Defending religious pluralism for religious education

Abstract

Religious exclusivism, or the idea that only one religion can be true, fuels hatred and conflict in the modern world. Certain objections to religious pluralism, together with associated defences of exclusivism are flawed. I defend a moderate religious pluralism, according to which the truth of one religion does not automatically imply the falsity of others. The thought that we can respect persons even when holding them mistaken strains credulity when we are dealing with religious convictions. Moreover, exclusivism is informed by inadequate approaches to discourse about transcendence. The intentional-descriptivist approach to reference is not comprehensively adequate, and yet is assumed by some objections to pluralism. The irreducibly metaphorical character of much religious language means that differences between world religions can be more apparent than real. Approaches to religious education should embrace a moderate religious pluralism.

Keywords:

• religious pluralism
• religious exclusivism
• religious education
• divine transcendence metaphor

Introduction

Social and international tensions have many explanations. In the contemporary world these include ideological differences, competition for scarce resources such as water, oil and food, historical disputes over territory and ethnic divisions. In addition, I believe that religious exclusivism feeds hostility between peoples and that such a position is both conceptually and morally untenable.

Barnes (2008) sums up one version of religious exclusivism as ‘if the beliefs of one religion are true, the beliefs of some other religion (or religions) must be false’. He defends it against what he sees as the recent excesses of pluralism in religious education.

Religious fundamentalism is associated with exclusivist perspectives, and is growing in many parts of the world. Some experts predict that demographic factors are likely to strengthen it further (Kaufmann 2010). Others speculate on whether contemporary secularism and modernism are partly responsible for the vigour of fundamentalism (Emerson and Hartman 2006). Many American citizens are still exclusivist about their faith (Wuthnow 2005; Trinitapoli 2007).

Yet, Barnes observes:

British religious education has abdicated its responsibility of preparing pupils to live in a religiously diverse society by failing to admit that the diversity of religions extends to incorporate a diversity of truth-claims. (Barnes 2008, 69)

Against Barnes, I contend that a settled conviction that religions conflict with each other and that one particular religion is ‘right’ threatens peaceful co-existence. The basic tenet of the fundamentalist that there are ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, though a familiar human sentiment, is one that religious education should resist (as indeed it often has). Accordingly, in this article I uphold a version of religious pluralism against recent objections, and argue that its insights are important for many aspects of social and international harmony. I conclude that moderate pluralist approaches to religious education should be maintained and reinforced. I briefly indicate the kind of curriculum content that would foster this aim. My intentions are necessarily limited: it is one thing to expose the weaknesses of certain objections to religious pluralism, but quite another to offer a full-blown defence of it. I cannot pretend to have done the latter.

All religious pluralisms oppose exclusivism, but they embrace a number of distinct positions. In Teece's (2005) pluralism, for instance, the different religions represent different but complementary revelations of the divine. According to a less ambitious pluralism defended in this article, the truth claims of one religion do not necessarily exclude those of another even where there is prima facie conflict between their claims. This modest pluralism avoids the empty and potentially misleading platitude that ‘everyone has part of the truth as far as religion is concerned’. Furthermore, it is at least psychologically consistent with an attitude of humility and tolerance on the part of those with a strong and specific religious commitment.

‘Religion’, a family resemblance term, is applied to belief systems involving a deity, an impersonal being not regarded as a creator, and even world views lacking a God (Hick 2004). However, Theisms are central stage in the flawed arguments against religious pluralism discussed here. Of course, there are also important questions about how Theistic religions relate to non-theistic religions, and how religions in the broadest sense relate to non-religious world views, but these are beyond the scope of this article.

Religious exclusivism and respecting persons

According to Barnes (2009), we can ‘respect a person and [nevertheless] … think that her beliefs are false, trivial or uninteresting’. This is orthodox liberal thinking. On such a basis, we can be exclusivist about our religion, and at the same time have a respectful and tolerant attitude to those of other faiths. Yet, can our respect for persons really be detached from our view of their religious commitments? My initial response, to be developed and qualified in what follows, is that even if we promote the Kantian principle that persons ought to be respected as such, religious exclusivism makes this aspiration profoundly difficult to realise.

