By Michael A. Milton
Michael A. Milton is President and Professor of Practical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC
According to this idea of pluralism, any denial of its validity would be paramount to blowing up bridges of common understanding and relationships among human beings. If you have seen the “I Hate Mean People” bumper stickers you might begin to understand what they really mean. To stand for the exclusive claims of biblical Christianity, according to her and many others, is to stand against world peace. The idea of religious pluralism as the ideal cultural dynamic for our country is developed and defended by Diana L. Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University, in works like
A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation.[19]To preach faithfully in our generation, we must admit the pluralistic culture — whether we like it or not — but reject the philosophy of pluralism. In
Christianity and Culture T.S. Eliot wrote:
Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes.
[20]For Eliot, pluralistic societies can only come through a Christian society, with its essential understanding of and necessary consequences of the idea of human freedom and Christian liberty. However, Eliot is silenced beneath the cacophony of politically-correct voices that equate pluralism with peace and exclusive truth claims with repression.
“Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” asked the psalmist (
Ps 2:1, esv). Yet in the postmodern city, the divergent voices find unity in opposition of the one who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” even as the early church in Acts prayed, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed” (
Acts 4:27, niv).