religious groups) within a community or society. Pluralism moves beyond mere recognition of religious diversity, to the positive valuing of differences as a source of potential strength for the community. Religious pluralism does not require that one view the truth claim of every single religious community as equal, but calls for recognition and respect of the truth claims and traditions of others. A perspective of pluralism encourages movement from mere toleration of differences, to positive appreciation, to dialogue and cooperation that seeks common ground from which a shared social, moral, cultural etc. framework can be created.
Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future
Increasing numbers of organizations, religious and secular, are taking up concern for how our planet will endure beyond the next few decades. Each religious tradition recognizes the human responsibility for sustaining the earth’s resources as part of religious practice. Concern for sustainability is one of the areas where religious pluralists can work to make a difference for themselves as well as the global population. Few people disagree about the need; the challenge then is how to understand the differences in each religion on behalf of the common need.
The word sustainability is derived from the Latin “sustinere” (tenere, to hold; sus, up). Dictionaries provide more than ten meanings for sustain, the main ones being to “maintain,” “support,” or “endure.” Since the 1980s, however, sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on planet Earth and this has resulted in the most widely quoted definition of sustainability, that of the Bruntland Commission of the United Nations from March 20, 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” At the 2005 World Summit it was noted that this requires the reconciliation of environmental, social and economic demands - the “three pillars” of sustainability. This view has been expressed as an illustration using three overlapping ellipses indicating that the three pillars of sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually reinforcing.
The Rise of Religious Diversity in the US, Especially as Related to Immigration
Religious diversity has been a key element of American society from earliest times. Prior to the arrival of the first European settlers, a wide variety of Native American cultures and spiritual traditions were present throughout the continent. Although the English Puritan colonists in New England sought to establish a uniform religious society, most other settlements along the eastern seaboard – in the areas that became New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland – were comprised of immigrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds and a variety of Protestant Christian groups (an even Catholics in the case of Maryland). Official support for religious pluralism and the free exercise of diverse religions was set forth in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Yet, in practice, religious diversity originally referred primarily to acceptance of different types of Protestant Christians; going beyond that definition has not always been easy. Since the colonial period, religious diversity has been increased by successive waves of immigration from different parts of the world. Each new ethnic and religious group has forced an expansion of the nation’s understanding of such diversity – beginning with Irish, German and Italian Catholic, along with Jewish, immigrants in the late 18th and 19th centuries, through the influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and continuing through the 1965 Hart-Cellar immigration act, that opened the doors to increased immigration especially from South and Southeast Asia. As recently as the 1950s and 60s, scholars of religion described the U.S. as predominantly “Protestant, Catholic and Jewish.” But in the last 50 years, immigration has resulted in a vast expansion of America’s religious diversity, to include significant communities of Muslims, Buddhist, Sikhs, Hindus, Baha’i and numerous other traditions.
Interfaith Groups in the US
In 1893, the first World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago, Illinois, USA. About one hundred religious leaders from around the globe met to discuss the need to respect differences in religious expression and to find other ways to settle conflicts than through religious violence. After two world wars in the beginning of the twentieth century, many leaders worked to create the United Nations that published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 in the hope of helping all countries work to secure individual rights in their own societies and to help prevent further world war. The World Council of Churches was also formed in which people of differing Protestant faiths would agree to cooperate to do the same. By the 1960s the Catholic Church took up a major revision of its thinking toward faith traditions other than their own of Catholic Christianity; Vatican II reformations of doctrine opened that door to interfaith understanding and cooperation.
Today, interfaith groups are forming in every part of the country carrying a concern that we work as much as we can to increase interreligious dialogue as a form of religious diplomacy. Especially since 9/11, persons in the United States have awakened to a very pressing need to understand Islam in its many differing traditions around the globe, and by extension, to understand religious traditions different from their own but represented in US society.
Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech
When America fought for its independence from England in the late 18th century, citizens of this new country wanted certain freedoms as a foundation for the new government and society. Many of these freedoms were written into a set of Amendments to the US Constitution. The First Amendment (ratified in 1789) described the freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly that this new government would protect for each individual.
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the choice of an individual or community, in public or private, to express beliefs and teachings as well as practice worship and observances that identify a religious affiliation. The concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religious affiliation or not to identify with a religious community at all. This freedom of religious expression is considered by many people and nations to be a fundamental human right.
The modern American conception of freedom of speech derives from the principles of freedom of the press (mainly in the context of political criticism) and freedom of religion as they developed in England, starting in the seventeenth century. Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak without censorship. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to indicate not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, such as libel (deliberately telling lies about someone) and the use of "hate speech.”
The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR – 1976).
Religion
Religion is an explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, based on a notion and experience of the Transcendent, and how to live accordingly. It contains the four “C’s”: Creed refers to everything that goes into the “explanation” of the ultimate meaning of life. Code of behavior, or ethics, are all the rules and customs of action that follow from the Creed. Cult are the ritual activities that relate the follower to the Transcendent: prayer, meditation, fasting.... Community-structure is the relationship among the followers; it can vary from an egalitarian relationship, as among Quakers, to a monarchical one, as with Catholics. The Transcendent, means “that which goes beyond” the every-day, surface experience of reality. It can mean spirits, gods, a Personal God, Impersonal God, Emptiness, etc. In modern times there have been developed “explanations of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly” not based on the Transcendent, e.g., secular humanism. Although these “explanations” function as religions do in human life, because the Transcendent is not included they are given a different name, which often is Ideology.