Darwall (1977) distinguishes between appraisal respect and recognition respect. Recognition respect credits someone with status as a person. Such status derives at least in part from the very fact of such recognition. Our attitude to them has nothing to do with their qualities or talents. In contrast, we afford someone appraisal respect when valuing at least some of their personal characteristics. So, for instance, I respect Stephen Hawking as a physicist or Nelson Mandela in virtue of his moral qualities. If respect could be detached from verdicts on religious beliefs, for instance, it would have to be recognition respect.

However, religious conviction tests Darwall's account of respect to its limits, for religious belief can have profound implications for the status accorded to persons. I may value others’ autonomy, rejoicing in their real ownership of beliefs and choices. Yet if, for instance, I think they worship a being whose very existence I take my own faith to deny, my respect for them is seriously challenged.

Raz observes:

… respecting people is a way of treating them. It is neither a feeling, nor an emotion, nor a belief, though it may be based on a belief and be accompanied (at least occasionally) by certain feelings. It is a way of conducting oneself, and more indirectly, of being disposed to conduct oneself, towards the object of respect. (Raz 2001, 138)

If a believer thinks her religion directly implies that an adherent of another faith makes fundamental mistakes about God then, despite her best efforts, she may struggle to conduct herself towards the other in an appropriate fashion, let alone to entertain appropriate emotions. Sadly, there seems to be plenty of evidence of this in the modern world.

Defenders of liberal pluralism and the idea of overlapping consensus (Rawls 1993) may be more optimistic about exclusivism. On their account, a pluralist democracy accommodates a range of religious and moral views; citizens’ ‘comprehensive doctrines’ come in all shapes and sizes. This is compatible with such citizens endorsing a view about how the basic structures of society should be organised, that is, about what kind of justice should govern the political arena in which all the different interest groups have to operate and co-exist peacefully. Such justice involves respect and basic liberties for everyone. ‘Reasonable’ citizens in the sense canvassed by Rawls of Political liberalism believe that there are deep and difficult issues about which sensible people may disagree, and hence will not think it right to impose their particular views on others.

However, it is arguable that a Rawlsian approach cannot solve the problem of exclusivist religious outlooks. There are at least hints in Rawls that he is well aware of this. Speaking of the position of Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century, he comments that ‘Both faiths held that it was the duty of the ruler to uphold the true religion and to repress the spread of heresy and false doctrine’ (Rawls 1993, 148).

The two faiths would only tolerate each other for pragmatic purposes, and if either faith ‘became dominant, the principle of toleration would no longer be followed’ (Rawls 1993, 148). Lasting consensus depends on sustainable universal respect for every individual. Religious exclusivism presents a serious obstacle because it involves strongly negative views about other people's fundamental commitments. Exclusivists have little desire to be reasonable in Rawls’ sense. Because they feel that they ‘know’ they are right and that this directly implies that others are wrong, tolerating disagreement is not sensible as far as they are concerned. They may ‘… lack a sense of justice and fail to recognise the independent validity of the claims of others’ (Rawls 1993, 52).

I note in passing a strong argument for religious pluralism that applies to some but not all faiths since it only makes sense for a Theistic system. An exclusivist interpretation of the claims of any one Theistic faith means that God has ordained that the others have at best an inferior access to the Divine. The Roman Catholic Church in the past has proclaimed that the rest have no access at all.1 And they are not alone in this. In the most extreme exclusivism, people who had the misfortune to live in the Stone Age, or the intelligent molluscs that might inhabit the fourth planet of an obscure star in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud are denied a route to the Almighty. This is clearly absurd. It postulates a ‘God’ who is either remarkably inefficient or exercises arbitrary power. Apparently, God has ordained that a limited selection of people have the business class route to Him, while the rest have economy class or are possibly denied a seat on the plane outright. The imagined Agent in this story strains our credulity. It has limited powers of organisation and could scarcely be said to be perfectly loving or perfectly good. It is very difficult to understand how any faith could suppose their God could behave in this manner and still be unsurpassable.

