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Perspectives - Religious pluralism in America: Past, present, future
J. Coert Rylaarsdam
Sometimes we say a cultural and religious pluralism ». I like that better. Not only is it inevitable and proper that a community rooted in a faith should produce a characteristic cultural result, whether in social institutions, folkways, or art forms. What we are saying when we talk about pluralism in America is that we welcome and take for granted such multiple and different spiritual sources in our common life. Pluralism in this sense is very new on the scene; to talk about its a past » is to talk about yesterday, really. Up to yesterday we talked about « tolerance ». But there is a world of difference between tolerance and pluralism. It is our intention here to spell that out.
PLURALISM VS. TOLERANCE
The American plant has a plural root system: Jewish roots, Roman Catholic roots and Protestant roots. All are indigenous; and the lives of each of us are shaped, at least to some extent, by the entire complex.
In the American vocabulary of self-understanding, pluralism » is still a very new term. It came into its own with the presidency of John F. Kennedy. That presidency illustrated that America is not a Protestant country, as distinct from a Jewish country or a Roman Catholic one. Pluralism implies that everyone belongs, that all faiths belong, and that none belongs less or more than the other. To use another image, no one is a guest, however welcome or appreciated; all live here. And therefore all are responsible for the common enterprise; we are all accountable for the outcome. We are more intimately a part of one another under pluralism than we were before. It is a two-way relationship with a new emphasis; it is no longer simply a matter of how the u It » will deal with us, whether as Jews or Evangelicals or Catholics; we are an organic part of the It.
Pluralism is something new; it is not a synonym for u tolerance ». It says something else, something new. Far be it from me to downgrade tolerance; it was a good and necessary stage in our national development. But, by definition, it lacked the mutuality of pluralism. To treat them synonymously is to betray sloppy analysis and thought.
Spiritually speaking, the center of our national life before pluralism was in the singular, not in the plural. However camouflaged, ti tolerance » carried the notion of host and guests that is wiped out by u pluralism ». In the American story, for Roman Catholic and for Jew, PLURALISM announces an equality in privilege and responsibility that mere tolerance did not imply. We are co-equal members in a common household. Out responsibility for the entire enterprise we call America is greater now, and it is shared, so rights and responsibilities are more closely interwoven than ever before. My very close, long-term relationships with both the Jewish and Catholic communities permit me to say, I hope, that — at least psychologically — the transition from the experience and situation of tolerance to that of pluralism is still in process. Some of the concerns of this conference reminded me of that. It is hardly surprising that it should be so. Tolerance had such a long history; PLURALISM is still so new. For Protestants the transition is very different but equally incomplete, or more so. Besides, the change is tremendous and fundamental. t, Pluralism t. is not just a happier term fora tolerance *. That is why I have begun with this long analysis of the difference.
GROWTH OF TOLERANCE IN AMERICA
My assigned topic specifies Past, Present, Future. I began with the present to stress the distinctively novel character and implications of pluralism. But now we must turn to the past, to take a careful look at the nature of the long process that provided the setting for the change in the present that we have already been talking about. That is, we must review the story of tolerance. Like the story of the Magna Carta, at the outset it is a story of distinctly limited facts and provisions, but with ever-expanding potentials and always-widening applications. Thus, while in principle there is a profound discontinuity between tolerance and pluralism, the final forms of the former are virtually indistinguishable from those in which the latter expresses itself.
Jews often eulogize our land by saying: « America always was different.* That is true, especially in the sense that the story of tolerance was a part of the story of America from its earliest colonial beginnings. It is also true in the sense that it has probably flowered more fully here than anywhere else. And perhaps only here did it come to that full fruition that prepared the way for pluralism. But the story of tolerance in the post-Reformation world had its beginnings in Europe.
