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Part of the difficulty of evaluating other religious traditions is that we can’t help but evaluate them through the lens of our own religious tradition. We have no “objective” platform outside of ourselves, our histories and our perspectives from which to evaluate.

In a previous blog post I noted that what I call Moralism acts as a sort of covert, default religion within our culture (and others).  A good example of this came in the Yoga discussion. When I questioned whether yoga could be used as an avenue for Christian discipleship one response I got was “are you saying people who do yoga are ‘bad’ people and are going to hell?!” This is a pretty blatant assumption of a moralistic worldview in evaluating a claim.

Listen carefully to the American public media handle religious material. Two assumptions universally beneath the surface appear quickly:

1. Religion is supposed to help people experience “a better life” (the therapeutic aspect)

2. Religion determines whether people go to heaven or hell.

A few years ago there was an ABC News special on the subject that you can still find on the web but only in a short summary format. The treatment exemplifies how we as a culture are attempting to navigate the difficult challenge of religious pluralism.

The treatment first begins by noting some differences between religions but then implicitly assuming a sort of “least common denominator” reality. The terms it finally adopts for this “least common denominator” approach are ones that Christians (the tradition most of their audience likely can relate to) would be familiar with. The program runs into trouble even with this strategy when it becomes very clear that different traditions have very different notions of an after-life if they have one at all.

Where the conversation usually goes from here is likely wise predictable. It often goes in both of these directions.

Either we highlight the differences “Christians say Christians go to heaven and Muslims to hell. Muslims say Muslims go to heaven and Christians to hell.” Pluralism then becomes an occasion for skepticism about religion in general.

The other route is to try to downplay the conflict and have an implicit system relativize the competing systems. That is usually where moralism comes in handy. “Christians and Muslims disagree, but I think we can say that God will reward the good people for meaning well or at least trying. If there are people bad enough that in our opinion will warrant condemnation God will take care of that too or maybe just evaporate them quickly so they won’t suffer, like the dogs at the pound.”

It’s easy to see how Christian Smith’s “Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism” then comes to expression. We can’t be sure about afterlife (or before life) convictions so we’ll focus on the therapeutic and the morality of our present existence and be skeptical about what we can’t demonstrate.

Here’s the problem with that. This “solution” really only begs the question because to evaluate the therapeutic and the moral you need the rest of the religious perspective. We tend to have an a-historical, pragmatic view of reality and an assumption that we see it all clearly. We know the good because the good is obvious. (Again, see the quote from Souls in Transition.”)

When confronted with the fact that our notions of the therapeutic and moral have varied greatly throughout history (something that perhaps should incite a bit of skepticism with respect to our presumed internal moral compass) we invoke a narrative of moral, social evolution presuming that now finally today we have finally arrived at the true knowledge of what is right, what is good, and what brings health to individuals and community.

The irony of course is that differences in these matters are at least as broad and conflictive as religious differences especially if you get out of your own cultural groupings.

The end is a society that is religiously impoverished according to anyone’s standard. Many people have little idea what they actually believe beyond an instinctive response to situational episodes groomed by hours of social and media experiences. In short, it’s easy to see why we find what we see described in Christian Smith’s books on religion in society.

The promised eclipse of religion by the supposedly “scientific” or “modern” humanity has proven as empty as Harold Camping’s raptures. Despite the moralizing of the New Atheists the nihilism of their hollow materialism doesn’t feed the meaning hungry human heart. The general skepticism that gives rise to the New Atheists, however, tends to keep all religious participation tentative and pragmatic.  Religious pluralism undermines all religions to the degree that many in society assume a fence sitting posture, ready to hop off if that particular fence “no longer works for me.”

At the same time it forces others to abandon public religion for private ones that resist public truth. You can see this in fundamentalisms of various stripes as well as in the popularity of traditions that profess the public world to be illusory. Retreating into the Bible at the expense of engagement with public history and science is not that far removed from working hard to resist appearances in an attempt to see all existence as emanations of the divine (pantheism and panentheism)(then again many won’t even know those words.)

A great irony of our present age is of course the fact that  we have more information at our disposal and are less capable of using it productively. No where is this more true than in the area of religion.

Because the dominant, implicit assumption about religion in America is moralism, and because people seeing two things that look the same (similar codes of moral conduct and post-death reward/punishment assertions) many people move on to view evaluative discussions about comparative religions with nervousness and impatience.

Religious differences have obviously caused much suffering and grief in human history. There is no question about it. As religious pluralism grows in the West, where it was less common than other places in the world, people are very interested in having the religions get along. This is where the “all religions are the same” impulse offered by Moralism is deeply attractive to many people.

If you read Christian Smith’s “Souls in Transition” which is a sociological study of the religious beliefs and behaviors of young adults you’ll quickly see that this is the solution they quickly jump to. Not only do most young people share this moralistic religious assumption, they also believe that morality is nearly innate and their moral compasses are true.