Needless to say, acceptance of this internal argument against exclusivism need not lead believers to conclude that all religions are valid. It is rather that it should persuade religious believers to adopt a default position that is not strictly exclusivist.

Objections to religious pluralism and reference to God

In the last few years some writers have attempted to breathe new life into objections to religious pluralism, and I now turn to a discussion of key weaknesses in such objections. Barnes and Wright assert:

The different descriptions of the religious object(s) in the various religions should not be regarded as having a common referent; the descriptions are not only different but in particular instances actually conflict with each other. (2006, 71)

Ironically, this descriptivist understanding of reference does apply to fictional objects. Imagine a reader confusing Saruman and Sauron in The lord of the rings. These are two distinct (fictional) individuals, since Saruman answers to a set of descriptions including ‘wizard’ and ‘master of the tower of Orthanc’, while Sauron is described as ‘Morgoth's servant’, ‘Ruler of Mordor’, etc. Saruman is whoever (fictionally) meets these descriptions. If we change any of them, we are not talking about Saruman. Barnes and Wright are treating descriptions of transcendent deity along the same lines. If Christians describe a Trinitarian God, while Islam's depictions of Allah are strictly Unitarian, then on the descriptivist account, Christians are not talking about the same being as Islam.

The inadequacies of a descriptivist account of reference as a comprehensive theory were first exposed many decades ago. Here, I merely summarise the relevant insights. We can believe things and say things about or of physical objects, people, events, states of affairs, fictional objects, abstract objects and so on. It must be possible for Theists to believe and say things of or about God. In the history of philosophical logic, ‘about’ and ‘of’ feature are two contrasting accounts. The first springs from the descriptive-intentional theory of reference held by Frege and championed in the middle of the last century by philosophers such as Strawson, Searle and Dummett. Suppose Jones believes that the next door neighbour's daughter has blue eyes. The descriptive-intentional theory explains how Jones’ belief is about or of one particular person Jane as follows: (1) Jones must think that there is such a person as the next door neighbour's daughter; (2) he must believe that whoever is the next door neighbour's daughter has blue eyes; and (3) that girl Jane must actually be the next door neighbour's daughter. The descriptive-intentional approach to talking of or about a particular entity is along similar lines.

This account is also applied to proper names. Consider ‘Jane has blue eyes’. This sentence (or the corresponding belief) can be about an actual girl Jane where speakers with a language in which the name ‘Jane’ has currency associate with that word a number of beliefs of the following type: Jane is the person with blue eyes, living at 21 Gas Lane, with Roger and Judy Brown as parents, etc. Not every individual in the community will believe that Jane has all of these properties. But each individual will have a cluster of such beliefs, where there is sufficient overlap between the clusters for the name ‘Jane’ to have a clear use in that community. Finally, the actual girl Jane really does possess ‘sufficient’ of the properties involved in the community's cluster of beliefs.

The descriptivist-intentional construal of ‘God’ runs as follows. Suppose Jones says ‘God is looking after me’, or has a belief to this effect. Then he has said or believes something of, or about God, just so long as ‘God’ is associated in Jones’ speech community with a cluster of beliefs such as ‘God is a person’ and ‘God is loving’, Jones associates ‘most’ of these beliefs with ‘God’, and finally, a real existent, God, fits these beliefs.

However, this descriptivist-intentional account fails to appreciate that definite descriptions have more than one use. Donnellan (1966) showed that definite descriptions function in two ways. In what he calls the ‘attributive’ use, someone who says: ‘Smith's murderer is insane’ on encountering a scene of death and destruction involving Smith, but who has no idea of the murderer's identity, means to talk of whoever it is that murdered Smith. The individual answering the description used is the person to whom the speaker refers with the definite description ‘Smith's murderer’. ‘God’ has characteristic descriptions associated with Him by each Theistic religion. So a believer who talks of ‘the being who spoke to Moses on Sinai’ would, if using this description attributively, refer to whoever it is that answers that description. Descriptions applied to fictional entities function attributively.