You all know the story of the boatload of Jewish refugees from South America that docked in New Amsterdam. They were our first Jewish immigrants, and there was a great debate as to whether they would be granted residence. The pastors of New Amsterdam and their more conservative parishioners had great reservations, and the local representative of the Dutch West India Company designated as the governor of the little settlement seems to have shared these to some extent. But the directors of the company in Amsterdam overrode the objections; the Jewish refugees were admitted as permanent immigrants. Tolerance had won a victory in the new world, but the victory rested on instructions from Amsterdam.
What made it happen? Were there new developments in Christian theology? a new vision of Christian-Jewish relations? Certainly nothing official, and at the outset, nothing unofficial either. Theology seldom changes anything; it only rationalizes what has already happened. To the best of my knowledge, theologians and Church were not consulted on the decision. It was made by the practically minded officials of the mercantile company. An ad hoc ruling, non-ideological and pragmatic, to further the over-all interests of the company and of the nation it represented. What made it happen? Secularization made it happen. That, I think, is the key to the story of tolerance and its progress for the next three and a half centuries.
By using the term « secular I do not want to impugn the spiritual meaning or value of the story. As I use it, the word does not refer to some denial of the omnipresence of the Divine Mystery, nor its working and purpose in all human enterprises. I use it simply to point to the fact that in the modern age the new orders of life that developed — mercantilism and international trade, scientific inquiry and technology, and political nationalism, to name three — were not defined in ultimate ideological terms, and progressively they lay beyond the control of those who spoke in such terms. They developed simply as human enterprises with a significance relative to their human context. They lived a quasi-autonomous life, practical, and guided by common sense. Over the centuries, by following this course, they transformed human existence in innumerable ways, including that of the custodians of the legacies of religious faith and of their communities.
All religious communities had to come to terms with the new realities that began to emerge in the seventeenth century. I have recently read Irving Howe's tremendous work, The World of Our Fathers. Nothing in that book moved me as profoundly as the anguish of devout, semi-literate immigrants from Eastern Europe with an essentially medieval mentality, suddenly confronted by the a secularity » of the American scene that had been three centuries in the making before they came. How could one be religious in such a world, they asked. Their aggiornamento was far more traumatic than that of Vatican II, let alone the step by step adjustments that punctuate the Protestant story.
The story of tolerance is really the story of coming to terms with the cosmopolitanism that modern life demands. Tolerance of the Jew as an equal is not a part of the classical Christian heritage, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. But, given the facts of modern life, for both tolerance became the key to inter-faith relations between Christians and Jews. And both began progressively to annotate their respective traditions to rationalize the change. Precisely because this began earlier in the countries that planted colonies here, and because it was pursued more thoughtfully, the story of toleration had its most fruitful flowering in America.
What I have been saying by implication is that in the story of the progress in tolerance, the active role was played by what for want of a better term we have called the secular powers and forces in the modern age. The institutional expression of religion, Protestant no less than Catholic, was sometimes opposed to tolerance; there were scattered remnants of that even in colonial America. And at best it played a passive role of accommodation. That reminds me again of the episode in New Amsterdam.
After the Dutch had won their independence and established their republic they enjoyed their Golden Age in the seventeenth century. They confirmed their freedom in an amazing burst of commerce, technology, invention, art, science and exploration. Religiously the little state had many strands. There were humanists and Calvinists, as well as other sects farther left. There were Roman Catholics and there were Jews. Religiously, there was no majority. No religious authority could impose its will without destroying the common life. All were needed for its success. And, with whatever misgivings, all groups wanted to further that. God might be a Calvinist or an Erasmian, a Catholic or a Jew; above all, he was Dutch. lie demanded inter-faith tolerance. So, soon, the Catholics could worship without fear, whatever the laws on the books; Jews could build a beautiful synagogue, though their civil rights were not yet defined; and religious exiles from many lands found a refuge. All of that in what was then and still is, in many ways, an intensely and contentiously religious country. Eventually the whole permissive system was exported to England, complete with prince. There it established itself in the so-called « Glorious Revolution J> of 1689. The results were similar: soon Non-conformist and Catholic could worship again without fear of arrest, though some disabilities lingered. Jews were given official permission to return. They were equals in the economic order, if nowhere else. God was still mostly an Anglican, but other ways of being English were allowed. Toleration had won. It flowered and bore its richest fruit in America, but as a proven principle in inter-faith relations, it was a colonial immigrant.
