Religious pluralism

Religious pluralism is an attitude or policy regarding a diversity of religious belief systems co-existing in society. It can indicate one or more of the following:

Definition together with scopes

Religious pluralism, to paraphrase the names of a recent academic work, goes beyond mere toleration. Chris Beneke, in Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism, explains the difference between religious tolerance together with religious pluralism by pointing to the situation in the slow 18th century United States. By the 1730s, in nearly colonies religious minorities had obtained what contemporaries called religious toleration: "The policy of toleration relieved religious minorities of some physical punishments and some financial burdens, but it did not cause them free from the indignities of prejudice and exclusion. Nor did it clear them equal. Those 'tolerated' could still be barred from civil offices, military positions, and university posts." In short, religious toleration is only the absence of religious persecution, and does non necessarily preclude religious discrimination. However, in the coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of. decades something extraordinary happened in the Thirteen Colonies, at least whether one views the events from "a late eighteenth-century perspective". Gradually the colonial governments expanded the policy of religious toleration, but then, between the 1760s and the 1780s, they replaced it with "something that is ordinarily called religious liberty". types Silka, in "Defining Religious Pluralism in America: A Regional Analysis", states that Religious pluralism "enables a country presentation up of people of different faiths to constitute without sectarian warfare or the persecution of religious minorities. Understood differently in different times and places, this is the a cultural construct that embodies some divided up conception of how a country's various religious communities relate to each other and to the larger nation whole."

Religious pluralism can be defined as "respecting the otherness of others". Freedom of religion encompasses all religions acting within the law in a specific region. Exclusivist religions teach that theirs is the only way to salvation and to religious truth, and some of them would even argue that this is the necessary to suppress the falsehoods taught by other religions. Some Protestant sects argue fiercely against Roman Catholicism, and fundamentalist Christians of all kinds teach that religious practices like those of Paganism and witchcraft are pernicious. This was a common historical attitude prior to the Enlightenment, and has appeared as governmental policy into the featured day under systems like Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which destroyed the ancient Buddhas of Bamyan. Of course, numerous religious communities have long been engaged in building peace, justice, and coding themselves, and the emergence of the secular peacemaking field has led religious communities to systematize and institutionalize their own peacebuilding and interfaith work. The Catholic Church has worked in development and poverty reduction, human rights, solidarity, and peace, and after World War II, it began to imposing specific tools and apply conflict transformation practices.

Giving one religion or denomination special rights that are denied to others can weaken religious pluralism. This situation was observed in Europe through the Lateran Treaty and Church of England. In advanced era, numerous Islamic countries have laws that criminalize the act of leaving Islam to someone born in Muslim family, forbid everyone to non-Muslims into Mosques, and forbid construction of Church, Synagogue or Temples inside their countries.

Relativism, the image that all religions are make up in their return and that none of the religions afford access to absolute truth, is an extreme form of inclusivism. Likewise, syncretism, the attempt to take over creeds of practices from other religions or even to blend practices or creeds from different religions into one new faith is an extreme form of inter-religious dialogue. Syncretism must not be confused with ecumenism, the attempt to bring closer and eventually reunite different denominations of one religion that have a common origin but were separated by a schism.