religion faith pluralism

Religion has been a potent force in my life, shaping my identity, values, self-concept, and worldview. Beyond the psychological power of faith, religion has primarily served as a social mechanism in my life. I have always struggled with the more esoteric elements of faith and religion including the efficacy of theological concepts. Especially because I have been exposed now to many alternating views of what God is, how the cosmos functions and how it was formed, and the meaning of human existence, I am less sure now that any one faith, religion, or belief system holds all the answers. This course has further expanded my mind and outlook, exposing me to attitudes and approaches to worship that are totally different from any others I have experienced. Rather than muddle my mind, this course has engendered in me an appreciation for pluralism. Yet ironically, my growing interest in world religions and ecumenism has also strengthened the core of my true faith. I attribute my ability to reconcile an exclusivist heart with a pluralistic mind to several mentors and influential people in my life.
Buddha would not have evolved his faith were it not for his Hindu background, and Jesus evolved His ministry from Jewish roots. No religion sprouts out of nowhere; all are fertilized, watered, and nurtured by human history and the contributing minds and souls of believers. Therefore, this personal religious autobiography begins before I was born. My grandmother practically raised me. Because we were poor enough that both my mother and father had to work double shifts, I would come home each day to the loving home my grandmother created for my siblings, my cousins, and me. She was a pious woman. At times she was strict, but she was always loving. I owe to my grandmother a sense of firmness in my identity and a strong belief in Jesus Christ. However, my grandmother was a Seventh-Day Adventist. Although my parents inculcated their own beliefs into my world, my grandmother taught me the core precepts and practices of Seventh-Day Adventism. The practices include vegetarianism, and the precepts included service. Service is a concept that most—if not all—Christian denominations share in common with one another given the message at the heart of all of Jesus’s teachings (Hattingh, Morton, Ferret, et al., 2016). However, vegetarianism is not a Christian tradition and nor is it an American one—at least in the time and place I grew up.
My grandmother’s dietary practices made her stand out, and when friends came over, I started to realize that my grandmother’s religion also made me stand out. Even though I was not a practicing vegetarian, I could only eat vegetarian food in my grandmother’s house. It was mainly on the weekends when my parents were home, at school, or at my friends’ homes that I would eat the standard American diet filled with meat and junk food. I only had one friend who was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and he did always seem different from the other children. In retrospect I can see that his diet was one of the things that singled him out, far more than his belief system since we kids did not care to discuss the intricacies of religion at all. Seventh-Day Adventism is a unique branch of Christianity that, like the Church of Latter-Day Saints, grew out of the religious revivalism sweeping America in the nineteenth century (Lechleitner, 2013). As such, it is a new faith and a New World faith. It is American to the core, which is something I only learned recently. I also learned through this course that Seventh-Day Adventism has been instrumental and influential in spreading the message of Christ worldwide (Banta, Lee, Hodgkin, et al., 2018). Because I admired my grandmother and looked up to her, I never considered that she would have followed a faith that was so new and so unique to be labeled more a sect than a religion for many years. Now I see that her faith has infiltrated every corner of the globe and especially in parts of the world where the people are disenfranchised (Banta, Lee, Hodgkin, et al., 2018). Before this course, I had not considered the historical and political implications of a religion that made a meaningful impact on my early childhood and on my identity.
This course has reinforced my knowledge that religion, politics, and personal identity are inextricably entwined and often problematically so. For example, Huntington (1993) writes about the “clash of civilizations” that usually refers to East versus West or Muslim versus Christian societies. I have experienced and witnessed culture clashes first hand in my upbringing. My religious autobiography would not be complete without mentioning the ways different Christian sects intersected with other religions including both Judaism and Christianity.
Neither of my parents practiced Seventh-Day Adventism, but neither rejected it. They veered more towards the secular humanist in their outlook and worldview, but both did believe in the value of church for community life, for moral education, and for psychological sustenance. At the time, when I was a child, I did not appreciate the value of going to church with my parents. We attended a large Baptist Church, replete with revival meetings. I met many of my friends at church, and so I associated religion more with culture and community than with theology. Only when I was a teenager did I start to more seriously contemplate existential issues. At that time, I met someone who was from a Muslim family. I became romantically involved with the person and spent more and more time at their family home. I knew they were different but did not consider why or whether it was important. Race and class were far more pressing issues in our identity and who we were friends with than religion at that point.