PLURALISM: PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE
So much for the past. What of the future? To begin to talk about the future, I think we must consider very carefully the implications that are inherent in the novel character of our new-born self-understanding in the present. To discuss the future we must put tolerance on the back burner, so to speak, and think in terms of religious pluralism. We must soft-pedal the « secular processes a bit and focus on each other as communities of faith.
We have seen that in the long story that marked the progress towards tolerance, the secular forces played the active role; institutional religion, especially in situations in which it was asked to make concessions, was reluctant, or, at best, passive. It spent a good deal of its time « catching up >> with the inevitable; that is, it produced very important theological thinking by coming to terms with or justifying what had, in effect, already happened. (One splendid example that comesto mind is the Declaration on Religious Freedom promulgated by Vatican Council II. [That document, incidentally, may read like a rationalization of the American scene to Americans, but it simultaneously plays the role of a pioneering statement in some other societies.])
Since the so-called secularizing forces played the active role, in the story of tolerance there was little room for theological dialogue. There was very little basic exchange between religious faiths as such, or between a faith and the secular forces that created the new scene. Each faith, by itself, struggled to protect its integrity in its confrontation with perspectives of a relativistic sort, not rooted in the Ultimate Mystery; and sometimes tolerance seemed to betray all perspectives of faith. Quite naturally, both those insisting on the inclusive, democratic American way and those seeking acceptance and equality on the basis of it — the secularist and the Roman Catholic, or the secularist and the Jew —insisted on using the American Constitution as the platform for their discussion. That was understandable, right and proper. But it also meant that there was little or no meaningful exchange between Catholic and Protestant, or between Jew and Christian. Each faith won its acceptance by itself, by measuring itself against the national secular standard. Christian and Jew met as .. . Americans.
Would it be true to say that pluralism brings an end to that kind of singularity? If pluralism is an actual reality at all, no one is any longer a mere guest; we are all hosts, keepers of a shared household, with shared responsibilities. If, as we said at the outset, pluralism means that our common national and cultural life is watered from multiple spiritual springs, there would seem to be a reason for a mutual exchange between the respective faiths in this plurality that did not exist before. But it may be that with respect to some of the most important issues we are not yet ready for inter-faith dialogues, possibly because we lack even provisional answers to the questions that seem most pressing. In any case, it is most urgent that we then clarify our own respective thinking about inter-faith relationships. For better or worse, our role in the whole society is fixed: our relations to each other are vital.
I want to become specific about this by means of an example. I think that for a Christian who professes a religious pluralism that includes Judaism the most urgent question is whether he, as a Christian, can acknowledge what I would call the «spiritual legitimacy,' of the Jewish vocation in an ultimate sense. Do the waters of Judaism that mingle with the Christian waters in the pluralism of our common life contribute something distinctive without which our common life would be impoverished? That Jews enormously enrich American life in many, many ways no right-thinking Christian would deny; can he also acknowledge that this is the living fruit and evidence of an eternal covenant whose validity and mission endures for all time, in its own right? Can the Christian use the popular hyphenated adjective . Judaeo-Christian » not as a short-cut for a linear story in which the older is subsumed in the younger, but as the metaphor for two separate but related spiritual movements, each with its beginning and end hidden in the Divine Mystery? Such are the disturbing, sometimes revolutionary, theological questions now engaging serious study circles in the Christian world. I think that the character and endurance of religious pluralism in the future will depend on whether and how Christians en masse eventually answer those questions.