Donnellan contrasts the attributive with the referential use. Imagine a discussion of Jones’ odd behaviour at his trial, Jones having been charged with Smith's murder. We say, of Jones, ‘Smith's murderer is insane.’ We use the description to call attention to a particular individual; another phrase or name would have sufficed. This differs from the attributive use, where it is essential that the description employed is true of the referent. Donnellan also points out that the referential use can succeed even where the referent fails to answer to the description concerned. Suppose that, unbeknownst to us, Smith committed suicide. If Jones discovers that we have said ‘Smith's murderer is insane’, he could reasonably accuse us of saying false things about him. We may have referred to Jones, even though the description ‘Smith's murderer’ does not fit him.

Kripke (1980) reminded us of Frege and Russell's view that a proper name is a disguised definite description. On such an account ‘Scott’ would be equivalent to a description such as ‘the author of Waverley’. According to Searle's (1958) sophisticated version of descriptivism, a name is linked to a cluster of descriptions rather than just one, and the referent of the name is whatever satisfies a sufficient number of these descriptions. Kripke argues persuasively that this account does not fit all the important cases and offers his theory of ‘direct reference’. Even when denying that someone satisfies some or even all of the descriptions conventionally linked to her, we can successfully pick out an individual. Aristotle might not have satisfied any of the descriptions linked to him: ‘the statement that Aristotle had this disjunction of properties is a contingent truth’ (Kripke 1980, 63). Biblical scholars hold that there was such a person as Jonah but that no one did the things commonly associated with him.

In Kripke's idealised story about direct reference, an ‘initial baptism’ links a name to a particular individual for the first time. This is often when the individual to be named can be pointed out. For instance a baby, destined to become a very famous physicist, is named by its parents ‘Richard Feynman’. The use of this name is spread among their friends and acquires a place in their wider society. Later on someone might say, ‘Feynman went to New York in September’. The speaker may succeed in referring to the actual man Feynman, the adult the baby has become, so long as a ‘certain passage of communication reaching ultimately to the man himself does reach the speaker’ (Kripke 1980, 91). The speaker may know little or nothing about physics and have entirely forgotten from whom he acquired the use of the name ‘Feynman’. Links between speakers and their referents need not include an immediate sighting of the referent. For instance, we might refer ‘directly’ to the person who has left an impression in a chair cushion.

Alston (1988) applies Kripke's account of ‘direct reference’ to God, attempting to flesh out what would constitute ‘initial baptism’ in this very special case. In what he acknowledges is a controversial move, he postulates that ‘God’ can refer to something in people's experience. Sidestepping at least some of the obvious objections here, he makes it clear that this need be nothing like a particular perception or specifiable experience. Nevertheless, he appreciates that ‘there must be some way in which it is communicated to others what entity it is to which the initiator was referring with ‘God’ (1988, 119). He takes it that aspects of experience within a context of a community of worshippers supply both baptism and patterns of identifying reference which can be passed on.

Perhaps the referring expression ‘empirical reality’ works in a similar fashion. It cannot be linked to a particular experience, or indeed to a particular type of experience. Yet, a group of educated speakers can employ the phrase to make identifying references, and there is, arguably, a clear sense in which empirical reality plays an appropriate causal role in making this possible.

For Alston's account to be convincing much more work would need to be done, as he clearly realises. At the same time the bare bones of the theory certainly reflect Theists’ aims and practice. Surely, an adequate theory of reference to God should portray the process as resembling discourse about objects in the empirical world more closely than discourse about fictional and abstract items, and the ‘direct reference’ approach certainly satisfies this requirement. Believers using the name ‘God’ are attempting direct reference to a real entity. Their descriptions of God are intended, at least on some occasions, to be referential rather than attributive. They are not merely speaking of whoever it is that satisfies a given description, but rather talking of that real being, God. According to the ‘direct reference’ theory, if there is a God, then commerce of some kind between Him and believers must be such that He can play a causal role in their having beliefs about Him and in talking about Him to others. Strictly speaking, of course, it is only necessary for some believers to have such unmediated divine contact. However, according to faiths such as Christianity, God is immanent as well as transcendent, seeks a relationship with each individual He has created and hence, at least in principle, can play a direct causal role in any individual's beliefs and discourse about Him. Hinduism lacks these specific doctrines. At the same time, insofar as it is appropriate to interpret at least some Hindu thinking about Siva or Vishnu as ‘theistic’ and as holding that these entities can enter into relationships with humans, something analogous could be said. In the non-theistic versions of Buddhism, and, of course in other non-theistic religions Alston's theories would not be applicable.

