Ernie: "Is there a way to be inclusive without completely losing our identity?
If so, how do we know we’ve struck the right balance?" Maybe we can start with the fact that many people want to be inclusive. Otherwise how do we account for, as one example, the great popularity of Lost Horizon -the book and the movie- which still has its "fans." Or how do we account for the enthusiasm among various scholarly types for the Nestorian mission in T'ang dynasty China and its literary productions, the so-called Jesus Messiah Sutras? For that matter, while it has hardly taken off like gang busters, there is the Baha'i Faith with its interfaith message organized around the new revelation of Baha'u'llah. Whatever else you can say, it is an ecumenical "new religion" that has found a way to not only survive but grow in the world. Sure, there are only, say, 10 or 15 million Baha'is worldwide, but that is something and it now is just about everywhere. There was also what turned out to be a false dawn, the arrival of an ecumenical age, so it was believed back in the 1950s, which was all the talk among mainline Protestants and not a few Catholics. Niebuhr spent a good deal of time discussing the subject and, of course, John XXIII based a big part of Vatican II on his version of ecumenism. As the country song has it, "guess you had to be there," but I remember vividly the popular feeling which was all over the place in those years that we were on the verge of a new era of inter-religious dialogue and convergence. That all went "poof" with the horrific murders of the era, JFK and MLK especially, but it is worthwhile to recall "what might have been." There have been attempts to revive that feeling, most recently with the revival of the World's Parliament of Religions in 1993 -and subsequent WPR conclaves. But let's stick with Shangri-La for the moment. That was a classic example of Christian Buddhism (or is it Buddhist Christianity?). A community of people who can just as well be considered Buddhist or Christian, they have created something new and the proof of the pudding is that -in inspired fiction, anyway- it works The crux may be the fact that it also works as an ideology. The dream never dies, so to speak. And it also was a big part of the now fading New Age movement, an interfaith utopia or new golden age "coming soon." I also remember -quite well- the enthusiasm the New Age movement once generated. And, O yeah, let's not forget Aurobindo and his Christian-Hindu-Buddhist theology that is also still very much with us and destined to be influential among not only people of South India, but the growing number of tourists who visit Auroville and its under-construction-as-we-speak, architectural wonders. That is, although fashions change, none of this is going away. The reason is obvious, we live in a global age where interfaith harmony is necessary for the functioning of the overall system. One way to achieve this is through syncretism. But that approach has serious drawbacks. Maybe it is inevitable in some sense, but where is its foundation? On what rock is it built? I'd like to know even if, for sure, there have been syncretistic eras, like the Hellenistic epoch ca 300 BC - 0 AD, and even the late 19th century in the cosmopolitan parts of the West. But the other things of faith are not going away, either, and they are much larger in scale and much more closely associated with people's identities -not to mention people's sometimes massive institutions. And, of course, the links between traditional faiths and nationalism. Writing all of this down the thought also occurs that when all is said individuals need to be convinced, viscerally as well as intellectually, that they actually have a foundation to stand upon. What both Christianity and Buddhism offer, besides highly personal faiths that speak to all kinds of private needs, are thought-through systems that deal with just about any issue you can think of in modern life. Hinduism also sort of fits this picture but "sort of" seems to me to be the operational truth of the matter, and Islam essentially only fits by reason of force and power. Hence, my view anyway, one reason for the good number of exits from Islam that is going on in a number of places is that allegiance is coerced and when the coercion is removed there is no personal justification for staying Muslim. OK, this is all over-simplified, but I think it helps to over-simplify and then backtrack to try and be more multi-dimensional and realistic. This allows you to focus. This is only a rough statement. I'm trying to sort everything out, just as you are trying to sort it all out. I do not have any really good answers yet. But maybe there are approximations to good answers somewhere in these comments. Perhaps when all is said, E.Stanley Jones had the best idea. That is also something I need to think about. BTW, all along I had a book in my library about Alexandria. Had forgotten about it until our new discussions led me to look in my Greco-Roman collection for information about Clement. I need to try and find a little more but it seems that Clement was working on this same kind of problem when the persecutions hit Alexandria and he had to get out of town and leave all of that only as far as he had been able to get with it until 203 AD. Hopefully I will be able to report more in the near future. Billy ________________________________ From: Centroids <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2018 9:53 AM To: [email protected] Cc: Billy Rojas Subject: Re: [RC] What's wrong with (so-called) "liberal Christianity"? * * * Hi Billy, Even at that time many people realized that religious parochialism and antagonisms were dysfunctional and militated against "peace on Earth and good will toward men." And women. But that Jesus was also Christ crucified, Christ who sacrificed everything for the sake of others. That Jesus could also accept others; this is certainly one valid interpretation of John 10: 14-18, the passage about "other sheep not of this fold." I think you are getting to the crux of the problem. This also ties very much into your distaste for Nehemiah and Ezra. The sad fate of liberal Christianity is quite a cautionary tale: How do you broaden the tent without it collapsing? I wrestle with this all the time. It is one thing to deplore the genocide Of our founders, with their Jewish or American. But the reality is they probably would not of survived as a people if they had chosen mere acceptance. And we would not be who we are today. Do we only have a luxury of scruples because they did not? How can we draw a better line? Is there a way to be inclusive without completely losing our identity? If so, how do we know we’ve struck the right balance? — Ernies -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
