Thoughts on "Pluralism: the Future of Religion" by Kenneth Rose

In his interesting new book, Pluralism: the Future of Religion, Kenneth Rose, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Christopher Newport University (full disclosure: I am a CNU alum and Ken was one of my instructors) argues that religious studies is in something of a crisis.  The theology of religions—which seeks to relate different religious traditions to Christianity and determine the relationships between these traditions, a notion in theory possible for any religious tradition based on revealed wisdom*—is, according to Rose, at an impasse.  Comparative religion, to which the theology of religions is necessarily prior, is similarly hobbled.

Theology of religions is at an impasse because current scholarship is based on a default position of inclusivism which, though it gives provisional value to non-Christian ideas, still has Christianity as its starting point and its normative model.  Though in form, this inclusiveness rejects the claims of exclusivity made by Christianity, Rose would have us see this as an illusion.  Such “inclusivism,” in his opinion, is simply a soft form of exclusivism, and no solution at all to the problems raised by the welter of competing religious claims. Since exclusive claims of truth are unsupportable in the modern world, this opens the door to pluralism, which has largely been rejected by the scholarly community as, ironically, exclusivistic. 

Pluralism, he suggests, sees “the availability of multiple bodies of internally plausible but malleable religious teachings as negating absolute claims for any of them.” (9)  Though he asserts that religions (note the plural) are attempting to understand something real, what he calls “an immaterial dimension of beatitude and deathlessness,” (12) the multitude of specific claims made by religious traditions, and the changes undergone by these traditions over their histories, provide sufficient reason to doubt that any one of them has the final word on the matter.  

As a counter to the older model of “cataphatic” pluralism, which simply piles attributes on to the sacred in order to make a more complete picture, Rose offers “apophatic” pluralism.  This views specific religious teachings as “a logical outcome of the cultural and historical conditions that necessarily limit every form of religious language.” (26)  It strips away all the symbols and attributes in favor of a direct encounter “with being, or the divine, free from the limited constructs generated by language, the mind, and culture.” (7)  Historical religions and their dogmas, in defining the sacred, necessarily limit it; each additional predicate attached to the sacred is a step away from experiencing it. 

Rose’s understanding of the historicity of religious traditions is very important to his argument, and is worth exploring here.  Though he rejects naturalistic theories of religions—such as those offered by David Sloan Wilson, Richard Sosis, and AraNorenzayan among others—which suggest that religion is an adaptation that aids reproductive success of individuals and helps bind groups together, his theory of religious change is evolutionary.  He further denies that the religious realm is accessible to the natural sciences at all and rejects compromise positions such as Stephen Jay Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” since Rose sees in reaity no “mental and physical dimensions that are entirely distinct from one another.” (153)

Religions change, according to Rose, as they come into contact with other religions.  Syncretism, which he suggests fosters hybridity and multiple religious identity, also dismantles old identities and creates new ones in a process he calls departicularization.  Through this process, apparently unchanging religious traditions are seen to change with exposure to new religious ideas and religious others.  It’s hard not to see them as organisms swapping genes, or perhaps memes, and becoming new.  Thus old religions pass on and new ones are created.  This is a process he sees intensifying as, through globalization, disparate communities are brought into closer and closer contact.

Recognition of this is important because, as Rose argues, “[i]f human societies continue integrating at the current pace, no religious tradition will be able to maintain nonnegotiable…claims except at the cost of cutting off solidarity with other human beings and by retreating into ever narrower and tragically doomed forms of fundamentalism.” (129)  It is here and in his writing on syncretism that Rose’s argument is at its strongest.  And no wonder—the very forces of modernity that are accelerating the processes of syncretism and departicularization are those that gave rise to the forces of religious fundamentalism, and its retreat into tribalism.  

I am sympathetic to much of Rose’s argument here, as the processes he describes as effecting religious change are not out of line with my own naturalistic understanding of religion.  We can disagree on whether there is a divine “real” behind all the appearances because we agree that, if such a real exists, it is inacessible to science and, ultimately, makes no claims about the natural world.  We can also agree that the religious traditions that attempt to describe this real, or that attempt to give the imprimatur of supernatural authority to natural processes, are products of history.  Both apophatic pluralism and naturalism reveal these as efforts to name something that is unnameable either because it is ineffable or because it doesn’t exist.  Which it is in the end is, ultimately, important only to individuals and not in some larger, cosmic sense.

But this agreement makes Rose’s rejection of Gould’s NOMA perplexing.  In proposing NOMA Gould sought to exempt the “moral truths” of religion from scientific enquiry and to exempt the discoveries of the sciences from religious scrutiny.  Science, as Gould said, gets“the age of rocks and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.” Gould, like Rose, would also deny any bifurcation between mental and physical realms, but conclude that both areapparent phenomena of the natural world amenable investigation by scientists.  But, so long as the claims of the mystic, or of the practitioner of everyday religion, do not extend to the physical properties of the universe, a NOMA-embracing scientist (or atheist) can say little about them.

Another point of concern is that Rose’s apophatic pluralism, while a powerful model for the academic study of religion, seems unlikely to have much impact among everyday religious believers.  Though undoubtedly correct in his assertion that “no religious community can preserve its language against change and decay forever,” (68) he also notes that those relying on authority and tradition will reject pluralist ideas.  

This, it seems, is where a large number of believers, at least in the Abrahamic traditions, live, in communities whose theologies range from conservative to fundamentalist.  Conservative theoogians will stress the authority of tradition and scripture, while fundamentalists will stress scriptures alone, interpreted literally.  Though there have always been liberal and conservative exegetical traditions, the encounter with modernity has given special impetus to fundamentalism especially in Protestant Christianity and Islam.  

That this fundamentalism is ahistorical in that it does not represent the normative experience of the majority of believers across time, and is entirely a product of modernity, is not understood by those embracing it. Fundamentalist believers live, as it were, in an eternal present, where the parameters of their religion as they understand it stretch back to the beginning of time and forward to the eschaton.  Historical forms of their faith, the majority of lived religious life, are viewed as defective forms at best, heterodoxy at worst.  Sectarian educational systems that turn out fundamentalist theologians seem unlikely to be touched by pluralist notions.

Indeed, the ongoing creative tension within even non-fundamentalist religious traditions between orthodoxy and heterodoxy seems to work against pluralism as well.  While syncretism is a feature of religions and not a bug, so, too, is the retreat into orthodoxy when confronted with novelty.  Heterodox ideas force proponents of orthodoxy to better refine their arguments and their dogmas, and build higher walls against outside encroachment.  Though their positions may represent a compromise with heterodox ideas, the guardians of orthodoxy will, like fundamentalists, maintain that their position represents a true transmission of the faith and is catholic in its reach (see, e.g., Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy)

More’s the pity.  Rose has presented a view of religious pluralism that seems to cast a wide enough net to draw in all of those who believe, as he does, in a higher-order reality that is a source of meaning.  That it makes no demands of its believers, that it offers no insights into physical creation, that it is inclusive of multiple religious traditions while privleging none, makes it a true middle ground of faith. 

These same characteristics, however, seem to portend, at least for the non-mystic, an anodyne faith.  The very traits that render a religion unoffensive to non-believers may rob it of its snap for those who believe.  If we agree with Rose’s assertion that “as long as human experience remains marked by finitude, loss, and suffering, religions will continue to thrive in unforeseeable varieties among us, for just so long as it speaks about a condition of beatitude that escapes the bounds of death,” (149) then we should also assume that religious believers will be looking for concrete answers to these problems and concrete promises of the world to come.  So once again, the predicates come pouring out and the cycle continues.

* Thanks, Ken, for the note of clarification.