We saw earlier that, in referential uses of descriptions, successful reference is compatible with the partial or total inappropriateness of the description. Remember that ‘Smith's murderer’ might refer to Jones even where Smith committed suicide. If this is possible, then it is also possible to refer to Jones with conflicting descriptions. ‘Smith's murderer’ and ‘the man falsely accused of Smith's murder’ might both refer to Jones.

Many faiths hold that we are unable to capture the transcendent divine nature in any kind of comprehensive fashion by using human concepts and language. Judaeo-Christian traditions talk about God as a person, but immediately offer radical qualifications. It is much easier, according to these religions, to say what God is not – the via negativa – than to say what He is.

Descriptions of God certainly vary from one religion to another and often seem to conflict. However, from the perspective of a direct account of reference, it is still possible that in some cases of such conflict people are speaking of the same God. If the descriptivist account of proper names fails to cover some central cases of reference, it is a bad argument to move, for instance, from the premise that Christian characterisations of the Deity differ from those of Islam or Hinduism, to the conclusion that they must be characterising different entities. In principle, no human description of the divine can be adequate. Hence, it is scarcely surprising if some of these descriptions seem to clash with others.

At the same time, the existence of an astonishing diversity of divine descriptions cannot simply be ignored. What is more, even if the same God is the subject of a variety of discourses, we are still confronted with apparently incompatible claims about Him. One obvious source of examples are the Trinitarian doctrines to be found in Christianity, compared with the claims Islam makes about Allah.

Transcendence language and metaphor

It is a familiar idea with a long heritage that language is often used ‘analogically’ or ‘metaphorically’ of God. This indirect or figurative use is believed to arise from transcendence. The latter furnishes human knowledge, thought and language with significant limitations. Note the following varieties of transcendence; a full discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

A being possessing ontological transcendence is somehow distinct, separate and different from everything else. Aquinas believed that ‘God is more distant from any creature than any two creatures are from each other’ (Aquinas 1964). Otto's (1923) famous phrase ‘wholly other’ is associated with transcendence thought of in this way. Something with epistemological transcendence is beyond our knowledge and understanding. The term ‘mystery’ is sometimes used in this connection. Evidently, this could be a matter of degree. Believers might hold that their God's epistemological transcendence was temporary, and would vanish in an afterlife. On the other hand, epistemological transcendence might be deemed a matter of principle, being an inevitable consequence of the essential ontological transcendence of the Divine.

So why do many religions attribute transcendence to God? Is such attribution justified? The short answer to this question is that a being lacking transcendence would not be the ultimate reality. He would not be God. Those religions focusing on worship would say that the entity concerned would not be worthy of worship.

God cannot simply be in possession of an unsurpassable degree of those qualities that can be found in other things. He must be different in kind. Moreover, God cannot be supreme and unsurpassable without at the same time being profoundly mysterious. He must have the highest level of epistemological transcendence compatible with the very possibility of thought and language about Him. In addition, note that those religions thinking of God as creator are, a fortiori attributing ontological transcendence to Him. The ground of all being must be ‘other’ than all other beings.

God's transcendence implies that even those divine properties which other things can share differ radically from their mundane counterparts. For example, in ‘God is a person’, divine personhood cannot be a straightforward variant on the kind of persons with which humans are familiar. However, the word ‘person’ is not subject to mere lexical ambiguity here. Attributing personhood to God relates human personhood to God's in some profound way. In contrast, lexical ambiguity does characterise ‘bank’ in ‘She went to the bank’. For this might involve a trip to a financial institution or to the edge of a river. Evidently, there are no affinities between river banks and financial banks.

So the traditional move, as I say, has been to appeal to metaphorical uses of language. Literal language would mean, for instance that God's personhood is directly comparable to human personhood. Therefore, the language concerned cannot be literal.

