Asian Perspectives on Theological Pluralism

Pluralism and Religious Harmony

Singapore is a small island at the end of the Malay Peninsula with a population of immigrants from China, South India and North India. In addition there are the local ethnic Malay. As a result of this mix, Singapore identifies itself as being a multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-linguistic society. The government has great pride in this identification, but there is also great concern. Religious and ethnic violence periodically breaks out in the world, and has even done so in Singapore (1950s), so the government must be ever vigilant to ensure religious harmony. It was with this concern in mind that the government brought forward a very controversial bill in December of 1989 which gave the “Internal Security Department” (ISD) free reign to intervene in religious community affairs if their affairs were thought to be threatening to the religious harmony (social order) of the country. It was interesting to see how the various religious communities responded. By and large, the Hindu and Buddhist communities, thanked the government for its vigilance and concern for religious harmony. The fairly small Sikh community voiced some concern, but it was the Muslim and Christian communities which voiced serious concern through representation in parliament. This issue roused the generally passive Christian community to meet, discuss, pray and voice concern to the government. Why is this?

Islam, Sikhism and Christianity all have a political and social dimension to their religious calling. Islam and Christianity are both missionary faiths: what they believe to be true is of universal significance and therefore it should be promoted. Hinduism and Buddhism, on the other hand are generally “other-worldly” faiths, with no essential agenda for this world. These simplistic distinctions were proven to be true in the political arena in Singapore. For our concerns here, we should note that the Christians acted just like we might expect followers of Christ to act. Christian leaders could not allow Christian faith to be merely a private practice of ritual, and so they spoke out about the social and political dimensions expressed in education, medical work and evangelism. These are all essential elements for a community named after the historic founder of the faith, who died, we might say, because he was a threat to the social order. Singapore is a pluralistic nation, and Christians live in that pluralist society, and yet faithfulness to Jesus Christ has meant the imprisonment of some, exile of others and questioning by the ISD of others. Life would be much easier for Christians in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and most other Asian countries if they would make one minor adjustment in their confession. If Christians would simply confess Jesus is a Lord rather than the Lord, then the Singapore government wouldn’t have to worry so much about this growing community and the Christians’ propensity to follow an outside authority.

My interest in this paper is to show that the modern debate of pluralism must be carried out on a global scale, more specifically from the context of Asia. The western church needs this broadening of the context of the pluralism debate to help move the discussion forward. At the present positions are clearly labeled. Exclusivists believe that people are saved only through a clear confession of Jesus Christ. Inclusivists believe that people are only saved by Jesus Christ, but Jesus saves even through other religions and traditions; all are included in Jesus’ salvific work. Pluralists believe that there are many paths to salvation and following Jesus is one of them. In this heated debate an arsenal of articles has been written from all sides and the vast chasm separating the parties threatens to divide the western church over the person of Jesus. This western church division will be a tragic curiosity to the churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and it will divide down the middle of our denominations in the West. For the future of western Christianity the Asian perspective is needed. Another reason the Asian perspective is needed is historical: the debate and many of the ideas originally came from Asia (specifically South Asia and to a lesser degree East Asia). The experience of religious pluralism is relatively new to the West, but it is an ancient and complex reality in Asia. In fact the experience of pluralism is normative for Asian Christian communities. For too long we have been listening to our own voices regarding pluralism. It is time we listen to the Asian Christian tradition to gain the perspective of those who have only known Christian faith in a pluralistic context.

Pluralism Defined

Pluralism came into the English language in its earliest usage as a religious term in the 17th and 18th centuries (plurality of benefices and “plurality of wives and gods”). Its usage expanded in the 19th century to be used as a philosophical term (“the knowable world is made up of a plurality of interacting things”) and later as a political term (in reaction to totalitarian governments in Europe). In this century it has been used as a sociological term (“cultural pluralism is a controversial expression”) and then once again as a religious term (our special concern). We are much indebted to the Oxford English Dictionary.

And yet we must pause and note that pluralism has really been used in two ways: one descriptive (what is) and one prescriptive (what ought to be). In the 17th and 18th centuries plurality of benefices described a real practice, but it was not a good practice. It was not a prescription for how churches should be ordered, but it was a problem of church order which gave too much power to one person. When pluralism began to be used philosophically it began to take on a more prescriptive character: this is how we must understand reality. Today we have both uses. Pluralism describes the context of the Christian communities in Asia (and now in Birmingham and Boston). But pluralism is also a call to inclusion of all faiths as equally valid paths to salvation. It is used to prescribe how we should think, act and even worship. For Christians in Asia pluralism has always described their context for life and mission. But until recently Asian Christians were not told that this plurality required an end to their efforts to include all in the kingdom of God. Their pluralistic reality necessitated evangelistic endeavor, it did not preclude proclamation.

