“What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point.

They begin with this simple observation: something is wrong with the world.”

~ Stephen Prothero

 

Every Unitarian Universalist seminarian has to traverse an enchanted (or maybe haunted?) forest of hoops and red tape before being admitted into ministerial fellowship.

 

One such hoop is The Required Reading List, which contains – currently – eighty-eight books that every aspiring minister has to digest and, at the gatekeepers’ request, summarize or analyze.

 

The specific books on The Required Reading List come and go like so many theological flavors of the year, but for a very long time one of the books perched on that list was The World’s Religions written by renowned religion scholar Huston Smith. (My colleague Scott guesses that this book “rests on more UU congregational library shelves than the Bible.”¹)

 

It’s not just several generations of UU ministers who’ve been schooled in Huston Smith’s approach to the religions of the world. You’ve probably heard and even repeated his most famous metaphor without even knowing it: all religions are different paths up the same mountain; at the top, “the same god beckons.”

 

All religions point to the same God, and to the same goal – what a rosy-hued assertion, born of a lovely open-mindedness and acceptance. It’s a belief that lives strong. Modern religious luminaries like the Dalai Lama and Karen Armstrong have echoed and reshaped this sentiment, spreading a hope-saturated message about the “one-ness” of all religions:²

 

“Sweet harmony of peace, love, and understanding... [are] at the heart of every religion.”³

 

If that’s too touchy-feely for you, remember that the so-called New Atheists have their own counterpoint to the cheery “it’s all the same mountain” image: **core of New Atheist thought *** they believe that all religions are equally dangerous and false.⁴ I disagree with the New Atheists that all religion is poppycock but – well, it’s a good thing that Unitarian Universalists can’t be brought up on heresy charges, because otherwise I’d be put on trial for what I’m about to say – I’ve also come to disagree with Huston Smith, Karen Armstrong, and the Dalai Lama. I don’t believe that all religions share the same goal and the same God. I don’t think that’s helpful to meaningful interfaith dialogue.

 

“What we need on this furiously religious planet,” says religion scholar Stephen Prothero, “is a realistic view of where religious rivals clash and where they can cooperate.”⁵ In his compelling book, The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World – and Why Their Differences Matter, Prothero argues that the world’s religions are not alike; that they’re not at all paths winding up the same mountain to the same God, who’s just given different names.

 

“Godthink” is the label Prothero gives to the impulse to view different religions as either all bad or all alike at their core. The notion that all religions are a fool’s playground, as the New Atheists claim, is “Godthink” – naive in both his eyes, and mine. The notion that the world’s religions are the same is just as naive, he claims, even though it’s born of good intentions because “when it comes to religion, we desperately want everyone to get along.”⁶

 

And yet: as he puts it, “the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking and has not made the world a safer place.”⁷ In fact, it’s “dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.”8 “Pretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer... Tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually know something about whomever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting.”⁹

 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting harmony and religious unity. Every card-carrying liberal wants that more than a Prius in every driveway. We human beings find meaning, especially in times of stress, by seeking common ground. It is a good instinct. And: religions are far more complex and multi-faceted than mere “belief systems,”10 says Prothero, because “odd as this might sound, faith and belief don’t matter much in most religions. Often ritual is far more important. When it comes to religion, we are more often what we do than what we think.”¹¹

 

How can we understand different religions, then, if it’s unwise to lump them all onto the same mountain? Here’s Prothero’s approach, which he calls “admittedly simplistic.”¹²

 

“The world’s religions share... this simple observation: something is wrong with the world;”¹³ it’s the  something” that differs. Each religion – he delves into nine – “attempts to solve a different human problem.” Each religion’s solution to that central problem includes prescribed techniques and exemplars “who chart this path from problem to solution.”¹⁴

 

Here are four examples: € in Christianity, the problem is sin; the solution (or goal) is salvation € in Buddhism, the problem is suffering; the goal is nirvana, or awakening; the technique is the Noble Eightfold Path€ in Islam, the problem is self-sufficiency, “the hubris of acting as if you can get along without God;” the solution is ¹⁵ obedience and the technique is the Five Pillars of action € in Judaism, the problem is exile (“distance from God”¹⁶); the solution is to return to God by following the law.

 

As a thought experiment, my colleague Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle¹⁷ tried applying this approach to Unitarian Universalism: for him, the human problem – the “something” that’s wrong with the world – is division (or disconnect), and the solution is unity (or connection).

