Religious Pluralism in America

Religious Pluralism in America
Author: William R. Hutchison
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300129572

Religious toleration is enshrined as an ideal in our Constitution, but religious diversity has had a complicated history in the United States. Although Americans have taken justifiable pride in the rich array of religious faiths that help define our nation, for two centuries we have been grappling with the question of how we can coexist. In this ambitious reappraisal of American religious history, William Hutchison chronicles the country’s struggle to fulfill the promise of its founding ideals. In 1800 the United States was an overwhelmingly Protestant nation. Over the next two centuries, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others would emerge to challenge the Protestant mainstream. Although their demands were often met with resistance, Hutchison demonstrates that as a result of these conflicts we have expanded our understanding of what it means to be a religiously diverse country. No longer satisfied with mere legal toleration, we now expect that all religious groups will share in creating our national agenda. This book offers a groundbreaking and timely history of our efforts to become one nation under multiple gods.

Encountering Religious Pluralism

Encountering Religious Pluralism
Author: Harold Netland
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2001-08-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830815524

Harold Netland traces the emergence of the pluralistic ethos that challenges Christian faith and mission, interacting heavily with philosopher John Hick and providing a framework for developing a comprehensive evangelical theology of religions.

Christian Pluralism in the United States

Christian Pluralism in the United States
Author: Raymond Brady Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1996-11-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780521570169

Recent immigrant Christians from India are changing the face of American Christianity. They are establishing churches with Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic rites. This book is a comprehensive study of these Christians, their churches and their adaptation. Professor Williams describes migration patterns since 1965, and how the role of Indian Christian nurses in creating immigration opportunities for their families affects gender relations, transition of generations, interpretations of migration, Indian Christian family values, and types of leadership. Contemporary mobility and rapid communication create new transnational religious groups, and Williams reveals some of the reverse effects on churches and institutions in India. He notes some successes and failures of mediating institutions in the United States in responding to new forms of Christianity brought by immigrants.

Confident Pluralism

Confident Pluralism
Author: John D. Inazu
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2018-08-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 022659243X

In the three years since Donald Trump first announced his plans to run for president, the United States seems to become more dramatically polarized and divided with each passing month. There are seemingly irresolvable differences in the beliefs, values, and identities of citizens across the country that too often play out in our legal system in clashes on a range of topics such as the tensions between law enforcement and minority communities. How can we possibly argue for civic aspirations like tolerance, humility, and patience in our current moment? In Confident Pluralism, John D. Inazu analyzes the current state of the country, orients the contemporary United States within its broader history, and explores the ways that Americans can—and must—strive to live together peaceably despite our deeply engrained differences. Pluralism is one of the founding creeds of the United States—yet America’s society and legal system continues to face deep, unsolved structural problems in dealing with differing cultural anxieties and differing viewpoints. Inazu not only argues that it is possible to cohabitate peacefully in this country, but also lays out realistic guidelines for our society and legal system to achieve the new American dream through civic practices that value toleration over protest, humility over defensiveness, and persuasion over coercion. With a new preface that addresses the election of Donald Trump, the decline in civic discourse after the election, the Nazi march in Charlottesville, and more, this new edition of Confident Pluralism is an essential clarion call during one of the most troubled times in US history. Inazu argues for institutions that can work to bring people together as well as political institutions that will defend the unprotected. Confident Pluralism offers a refreshing argument for how the legal system can protect peoples’ personal beliefs and differences and provides a path forward to a healthier future of tolerance, humility, and patience.

Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism

Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism
Author: Jacques Dupuis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 456
Release: 1997
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

The results from a lifetime of study, reflection and experience in both Europe and Asia is this comprehensive examination of Christian theological understandings of world religious pluralism.

Christianity and Pluralism

Christianity and Pluralism
Author: Ron Dart
Publisher: Lexham Press
Total Pages: 59
Release: 2019-07-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1683592883

Are the world's great religions ultimately all the same? Christianity and Pluralism is a collection of concise yet thoughtful essays by J. I. Packer and Ron Dart, interacting with and responding to the four traditional models used to answer the existence of multiple faiths (exclusive, inclusive, pluralist, and syncretist), but focusing particularly that form of syncretism which claims that all faiths find commonality through their mystical traditions. Written in response to key events in the history of the Anglican church, Packer and Dart's analysis gives us a perennially relevant model for how the church ought to respond to our own pluralistic culture with integrity and kindnessâ€"and how to uphold the distinctiveness of the gospel. Christians directly or indirectly engaging our pluralist world will find their ideas enriched by this short yet powerful book.