In the development of the term pluralism it has always referred to “more than one contained in one.” Or inversely pluralism has expressed “the one expressed in more than one way.” Pluralism today has become a major literary theme in light of the breakdown of western world dominance in the 20th century. Western Progressivism of the 19th century had as its declared goals both the civilizing of the non-western world and the Christianizing of its people. Although there were many tensions in these two goals, they existed together as the assured historical trajectory. All people would advance through “modern” learning, science and politics. As Western Colonialism neared collapse in the 20th century and the ideas and practices of the imperial lands returned to the West, new ways of thinking about the plurality of cultures were needed. As with most all theological movements we must acknowledge that the genesis of this discussion of pluralism is found on the missionary frontier of the church. Missionaries were exposed to these pluralities for centuries, but this was exposure while in power. When the back of Western Colonialism was broken there was a revisiting of the plurality of cultures and religions, but now in the West: The Empire Strikes Back. Not only the visit of the engaging Swami Vivekenanda at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, but also the many other Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Chinese religionists traveling to the West and studying in the West challenged normative interpretations of other religions. Modern Western Pluralism is a product of the missionary enterprise.

Asian Context of Religious Pluralism

Modern religious pluralism as a theology accepts the religious or salvific importance of all religions as equally valid. Thus, religions which have exclusive claims to salvation must be reinterpreted or revisualized from the purely secular point of view. Religions are understood to be the human attempt to apprehend what God has done and is doing in this world. Revelation from God is general, open to all as experienced in creation, and is then “rationalized” and eventually institutionalized in various cultural forms. As long as a people have only their own religious understanding of the mystery of God there is little problem; this is the way to God. But when other religious systems become known and appreciated, the absoluteness of one’s own religion must either be jettisoned, reinterpreted or proclaimed. The Christian project of pluralism, a project born in the 1960s (the “Secular Decade”) and developed in the 1970s, has followed the middle path: reinterpreting Christian theology, language and tradition. Again, this process began, as we are told, because of the contact with Asian religions.

John Hick, arguably the father of Christian pluralism, tells it very clearly in his autobiographical statements in a number of his publications. Hick describes his conversion to Christianity through evangelical friends in InterVarsity Fellowship in England, but found the theology too “small.” After the war, with all of the experience of suffering and evil he made a physical, social and religious move. “A move at that time to Birmingham, England, with its large Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities as well as its older Jewish community, made this problem a live and immediate one.”1 In another publication he explains further, “[I was]….drawn into some of the practical problems of religious pluralism. I now no longer find it possible to proceed as a Christian theologian as though Christianity were the only religion in the world.”2 Paul Knitter, author of No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions” makes similar comments about his pilgrimage. “For the past twenty years or so, I have felt no small problem in integrating what I have learned and experienced from other faiths with what I have learned from traditional Christian doctrines, especially concerning the uniqueness and finality of Christ and Christianity.”3 The encounter with religions, the major Asian religions, has necessitated a rethinking of exclusive claims of Christianity and therefore of the Christ of Christian tradition.

For these, and we might add most, western theologians, the new interactions with other world religions creates a new context which challenges western dogmatic assumptions about Christ. The central issue is the identity of Jesus Christ. Thus, the theology of pluralism is wedded very closely to the 19th century search for the historical Jesus. If one remains committed to the Christian tradition then the biblical record can not be dismissed. But the biblical record is so rigid, narrow and exclusive. Hick outlines the theological move which seems to be a logical necessity of Christian pluralism in the preface to his volume, God and the Universe of Faiths.