Must all languages about a transcendent God involve non-literal uses? Clearly not. Negative claims can be literal. ‘God does not have a physical body’, ‘God is not an abstract object like the number two’, ‘God cannot alter the past’ all seem to be examples of this kind, insofar as we can make sense of them at all. On the other hand, positive claims about transcendence will involve figurative language, including basic doctrines such as that God creates or created the universe(s). God has no body, so cannot create in a manner that mirrors human creative activity. Would a better analogy be with humans who use their minds to create new thoughts? Would this support a literal reading of divine creativity? I think not. In the major theistic religions, He creates from nothing. This implies that such a performance differs radically from any form of human creation, mental or otherwise. If God's creation is construed as an ultimate dependency of all existing things on His activity, the religious believer must again resort to rich and irreducible metaphors such as ‘ground’, ‘sustain’ and ‘support’.

Suppose we encounter a putative example of a positive claim about a transcendent entity with literal pretensions. I would argue that such pretensions will not survive close scrutiny. For there will be conceptual and logical interconnections between the various ascriptions of features to a divine entity. The meaning and significance of ‘God is a person’, for example, cannot be separated from the meaning and significance of ‘God acts in the world’, ‘God is loving’, ‘God creates’ and so on. So, if any of these ideas cannot be captured literally, then it looks as though many of them cannot be. Figurative language will infect its supposedly literal neighbors.

Does an appeal to metaphor elucidate the status of transcendence language and the resemblances and differences between human and divine features? For instance, we are being given to understand that ‘God is a person’ is related to ‘Jones is a person’ in a way that is somehow comparable to how ‘The question is hard’ is related to ‘The chair is hard’. Now, in claiming a metaphorical status for a sentence like ‘God is a rock’, we are ruling out a possible literal interpretation – something to the effect that God is physically a rock such as a granite boulder. So, does awarding metaphorical status to ‘God is a person’ mean that God is not really a person? That implication would alarm many religious believers. Is the metaphorical gambit a poor one after all?

Yet, there are plenty of non-religious instances of metaphor where we are equally reluctant to qualify them by conceding that A is not really X. These include instances of ‘irreducible metaphor’ noted by Alston (1964). Alston cites mental state descriptions such as ‘the stabbing pain’ and ‘she feels depressed’. These are, as he puts it ‘in the position of metaphors that cannot die’ (Alston 1964, 105). Searle (1979) offers instances of spatial language used about time, including ‘time flies’ ‘the hours crawled by’ and ‘I don’t want to cut my stay short’. Again, a denial that time flies, on the grounds that we are speaking metaphorically, seems inappropriate. Time really does fly sometimes, despite the fact that denying this might appear, quite sensibly, to exclude the possibility that time can literally travel through the air. I conclude that awarding ‘God is a person’ metaphorical status places it in good company, and that crediting transcendence language with a metaphorical function does represent an appropriate way of understanding it.

If some transcendence language employs metaphors that ‘cannot die’ then there can be no literal translation, any more than there is for ‘stabbing pain’ and ‘time flies’. Paraphrases would merely introduce new sets of metaphors. Hence, literal comparisons cannot be made across religions. Literally incompatible phrases may sometimes be reconciled when understood metaphorically. For instance: ‘He spoke bluntly. He made some penetrating comments’. ‘As the light grew he could see her brow darkening’. ‘Time grows short’. So in some cases, at least, if metaphor features in characterisations of and claims about God, the appearance of tensions between different religions may be deceptive. I am not, of course, claiming that metaphors about the divine never conflict – a modest religious pluralism concedes this possibility, though it will always hesitate before pronouncing definitively that there is such conflict in a particular case.

Note also the holist features of concepts within any one set of religious doctrines. The concept of personhood applied to the Christian God takes its identity and meaning in part from how it relates to a range of other key divine properties, such as agency, goodness, power and so on. Suppose, then, we wanted to assess the relationship between the Hindu's claim that the ultimate Reality is ‘the blissful, universal consciousness of Brahman’ with the Christian doctrine that such Reality is a personal deity (Hick 2004). On a pluralist assumption that somehow we are talking about the same Reality, we are confronted with apparent conflict. Yet, we cannot compare these claims directly. Any attempt to do so implies that we can abstract elements from their networks, assess their stand-alone meaning and compare them across different world faiths. Such abstraction would undermine the meaning of those elements.

