Theorizing Religion encountered Diana Eck's powerful arguments for pluralism today. To let students appreciate that it's not as simple as it sems, I revived an activity from a few years ago and asked them to diagram the difference between pluralism, exclusivism and inclusivism. We came up with some cool things, but, curiously, as we explored them one by one, what had been proposed as a depiction of inclusivism, say, started to sound more like exclusivism or pluralism, etc. Why so tricky?One problem is that Eck's protagonists are people comfortably identified with one world religion or another, something true of only one member of this year's class. The rest would be banished into the outer darkness of tolerance, relativism, nihilism and syncretism - the false pluralisms Eck deplores. A further problem is that pluralism, as Eck celebrates it, isn't something you can do by yourself. It's not a view, a stance, but an ongoing open-ended practice of listening to - and hearing - others.
A final issue: we could see the political necessity of genuine "participation in plurality" but is there a religious reason? Of course not! The whole point is that "there is no such thing as a generic pluralist": each tradition must find its own reason, in itself, for such engagement, its own understanding of the fact - gift, challenge, temptation, test - of plurality. If such reasons are to be found... we can't supply them for others, let alone posit where or how or even if they'll find them!
(The quote above is not from Eck but S. N. Balagangadhara, whom we read last week.)