 

If, as Prothero suggests, every religion has its own technique for solving the problem it sees in the world, then we UU’s create connection through dialogue, respect, understanding, and compassion – all of which our world sorely needs these days.

€

“At the dawn of the twentieth century,” Stephen Prothero writes, W.E.B. DuBois prophesied that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” The events of 9/11 and beyond suggest that

the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the religion line.¹⁸

 

Last fall, in the lead-up to the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, others far more eloquent and insightful than I offered pages & pages (or gigabytes & gigabytes) of reflections about what it means that The World As We Know It was changed by four hijacked airplanes.

 

In this sermon, I’m in no way implying that the events of September 11th, 2001 represent “Islam” any more than Mitt Romney’s view of women’s bodies represents Christianity.

 

Both are corrupted extremes of broad, longstanding faith traditions. Let’s admit it: drama of any kind, including religious drama, turns us all into rubberneckers. Shifting our focus to the drama on the fringe, however compelling, means that we run the risk of overlooking the dignified majority who, devoid of harm, live out quiet, faith-filled lives.

 

So when I ask you to consider the danger of painting all religions as similar or sharing the same core message, I’m naming “the problem of the religion line.” I’m naming the larger container of what it means to live in a world where religion has become a tool of violence: violence inflicted in many different forms, onto many diverse victims, held in place by a variety of worldviews.

 

We – not just we Unitarian Universalists, or Californians or even we Americans, but we, the members of the interconnected human tribe – are being called to a new way of engaging with the hurts inflicted by people who use religion as a weapon.

 

Did radical fundamentalist Muslims use religion as a weapon ten years ago? Sure. But I also believe that when a presidential candidate boasts about how many inmates in his state have been executed – and when the audience applauds those 234 deaths – religion is being used as a weapon.

 

I believe that when multiple president-wanna-be’s promise to remove support for the most fragile and at-risk people in our communities, claiming that their economic plan pleases God, religion is being used as a weapon.

When loving same-sex couples are told that they don’t matter, that they’re broken and unworthy of the basic rights that heterosexual couples have, religion is being used as a weapon.

 

I could go on and on, but none of us wants to leave here today with the seeds of despair stuck between our figurative teeth. Suffice it to say that I agree whole-heartedly with Stephen Prothero when he says, “To reckon with the world as it is, we need religious literacy”¹⁹ – not just to denounce and judge, but “to know something about the basic beliefs and practices of the world’s religions.”

 

As UU’s we don’t need people to agree on their beliefs, or share the same practices. Our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of other beliefs/practices is understanding why those beliefs are so, and why. We UU’s have the tools to keep doing this difficult, **faith-filled*** work.

 

Something is wrong with the world. What we believe (more or less) is that problem is rupture, division, disconnect. The solution is to connect, to repair, to foster understanding, to try to get along – because the alternative is bleak. The way to connect is through wise dialogue, unwavering respect, a no-nonsense commitment to integrity, and maybe some humor to light the way.

 

As you move through this interesting and complicated world, keep bearing witness to what you know to be true; to what brings you connection and hope.

 

Know your own solution to the problems that dog us, as a human family; and never lose faith that you are a vessel for connection, for understanding; for bringing more love and more justice into the world.

 

May it be so.

 

 

Endnotes

 

1. Rev. Scott Wells, on his “Boy in the Bands” blog: http://boyinthebands.com/archives/summer-reading-huston-smith/

2. See http://dannyfisher.org/2010/07/08/robert-thurman-weighs-in-on-the-all-religions-are-paths-up-the-same-mountain-god-is-not-one-debate/

3. Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One, p. 2.

4. “New Atheists” include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.

5. Prothero, p. 4.

6. Prothero, p. 4.

7. Prothero, p. 3.

8. Prothero, p. 2.

9. Prothero, p. 4-5.

10. Prothero, p. 21.

11. P. 69.

12. Prothero, p. 15.

13. P. 11.

14. Prothero, p. 14.

15. Prothero, p. 32.

16. P. 253.

17. On a Facebook discussion thread, long ago.

18. Prothero, p. 11. In his own endnote, Prothero notes, “I first heard this argument from Eboo Patel.” I ask you: is there no shortage to the ways in which Eboo is awesome?

19. Prothero, p. 337.