If this series of questions just cited is answered as I hope and pray it will be, a number of things would follow;
1) Christianity would cease to be a source of nourish. ment for anti-Semitism, whatever its shape and form might be and wherever it might show itself. The traditional Christian teaching that, as a faith, Judaism is at best superfluous and at worst an affront to the Christian God, has probably supplied ten times as much fuel for anti-Semitism as all other sources combined. If Christians can find a theological way of saying de hde that, far from being superfluous, Judaism is a chosen instrument of God, with a divine mission, anti-Semitism will suffer a mortal blow. Not only that, an honest exchange between the two faiths would become possible.
2) Again, if this series of questions is answered as I hope, the ever-recurrent Christian campaigns for the conversion of Jews to Christianity would cease. Without forfeiting its universality, any more than Judaism does, Christianity would once and for all abjure its imperialism. The old imperial slogan that # there is salvation in no other name ;> would be read again for what it originally was: a personal testimony of faith by a joyful believer to his fellows in the faith.
3) Once more, in the third place, if these questions are answered along the lines indicated, the meaning of Israel for Christians will be transformed. I mean the State of Israel. Christians are favorably disposed to Israel, perhaps as favorably as Americans in general. But their attitudes, at least insofar as they are formally stated, rest on secular and purely humanitarian foundations; usually they derive no input from Christian faith as such. That is, they do not often contain a dimension only the Christian can provide. Yes, a people that has suffered so much is entitled to a secure homeland. Yes, there is something inspiring about the tenacity, commitment, and accomplishments of this little people. Yes, Israel is a shining example of democracy in a corner of the world where there are no other democracies that work. And so on. Very seldom, among Christians, does one find an appreciation of Israel that hints at its meaning as an illustration of a theme of Jewish faith. Perhaps, in part, it is also very rare that Jewish circles feature such illustrations in expositions of the State of Israel meant for gentile or Christian audiences. Just this last spring the chairman of my department, a Jesuit with a doctorate in the Hebrew Bible earned at Brandeis, called me into his office. He was elated; he had just read Abraham Heschel's Israel: An Echo o/ Eternity. a Why isn't there more of that? he asked. ‘ Why duplicate the stuff I can read in Newsweek? I had to remind him that in our feelings and convictions he and I were members of a rather small minority among Christians and that its status was quite « unofficial n. « On the basis of official declarations and actions, how would Jews know that there are Christians for whom Heschel's `. . . Echo of Eternity' really gets at the meaning of Israel? at its meaning for Christians?
4) If this series of questions is eventually answered, dialogue can begin.
What I have been saying is that the future of our newly achieved religious pluralism depends on the development of dialogue between our faiths. And I have been making the point that Christians have still to formulate theological images of Judaism that would make dialogue possible. Vatican II's statement on the Jews, and many like it, has carried the day among Christians; Jews are not an accursed people. So far, so good. But, then, what are they? The answer to that question is still in the making, and upon it depends the dialogue which should be the substance of religious pluralism in the future. In the meantime Christians still tend to linger in the secular arena which was the scene of the action in the era of tolerance.
In conclusion, and very briefly, please indulge me as I reverse the angle of vision. I am not sure that Judaism, at least as represented by this conference and its agenda, does not also linger in the secular arena that was so central for the era of tolerance, even though we both profess to have entered the era of pluralism. If Christians are theologically unprepared for pluralism, as I think they are, it is possible, I think, that Jews are psychologically and sociologically unprepared for it. Given the history of the interrelationship between the two communities of faith, the lack of readiness should evoke no great surprise in either case. Nevertheless, it is of the greatest importance. To draw attention to that, I have stressed the basic difference in principle between the era of tolerance and that of religious pluralism.
This paper was delivered at the plenary session of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, June 28, 1976.
Dr. J. Coert Rylaarsdam, an academic specialist in the Hebrew Scriptures, is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in America, presently teaching in the Theology Department of Marquette University, Milwaukee, U.S.A.