Divinity & Diversity

Divinity & Diversity
Author: Marjorie Suchocki
Publisher:
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2003
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

One of today's foremost theologians presents the case for embracing religious pluralism as integral to the Christian gospel. Religious pluralism is a fact in North American society today. More than at any other time, adherents of different religious traditions live, work, and play side by side. Yet the fact of religious pluralism creates a tension for a large number of Christians. At the same time they have realized that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and members of many other religious groups have become their neighbors, they are also aware of Christian teachings that seem to exclude these groups. Statements such as "no one comes to the Father except through me," and "outside the church there is no salvation," seem to imply that these new neighbors are not part of the family of God, or at least that their religious beliefs and practices are not viable avenues to human wholeness and salvation. In this insightful and irenic work, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki demonstrates that Christians need not ignore, nor even compromise, the teachings of the gospel in order to accept and rejoice in religious pluralism. She argues that the Christian doctrines of creation, incarnation, the image of God, and the reign of God make the diversity of religions necessary. Without such diversity the rich and deep community of humanity that is the goal of the Christian gospel cannot be realized. Along the way Suchocki rejects the exclusivist claim that there can be no relationship with God apart from the church, and the inclusivist idea that Christianity is the highest expression of the search for God, with other religions possessing in part that which Christians possess in full. She argues instead for a pluralist position, insisting on a full recognition of the distinctive gifts that all of the religious traditions bring to the human table.

Deep Religious Pluralism

Deep Religious Pluralism
Author: David Ray Griffin
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664229146

A groundbreaking scholarly work, Deep Religious Pluralism is based on the conviction that the philosophy articulated by Alfred North Whitehead encourages not only religious diversity but deep religious pluralism. Arising from a 2003 Center for Process Studies conference at Claremont Graduate University, this book offers an alternative to the version of religious pluralism that has dominated the recent discussion, especially among Christian thinkers in the West, which has evoked a growing call to reject pluralism as such. Renowned contributors of a diversity of faiths include: Steve Odin, John Shunji Yakota, Sandra B. Lubarsky, Jeffery D. Long, Mustafa Ruzgar, Christopher Ives, Michael Lodahl, Chung-ying Cheng, Wang Shik Jang, and John B. Cobb Jr.

Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education

Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education
Author: Jenny L. Small
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000067300

This text presents a new critical theory addressing religious diversity, Christian religious privilege, and Christian hegemony in the United States. It meets a growing and urgent need in our society—the need to bring together religiously diverse ways of thinking and being in the world, and eventually to transform our society through intentional pluralism. The primary goal of Critical Religious Pluralism Theory (CRPT) is to acknowledge the central roles of religious privilege, oppression, hegemony, and marginalization in maintaining inequality between Christians and non-Christians (including the nonreligious) in the United States. Following analysis of current literature on religious, secular, and spiritual identities within higher education, and in-depth discussion of critical theories on other identity elements, the text presents seven tenets of CRPT alongside seven practical guidelines for utilizing the theory to combat the very inequalities it exposes. For the first time, a critical theory will address directly the social impacts of religious diversity and its inherent benefits and complications in the United States. Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education will appeal to scholars, researchers, and graduate students in higher education, as well as critical theorists from other disciplines.

America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity

America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity
Author: Robert Wuthnow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691134111

Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and adherents of other non-Western religions have become a significant presence in the United States in recent years. Yet many Americans continue to regard the United States as a Christian society. How are we adapting to the new diversity? Are we willing to do the hard work required to achieve genuine religious pluralism? Award-winning author Robert Wuthnow tackles these and other difficult questions surrounding religious diversity. Wuthnow contends that responses to religious diversity are fundamentally deeper than polite discussions about civil liberties and tolerance would suggest. Rather, he writes, religious diversity strikes at the very core of our personal and national theologies. Only by understanding this important dimension of our culture will we be able to move toward a more reflective religious pluralism. -- From publisher's description.