{"id":38253,"date":"2023-04-12T01:00:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T08:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=38253"},"modified":"2023-04-13T09:46:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T16:46:19","slug":"the-unity-of-religions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2023\/04\/the-unity-of-religions.html","title":{"rendered":"The Unity of Religions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

The Unity of Religions<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

James Ishmael Ford<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson<\/p>\n

For anyone who says there are common currents to religions, say, like for me; there are challenges. Hard questions. Is there really a thread through them all, a tie that binds, some universal truth found in all religions? Just looking at the various creeds and the rites of the religions, it seems the answer would be no. No. And pretty resoundingly.<\/p>\n

Within religious studies, the technical term for those who say \u201cyes,\u201d is perennialism. Perennialism is the belief that all religions share something in common. The first attempt to define this during the European Renaissance. The first person I can think of to assert this sense of a thread looks to be Marsillo Ficino, a fifteenth century Italian priest and an early Humanist philosopher.<\/p>\n

Ficino saw a common thread running from the Corpus Hermeticum<\/em>. The Corpus<\/em> clearly showed at the very least a foreshadowing of Platonism and Christianity from centuries before they happened. As everyone at that time believed the Corpus<\/em> to have been composed around the time of Moses, it looked pretty obvious.<\/p>\n

The problem was that Ficino got his dates wrong. The Corpus<\/em> was not, as was believed during the Renaissance, written in the thirteenth century before the common era. You know, when people believed Moses was alive and led the enslaved Jewish people out of Egypt to that promised land.<\/p>\n

Instead, as it turns out, the Corpus<\/em> was compiled somewhere between the first and third centuries of our common era. And it actually is a mash up of Platonism and Christianity, not a foreshadowing.<\/p>\n

For me this demonstrates both the power of that sense all religions at that spiritual level are connected, together with the harsh fact that actual evidence of this is at best tenuous.<\/p>\n

As the contemporary scholar Stephen Prothero titles his provocative book, as we look into the matter, it appears God is Not One<\/em>. The good professor contends \u201cthe idea of religious unity is wishful thinking\u2026\u201d He in fact goes beyond condemning the unity of religions as fantasy. He asserts claiming all religions are one is a willful ignorance that makes the world a more dangerous place.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t so much a case of many paths up one mountain, but more likely many paths and many mountains. And. And, yet there is something in all this which calls for hedging from categorical assertions like the many religions are all different, period. Despite the tons of evidence about the differences, there are some threads that do look shared. There are even a couple of places where there are obvious commonalities.<\/p>\n

One is the obvious ethical connection among the religions. It\u2019s hard to have missed one of those lists of the Golden Rule and how that rule is articulated within pretty much all religions. They all believe in equity and treating your neighbor fairly. It may feature more strongly with one tradition than another, but it\u2019s there. One can argue it is something deep within our humanity. And it is a birthing place for much of our spiritual sensibilities.<\/p>\n

For me this is a bridge between the social cohesion aspect of religions (which I rail against every now and again) and the encounter with meaning, with purpose, with ultimacy. This sense of intimacy with others, this sense of a shared and mutual obligation leaps between the specifics of culture and our deepest intimations.<\/p>\n

I also suspect this sense of fairness is probably the deeper connection driving much of today\u2019s interfaith dialogue. Reminding us of our particular religion\u2019s rule to not harm others. The idea is to feel a little closer, at least see each other\u2019s humanity, and from that to be a bit less dangerous to each other. A good thing.<\/p>\n

I strongly suspect this is rooted in two fundamental aspects of human psychology, which probably even has a biological an evolutionary basis. We seek harmony, balance, and see it manifesting as \u201cfairness.\u201d And at the very same time we have an urge to cheat, to gain an advantage for ourselves and ours. The Golden Rule address both aspects of who we are.<\/p>\n

But something more? Something about ultimacy and meaning and that love which defies death? I find it interesting that Professor Prothero actually sees one thing that all the world\u2019s religions, at least the ones he has studied, have in common. He observes \u201cWhat the world\u2019s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: something is wrong with the world.\u201d In part I suspect this intuition of wrongness is probably tied up to some degree with that cheating part of who we are as humans.<\/p>\n

The good professor goes on to list with what he acknowledges is an over simplistic schema of how religions see that \u201cwrong\u201d and their solutions. For Judaism the problem is \u201cexile,\u201d while the solution is \u201creturning home,\u201d for Christians the problem is \u201csin,\u201d and the solution is \u201csalvation,\u201d for Islam the problem is \u201cpride,\u201d and the solution is \u201csubmission.\u201d The list goes on. There is that fundamental noticing of some sort of problem in life. A lack, a wound, something missing.<\/p>\n

And out of this sense of wrong, of lack, of lostness, of wound; sometimes something happens.<\/p>\n

I believe that sense of fairness is an aspect of it. But at heart it\u2019s a discovery of our intimacy. Which we might think of as the mother of our sense of the fair. We are all of us intimate with the world and each other.<\/p>\n

And of course we also have that bit about cheating.<\/p>\n

And the discomfort in how all things are unbalanced, slightly off.<\/p>\n

And if we\u2019re curious and maybe a bit lucky, we begin a journey.<\/p>\n

Perhaps toward the secret heart of the unity of the religions\u2026<\/p>\n