This week begins a multiple week series on the challenge of preaching in an age of religious pluralism. Today the focus is on defining the problem.

The Challenge of Preaching in an Age of Religious Pluralism

The modern preacher of the Christian gospel faces a different challenge than the gospel preachers of the past two hundred years. How does one preach the Christian gospel in a time when all religions are considered equally valid? To effectively preach the gospel’s truth, one must first understand the nature of religious pluralism. The preacher can draw comfort, strength, and direction from the early church, for Christianity was founded in an age of religious pluralism. Yet modern pluralism is different from that of the early church because of the influence of our postmodern age. Therefore, the preacher of the gospel needs to understand the culture of the people to whom he seeks to preach. Upon understanding the culture, how does one bridge the culture to preach effectively within it? Finally, what are some practical steps one can take in the act of preaching that will assist in ensuring the message is heard, understood, and causes a reaction within the people?

The Nature of Religious Pluralism

Mark Lilla writes that deep interest in the supernatural, the afterlife, transcendence, and God comes naturally to most human beings. It is indifference to them that must be learned.[1] Every culture has possessed an innate desire to worship something or someone outside of themselves throughout history. Every culture was devoted to a god or goddess of some shape or form. Many of these cultures were polytheistic; they believed in a pantheon of gods to explain the natural world around them. In the modern world, science has taken that place. People do not look to a god or a pantheon of gods to answer their questions regarding the natural world because science has done so.

Today, most people in society look to religion as a form of comfort rather than a source of understanding the truth. This has led to a modern take on pluralism that flows from a postmodern view of the world. In today’s Western society, tolerance is the keyword. In the 1990s, D.A. Carson wrote about the change in the idea of tolerance. Previously, society may not accept an idea but would tolerate a person. However, in many modern Western societies, toleration has changed to focus on ideas rather than people increasingly.[2]There is less discussion because tolerance of diverse ideas demands that we avoid criticizing the opinions of others. In addition, there is little discussion where the ideas at issue are of the religious sort that claim to be universally valid. That kind of notion is outside of the modern plausibility structure. There is less civility because there is no inherent demand to be tolerant of people in this new practice of tolerance.[3]

At the heart of the new disposition are principled pluralism and radical relativism.[4]When it comes to religion, philosophy, or morals, one system’s viewpoint offers as much validity as another.[5]The culture maintains the opposing voices should be accorded the same authority because they are equally valid. Carson says they should be extended the same courtesy, but “if we insist that they be accorded the same authority, we are implicitly adopting philosophical pluralism as the cost of affirming biblical Christianity.”[6]

Yet, according to modern society, any notion that an ideology or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong. The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism. No religion has the right to pronounce itself right or true and the others as false or even as relatively inferior. If any religion claims that other religions are wrong in some measure, a line has been crossed, and resentment is immediately stirred up because pluralism has been challenged. Exclusiveness is the one religious idea that cannot be tolerated.[7]

Therefore, if the cross of Christianity is too gruesome, people can choose the serenity of Buddhism. If Buddhism is too reflective, people can opt for the communal aspirations of the New Age. One religious choice is expected to contain as much truth as another. This has led to relativism becoming a religion unto itself.[8] If all religions are essentially the same, then it is only one religion with different sects within it.

This idea simply cannot be accurate. Religions other than Christianity do not attempt to offer or ultimately claim a universal offer of salvation.[9]Only Christianity does that. Islam and Judaism teach a Unitarian doctrine of God, while Christianity teaches a Trinitarian view of God.[10]Buddhism believes that there is no God, while Hinduism believes that there are thousands of gods. Though perhaps as ethically demanding as the Christian faith, most world religions often work out of fatalism and determinism.[11]Christianity is born from a system of hope in the resurrection of Jesus. The very faith systems negate one another. The idea that all religions are basically the same is simply ridiculous.

Yet pluralism is so much in the creed of modern society that even when the most potent arguments are arrayed to explain why morally good people should be rejected by the Christian God and assigned to hell, their hearts so rule their heads that no amount of argumentation is adequate.[12]They claim that it simply cannot be accurate. These systems have created gods that allow them to be who they want to be and do what they want. They have created gods out of their own imaginations. Timothy Keller writes, “Only if your God can say things that upset you will you know you have a real God and not just a creation of your imagination.”[13]Contemporary people are pretty spiritual. They are reaching and grasping at straws to find hope and make sense of their lives but are failing to find it in places other than Jesus.[14]

For Christians to assume they can continue to do business as usual and remain a player in the world of multiple religious options borders on the ridiculous.[15]Christians and Christian preachers must do something different to reach this lost generation, but the problem is that pluralism has invaded the church. Carson wrote that the extent to which religious pluralism has invaded the church is troubling; still more troubling for the preacher of the gospel is the extent to which it is assumed everywhere.[16]

Religious pluralism has so invaded the church that Christians do not know how to respond. It has made the less conservative Christians withdraw from evangelism, which is understood to be nothing more than inexcusable proselytism. The pressures of pluralism have the effect of encouraging us to change the shape of the gospel.[17]Pluralism has shaken the church. Instead of Christianity being the dominant ideology of yesteryear, pluralism has become the dominant ideology, and it produces enormous challenges for the preacher of the gospel.[18]Yet, there is nothing new under the sun. However new a philosophy may seem, the same old axes appear to be being ground again.[19]