Epilogue: The Future

Abstract

What can we say, from the point of view of our pluralistic hypothesis, about the future development of the religious traditions? We cannot do more than take note of existing trends and try to plot their continuation into the future. In fact we see contrary trends at work around us. On the one hand there is a marked growth of the pluralistic outlook, particularly among educated younger people. But on the other hand there is a powerful opposite trend, a wide resurgence of the ‘us against them’ attitude in the forms of both religious fundamentalism and political nationalism. Thus two different trajectories are in motion, affecting different people: one moving towards a world outlook, open to the variety of human ways of thinking and feeling; and the other retrenching into intensified allegiance to one’s own group, reaffirming its traditional values and modes of thought, and opposing a world-wide or species-wide loyalty.