Some may feel that these moves are too successful. A religion can, apparently, say absolutely anything about its God. For, in my narrative, seemingly bizarre divine characterisations cannot be judged to be unacceptably odd when understood literally. Moreover, they cannot be directly compared with their traditional counterparts in any case because of holist considerations. Christianity believes in a personal Creator who loves His creatures. Yet within my perspective, the objection could run, those worshipping a volcano that periodically ‘eats’ creatures may be focusing on the same being as the Christian's God.

Such an objection makes a straw man of my position. I am arguing that the appearance of tension or even of contradiction, between descriptions offered by the various world faiths, does not mean that the truth claims of one faith necessarily rule out all of those with which they seem to conflict. However, attacking exclusivism of this kind is not an endorsement of all systems and cults.

Objectors to pluralism are unlikely to be satisfied. They could argue as follows: the devout Christian, for instance, insists that Christ is the Son of God and this excludes Islamic conceptions of Allah, according to which the very idea of incarnation detracts from His absolute transcendence and simplicity.

My response to such a criticism of pluralism is that the imagined scenario builds in exclusivist interpretations of Christianity and Islam, interpretations which beg the question against me. It is precisely because each side is envisaged as adopting an exclusivist approach to their faith that the Moslem is characterised as denying the divinity of Christ and the Christian pictured as ruling out the Islamic notion of Allah because it precludes incarnation. Now, it is undeniable that many Moslems and Christians will think of their beliefs in just this way. Nevertheless, this article argues that a proper understanding of the limitations of human thought in relation to transcendence rules out such primitive exclusivism. All Christians know that Jesus is not literally the Son of God. Unease with such a reminder stems from the fear that it amounts to a denial of a central Christian doctrine. It does not. The language works profoundly, but not literally. Metaphorical claims that A is B are not always to be understood as implying that A is not ‘really’ B.

A plague on both houses? Religious assertions do not state facts about reality?

I turn to a final objection of a very different kind. An assumption of all parties to the pluralism debate so far discussed is that religious language has a significant fact-stating intention. On this view, one of its many functions is to represent reality as it actually is, to say how things are. What Schönbaumsfeld (2007) calls the ‘target view’ of Theistic claims, attributing it in particular to Richard Swinburne, includes the contention that ‘there is one correct way of describing the world and this description either contains an object (entity, item) such as God or it doesn’t’ (Schönbaumsfeld 2007, 158). Over the last few decades, this assumption has been opposed by a number of theologians and philosophers.

The least radical version of such opposition accepts a basic modernist framework within which language function can be analysed. According to that framework, language can be used to capture aspects of an independent reality, and it can also be employed in other ways. Braithwaite (1971) urged, in verificationist spirit, that religion could not be making empirical claims, and hence must be expressing emotion instead. Some have taken Wittgenstein to view religious language as expressing attitudes rather than making truth claims, though, inevitably such an interpretation is contested by others.

Moving towards more radical construals of the objection, in ‘fideist’ incarnations of Wittgenstein's understanding of religion, religious assertions cannot be evaluated according to standards of truth and rationality outside the faith concerned, since there are no such standards; the claims can only be judged according to criteria inherent in the belief system and practices informing the claim (many have objected, either to the idea that Wittgenstein really thought this, or to ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ itself, regardless of exegetical questions). Fideism strikes at the root of the thought that there is an independent reality against which all contentions can be checked according to universal standards of rationality.

The most radical instantiation of the objection to my whole approach to the pluralist–exclusivist debate incorporates a ‘postmodern’ rejection of the very idea of an objective truth about reality to which religious claims, among others, might aspire.

