Page 17 - Priorities #53 2012-June/July

17
Preface
by Matthew Nelson
In the sophomore Theology class, Morality & Social Justice, students are required to write Markings Papers, so-named after the magnum opus – Markings – of the Nobel Prize winner, diplomat, and author Dag Hammarskjöld. In the first unit of the course, students had to consider the necessity of God or not in morality. We weren’t bandying about the question whether one could be an atheist and still be moral; that is obviously a given. Rather, we were considering the deeper philosophical issue of whether one needed God – a transcendent, omni-creative, ultimate mind, “ground of all being,” force, or personality – that establishes morality as something beyond socio-psychological whimsy or human consensus. Students read articles by Cardinal Martini and Professor Umberto Eco; engaged in a debate between Evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig and Professor Louise Antony; and interfaced with other materials. In this Markings Paper assignment, students were given the following writing prompt and had to address it using the above sources: “If you believe in God, how does this belief motivate you to be good. If you do not, on what basis should you act morally?”
Pluralism & Priory
“You wouldn’t believe the controversy that your grandmother and I created in our families when we decided to marry,” my late grandfather, Arthur Nelson, told me a few years back. He went on to explain how their respective families would never unite because of the row created over their differing faiths. My grandmother, Jean, was Roman Catholic, and her side of the family could never embrace my grandfather who was Protestant. Truly indicative of my grandfather’s character – in an attempt to create peace – he pledged to my grandmother that he would attend her
Lithuanian Catholic parish
all the days of their lives.
Not that he ever gave up
the spirit of what made him
a son of the Reformation,
but he just couldn’t believe
that people of faith should
be at such odds so as to sow
dissention and division,
especially among followers
of Christ. Unfortunately he
didn’t succeed in convincing
my grandmother’s relatives
that he was Catholic enough
with his decades-long devotion; nevertheless, he kept his promise throughout their 60+ years of marriage. Arthur Nelson remained a devout Christian – Protestant and Catholic – embodying in himself the request Jesus makes to the Father for unity in John 17:21.
This vignette from my faith journey has influenced my perspective concerning religious diversity. From my vantage point, as a member of the so-called “Millennial” generation, I cannot fathom being hostile to the holy matrimony of two people – regardless of the theological, racial, socio- economic, and other differences between them. How difficult it must have been for my grandparents not to have the full support of their families for their everlasting commitment to one another. Of course such endogamy is now seen as a scourge upon people of intolerant times past for most contemporaries, and we see even many Jews and Zoroastrians rejecting this approach to the preservation of their faiths as they once did. Increasingly, because globalization has forced the issue upon the world, we must now live in communities where we can no longer avoid Earth’s vibrant religious (and other) diversity (My former professor, Diana Eck, establishes this convincingly in
her book A New Religious America). Given this reality, how then shall we live? With the memory of my grandparents in mind, I am motivated to share my Catholic Christian faith with the world in a way that respects other religious traditions and philosophical perspectives.
In all of my Theology classes I urge that we repent of our imperialist religious
exclusivism, and like many good Catholics (among them Professor Paul Knitter) work toward engagement and cooperation with, and a veritable celebration of religious diversity. Religious pluralism, as it is called, is not mere acknowledgement of diversity, or tolerance, or relativism; but it is a dynamic, authentic quest to engage with “the other”, primarily through dialog and community service work. As one of my faith heroes, a Muslim who founded the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), Eboo Patel, says: “Pluralism is building a society where people from different backgrounds can live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty.” This I believe is the way forward in order to realize more robust faith commitments within our own traditions and for the furthering of “common action for the common good” (to borrow from IFYC). Through the cultivation of religious literacy, and countenancing religious diversity amongst the student body and encounters with religious difference in chapel, guest speakers, and media, Priory students are becoming young men and women who are ready to grow in their spirituality through (not in spite of) the religious pluralism that swirls all about them.
Continued on page 19
My grandmother, Jean, was Roman Catholic, and her side of the family could never embrace my grandfather who was Protestant.