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Re-Thinking Religious Pluralism

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Religious Pluralism

Abstract

The main aim of this chapter is to make proposals for new and robust ways of conceptualising and investigating the wide variety of phenomena that fall under the heading of religious pluralism. Drawing on the growing body of literature about pluralism and diversity in numerous academic disciplines, the chapter seeks to make the case that religious pluralism and religious diversity merit careful consideration at a time of rapid change in many societies, cultures and religions. In particular, the argument is that these phenomena give rise to complex issues that require greater conceptual clarity than is evident in much of the relevant literature. The first proposal is to keep normative pluralism analytically separate from empirical diversity in studies of religion. The second is to place discussions of religious pluralism and religious diversity in the political, legal and cultural contexts in which they occur. And the third is to examine in detail the uses to which individual actors, organisations and institutions put religious diversity in everyday social settings and interactions. In combination, these three proposals promise to throw fresh light on religious pluralism and religious diversity both as objects of analysis and as features of social scientific discourses.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    My discussion takes no account of the radically different notion of ‘plural societies’ which characterized colonial regimes in which power was unevenly distributed between different categories of people identified by their so-called race. Western European and American colonial territories in South and South East Asia met the criteria of a plural society originally laid down by J.S. Furnivall (1948: 446): ‘A plural society, with different sections of the community living side by side, but separately, within the same political unit. Even in the economic sphere there is a division of labour along racial lines’.

  2. 2.

    ‘Pluralism can quickly degenerate into relativism, the view that “truths” are only true for those who believe them. Once a society stands back from the standards of a particular religion, and tries to treat all religions fairly, there are problems about whether it can accept the beliefs of all religions as of equal value.’ Trigg (2007: 1, 3).

  3. 3.

    According to Hirst (1997: 64), ‘the principle underlying a pluralist state – as conceived by J.N. Figgis, G.D.H. Cole and H.J. Laski’ would be ‘that the state exists to protect and serve the self-governing associations’.

  4. 4.

    ‘None of the tribunals has any legal status afforded to them by the state or the civil law, and their rulings and determinations in relation to marital status have no civil recognition either. They derive their authority from their religious affiliation, not from the state, and that authority extends only to those who choose to submit to them.’ Douglas et al. (2011: 48).

  5. 5.

    Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals make judgments on the basis not only of sharia but also of other Islamic sources of guidance.

  6. 6.

    ‘The doctrine of “consensual compact” means that the rules and structures of voluntary associations are binding on assenting members.’ Sandberg (2011: 188).

  7. 7.

    See Todd (2010) for a vivid account of the ‘politics of religious pluralism’ which reduced New York City’s diversity of religions to Protestant, Catholic and Jewish participation in the Temple of Religion at New York’s World’s Fair in 1939–1940.

  8. 8.

    See, for example, Beckford (1999), Bréchon and Willaime (2000), Ahmed (2005), Poole and Richardson (2006), and Clark (2007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    James A. Beckford

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  1. James A. Beckford
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Correspondence to James A. Beckford .

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  1. Department of FISPPA, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Giuseppe Giordan

  2. Department of FISPPA, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Enzo Pace

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Beckford, J.A. (2014). Re-Thinking Religious Pluralism. In: Giordan, G., Pace, E. (eds) Religious Pluralism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06623-3_2

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