In all the versions outlined here, the objection to my critique of the critics of religious pluralism is that I have constructed a pseudo-problem. Since religious affirmations do not or cannot, aspire to ‘truth’ then there is no conflict, either apparent or real. However, I believe that the crucial point in all this is how religious believers see their claims. For it is the various perceptions of the potentially warring parties that may constrain the very possibility of mutual respect. Many believers do see their beliefs as concerning how things are in a reality independent of them, and as ruling out beliefs embedded in other faiths about that same reality. It is with members of faiths with these kinds of perspectives that the discussion of this article is particularly concerned. The reality is that exclusivist world views are rarely informed by postmodern subtleties.

Pluralism and religious education

Religious education informed by a moderate religious pluralism is not a failure to take difference seriously. Religious education should, among other things, help all students to appreciate that people who appear to believe and practise faiths very different from theirs may have something just as valuable in terms of potential for encountering the divine.

All believers need to understand at least something of the irreducibly figurative character of thought and language about a transcendent God. This is vital, both for the continuing health and even stability of pluralist democracies and for constructive relationships between nations on the world stage. The liberal educational aim of respecting others regardless of religious beliefs is, as I urged earlier, going against the grain of human nature. Fostering ‘reasonable pluralism’ (e.g. de Ruyter and Merry 2009) is an admirable objective, but, I suggest, is unlikely to succeed without a better understanding of the status of thinking and language about a transcendent reality. A familiar injunction often to be found within statements of aims for religious education is to ‘teach’ students to respect those whose fundamental beliefs differ from their own. Such an aspiration needs the support of the moderate religious pluralism advocated here.

How might this be done? Space here only permits very brief pointers. Most school-age students cannot grapple with the theories of reference put forward by Kripke, or philosophical accounts of metaphor. But they could be encouraged to compare the situation of seemingly diverse religious claims with non-religious examples in which rival yet somehow complementary accounts may be offered. Narratives about human meanings, actions and relationships afford an excellent source of such examples. These may be encountered in certain kinds of qualitative research within social science, literature, and, of course, in everyday human experience. The ‘same’ reality is amenable to a range of characterisations, many or all of which are valuable and yet some of which may well appear to conflict. Arguably, if we reject the idea that aesthetic judgments are purely subjective, judgments about the arts also provide further examples; well-informed critics may sometimes reach seemingly conflicting verdicts, yet it is simplistic to assume that at least one of them must be wrong. A range of judgments may be capturing different aspects of a complex aesthetic reality.

In the UK, at least, religious education has been ‘pluralist’ in outlook for some time. Indeed, this is exactly what provoked Barnes and others to criticise it. There is no national syllabus for the subject. In recent years, its role in supporting community cohesion has been highlighted. The non-statutory guidance notes: ‘RE also contributes to pupils’ personal development and well-being and to community cohesion by promoting mutual respect and tolerance in a diverse society’ (DCSF 2010, 7). This aim and sentiment can often be found in local agreed RE syllabuses.

My argument is that promoting mutual respect and tolerance needs the support of the moderate pluralist perspective defended here. Students need to develop some understanding of the kind of relationships that may obtain between one set of truth claims about ultimate reality and another.

A recent Ofsted report on the teaching of RE in English secondary schools found that many teachers did not know what they should be trying to achieve in their subject. It asked whether there is sufficient clarity about what constitutes learning in RE. It highlighted the role of RE ‘in helping pupils understand diversity and develop respect for the beliefs and cultures of others’ (Ofsted 2010). Yet, they expressed concern over teachers ‘uncertainties about the relationship between fostering respect for pupils’ beliefs and encouraging open, critical, investigative learning in RE’ (Ofsted 2010). So the moderate pluralism supported in this article could well supply something that is missing from the current mindsets of some religious educators.

The points I have made in this final section are as applicable to faith schools as to common schools. Any suggestion that a pluralist strand should be compulsory in faith schools is likely to be controversial, to say the least. Furthermore, the thought that this approach should also be required in the United States public school system even given the constitutional restrictions on religious education will certainly not go down well in some quarters. All things considered, I am inclined to be controversial.

Notes

Note

1. As, for instance in the Papal Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) or the Council of Florence's decree that ‘no one outside the Catholic Church, neither pagans nor Jews nor heretics nor schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life; but they will go to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Quoted by Tilley 2007).