Morality is like common sense; unless you are actively resisting it, it is not hard to know what to do or to do it. The vast majority are moral intuitionists—that is, they believe that they know what is right and wrong by attending to the subjective feelings or intuitions that they sense within themselves when they find themselves in various situations or facing ethical questions. Those subjective moral intuitions are themselves reported to be the product of right moral principles implanted deeply within their consciences when they were children by their parents, teachers, pastors, and other adult authorities. That early moral socialization, their implicit account goes, is ineradicable and reliable. Having been laid down early and deep, the moral principles cannot be removed or altered. All one has to do is pay some attention to what one feels or intuits in any situation and one will definitely know what is the morally right thing to do. In this way, emerging adults profess to be navigating the moral challenges of life with relative proficiency and ease. Some say that their deeply ingrained moral principles guide them to form their relationships and practices in such ways that they actually rarely even have to face a difficult moral problem or choice in the first place.

Smith, Christian; Snell, Patricia (2009-08-10). Souls in Transition : The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Kindle Locations 1029-1037). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.

Where this tends to lead to is to have everyone be dabblers in all religions and devotees to none. Religions then become something like hobbies or lifestyle choices like snowboarding or soccer. For someone to get very serious about soccer and to declare that soccer is true and snowboarders will all go to hell is an assault on the public order. Religious people should be free to pursue their hobby but they must keep it private and should be careful not to make assertions about their religion that might cross someone of another religion. If religious people play by these rules then everything will be fine.

What this position is, however is naive, and exhibits a real lack of understanding about what religious belief is. Religious beliefs order ones world and express the basis of reality for them.

Religious beliefs are similar to cultural beliefs in that they are so deep and so implicit within us that we see the world through them. Try telling someone in our world today that it would be OK for a man to beat his wife if she burned the dinner. For most people in our culture such a statement is unthinkable, it’s just wrong. Well, if you can understand that, you have a sense of what a religion is.

Nicholas Woltersdorff, a nationally recognized philosopher had a good retrospective on 9/11 where he grapples a bit with right and wrong and religious pluralism. He notes correctly that the “all religions are the same” tack really doesn’t pan out. Religions need to tolerate each other and they must look within their own resources to find what they need to live together.

The difficulty in dealing with implicit religions, like moralism, is that tolerance is seen as unnecessary when there is a more obvious solution, seeing like I do. Again, what is naive about this view is that it is really no view at all. It is like a Christian saying “the solution to religious pluralism is that everyone become Christians.” OK, but what you’re really doing is begging the question.

The next question we have is “How can we see religious claims clearly enough to be able to talk about them and even evaluate them?” More on that in the next post.

The discussion on Yoga reminded me about why Christians have difficulty talking or thinking clearly about other religions. Here are a few observations on my part.

1. The dominant status of Christianity in American culture has created a lot of confusion about Christianity, what it is, what it teaches, etc. This isn’t helped by the fact that Christians themselves differ and do plenty of their own intramural fighting about these things. As the preferred status of Christianity continues to erode in our culture it is likely that some of this confusion will dissipate as well.

2. In my experience the most universally embraced quasi-religious belief system in our culture is moralism. Moralism is about behavior. There are good people and there are bad people. Good people do right most of the time, bad people don’t. People should be good and do right.

This gets connected then to lots of Christian notions as well as notions from other religions. Where death is concerned the idea is “good people go to heaven”. Americans don’t like to talk about hell unless they want to express a desire for punishment for someone who has hurt them or done some obvious public atrocity.

It also pops up in the popular American adaptation of the idea of karma. Do good things, good things happen. Do bad things, bad things happen.

Americans, however, are as selective about their ideas about karma as they are about hell. If you would suggest that children with birth defects or who are born into poverty deserve the suffering that comes their way because of wrongs they did in a past life Americans most often protest.

3. The common religion of Moralism has not only deeply impacted non-Christians in the culture but also Christians. Many people believe that the role of religion is to make people moral. This is one of the enduring reasons that people who themselves don’t go to church send their children to Sunday School. They believe that the job of the Church is to make people moral. “Good people go to church, therefore what the church does is make people good.”

One of the things you learn as a pastor is that it is tremendously difficult for people to hear something other than their assumptions.

One result of this confusion, that I find both Christians and non-Christians participate in, is that Christianity asserts that non-Christian people, and people who adhere to other religions are immoral.

Many people who are paying attention immediately object. Morality is by no means a monopoly of Christians or Christianity. CS Lewis himself in the appendix to his book “The Abolition of Man” listed natural laws of morality he called the “Tao”. People rightly note the similarities between the moral laws of many religions (including agnostics and atheists) and cry “foul!” and they are right.

You don’t need a metaphysic to be moral.

Many religions can help you become more moral and have proven track records to demonstrate it.

4. Because Moralism is the dominant, operating assumption for what a religion is for in the culture AND because religions have similar moral codes people then commonly jump to the next conclusion that “religions are all the same.” As I’ll point out in a subsequent blog post, this is a bad jump to make, and I’ll demonstrate why.

When Moralism is the dominant, practical, religious assumption, as it is in our culture, people tend to project it onto other religions (or even onto their own) its assumptions and go further to conflate the religions. “Religion” as it is then presumed is about two major things: what happens to you when you die, and how are you supposed to behave here. Moralism then says that “good people go to a good place when they die” and “religion teaches you right from wrong.” Many quickly then jump to a third thing that says “all religions are the same” and in fact they all look the same if your own religion is essentially moralism.