Only later did I realize that being Muslim in America carries with it a certain stigma. Even before September 11, it was difficult for Muslim people to integrate fully into the mainstream society. African American Muslims, many of whom derived their belief systems from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, had their own community. It was this community in which my friend was raised, and which I was offered a special glimpse. I started to appreciate much of what I learned, especially about the core principles of Islam itself including total submission to God. I also realized that the Muslim dietary practices, while sympathetic to vegetarianism, were focused on ritual cleanliness and purity in a similar way that my grandmother used to profess. I also saw that like the Seventh Day Adventist Church (2019), service is a cornerstone of the Muslim tradition. My friend’s family also showed me that the African American community had embraced Islam as a means of political solidarity, and to create the type of self-reliance and mutual support necessary to oppose, resist, or overcome racism (“Elijah Muhammad: Biography,” n.d.). Thus, the roots of my religious pluralism must have been planted then and there when I considered that faith in Christ was not the only path by which human beings reach God.
The readings from class have pointed towards a new means by which I can conceptualize my faith. Chapters 6 and 7, for example, point towards the modern spirituality in which individuality takes precedence over dogma. Some people in my generation remain pious and committed to a specific Christian denomination. Others are more like me, suspicious of the rigidity that characterizes fundamentalism in any form: no matter what the religion. After graduating from high school, I met someone who was half Jewish and this individual also expanded my worldview and showed how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share in common history and a monotheistic belief system. We have become too quick to emphasize differences, which creates and reinforces antagonism and mistrust. I have come to believe that world peace will only be possible through mutual respect, compassion, and empathy.
The “detailed ignorance” that I freely admit to having with regards to religion is due to the divide between common practice among believers and the official doctrines that the clergy promotes. I have never converted to any other faith and nor do I plan to. However, I would convert if I met someone whose family requested it of me in order to officiate a marriage. I believe that religion is first and foremost a social institution that provides communities with cohesion and political empowerment. My experiences with a grandmother who was Seventh-Day Adventist and significant others who have been Muslim and Jewish have further entrenched in me the knowledge that all faiths and traditions are sociological in nature. We sometimes focus on the esoteric, theological, or mystical aspects of religion at the exclusion of the more pragmatic features of how religion functions in our daily lives and how it can create unity or division in society.
Yet my religious autobiography continues with my personal exploration of my own values and beliefs. Eschatology and similarly difficult topics can best be addressed with deep and consistent personal inquiry, coupled with earnest scholarly research. The readings related to Stephen Covey and the “deep fundamental truths that have universal application” show me that to locate my own truth may require that I abandon all that I thought I know (Chapter 7, p. 189). I need to become willing to be ignorant and to embrace the emptiness of not necessarily knowing why we are here or what will happen when we die. When I recently confided to a Christian friend that I was taking this course and had been considering alternative approaches to God and theology, I found myself embroiled in a heated debate. The debate reminded me that pluralism is what makes humanity as beautiful and complex as it is, and I appreciate this course for encouraging me to explore the religious dimensions of my life and my personal history.







References

Banta, J., Lee, J., Hodgkin, G., Yi, Z., Fanica, A., & Sabate, J. (2018). The Global Influence of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Diet. Religions, 9(9), 251.
“Elijah Muhammad: Biography,” (n.d.). https://www.biography.com/people/elijah-muhammad-9417458
Hattingh, S., Morton, L., Ferret, R., Petrie, K., Heise, J. A., & de Waal, K. (2016). A Qualitative Analysis of Discipleship in the Seventh-day Adventist Church: Responses to a Global and Regional Survey. Journal of Adventist Mission Studies, 12(1), 156-171.
Huntington, S.P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs.
Lechleitner, E. (2013). Seventh-day Adventist Church emerged from religious fervor of 19th Century.
Seventh-Day Adventist Church (2019). Website: https://www.adventist.org/en/