In this field the most difficult problem for the Christian is to reconcile his allegiance to the person of Christ, by whom he is irrevocably grasped, with his awareness of God’s saving activity beyond the borders of Christendom. Two main paths offer themselves. A way that has often been taken is to give the idea of incarnation an adjectival instead of a substantive interpretation. One can then speak of divine incarnation in varying degrees in the great prophets, saints and seers of all ages. However, I prefer, in chapter 11, to reformulate the doctrine of the incarnation in its full traditional meaning and then to ask in chapter 12, to what logical category this doctrine belongs. I suggest that it is a mythic expression of the experience of salvation through Christ, and as such it is not to be set in opposition to the myths of other religions as if myths were literally true-or-false assertions. This option involves seeing Jesus as a human being rather than as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life. Such a view of him coincides with the conclusions of a growing number of New Testament, patristic and theological scholars today, and the realization that the notion of divine incarnation is a mythological idea of great historical power and importance is now fairly widespread.4

We quote this passage at length because it is one of the most succinct explanations of the theological move from Christian exclusivism to pluralism in light of the modern context of Asian religions. The biblical record stands, but it is reinterpreted not as historic fact (Jesus did not claim preexistence or identity with God) but as a metaphor developed by the early community. This, so the explanation goes, is ancient religious language of adoration and elevation of a community’s prophetic leader to the status of divinity.5 Even though Christians have lived in pluralistic religious environments since the time of Christ, the modern experience is seen as a “new fact” of our time. The newness of the fact needs to be clarified. What is new is that the “great” religions of Asia now have major communities in the West and at a time when the Christian communities are weakening and dying. In earlier centuries, as Christianity grew in Europe and America, there were other religious communities present, but they were overwhelmed being both culturally and militarily dominated by Christendom. Now Christian presence is weakening in the West and non-Christian religions appear to be vital and growing. This is the new fact.

The Asian church is far more experienced with challenges presented by competing truth claims and the struggles for identity when living in a multi-religious society. Asian churches in most countries today are thriving by most any measurement of “growth.” They are involved in movements of nation-building, continuing efforts to increase literacy and education, establishing new Bible colleges and seminaries and baptizing new Christians at a rate far faster than was the case under Western Colonialism. There are three themes we would like to develop in gleaning insights on religious pluralism from the perspective of the Asian church. First we will look at minority community identity. Except in the Philippines, Christians in every Asian country live as a minority community. In western Europe practicing Christians have become a minority recently. This shift has occurred at the same time that Asian religions have exhibited new vitality. The minority status of Christian life is a central issue in discussing pluralism. Secondly we will look at the Asian Christian existence as a suffering community. As minority communities throughout the world know, periods or even cycles of violence, oppression and persecution mark their existence. We will look at the nature of this suffering from a theological perspective as communities of the suffering servant. Finally we will look at Asian Christian mission as witness in bold humility.6 One cannot afford to represent the suffering Christ with any arrogance or self-confidence as a minority (often oppressed) community. And yet witness to Christ is made with persistence and with confidence in the message itself.

Minority Community

The struggle of a minority community in a pluralistic setting is to maintain the community’s identity and purpose when there are many other communities which have greater social influence. Early Christian communities in Asia (outside of the Roman Empire) remained distinct from local star worship and Zoroastrian devotion, and at the same time they increasingly became distinct from the Jewish communities along the Old Silk Route. Christians were living in the Parthian Empire, a Persian Empire that exhibited tolerance toward other faiths until its collapse in the early third century. Identity may be threatened with certain patterns of contextualization (especially in translation), but it is safe to say that the struggling Christian community in Asia maintained its Christian identity against many odds. Even with the Scriptures translated into Syriac, and even without the four distinct gospels of the western church,7 Christian identity was not only maintained but Christian presence was seen as a threat to the Zoroastrian social order by the third century. Christian identity held and in spite of major periods of persecution, Christian presence spread. Again and again the story has been repeated in Asia where a small Christian community develops and, in spite of cultural pressure to the contrary, a Christian identity is maintained with a noteworthy missionary spirit. Persian Christians in China, Naga Christians in India, Batak believers in Indonesia (not to mention Korean Christians throughout the world) all have clear Christian identities as minority communities.

Christian identity is only possible through clear identification of the community with Jesus Christ; the Jesus of history who became the Jesus over history. Sacramental, liturgical and ethical life is ordered around the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It must be recognized that without this center the community takes on a new identity; a Christ-influenced identity, but not a Christian identity. Jesus Christ is worshipped as Lord over all. But a re-centering (or off-centering) does occur with some regularity in the history of the church, each new interpretation becoming a new religious community. These new religious interpretations become new entries in encyclopedias of religion: they become new religions. One would be hard-pressed to find a Christian community based on a mythic interpretation of Christ in a Hindu or Buddhist context. Such a community could be part of a Hindu community which honors Jesus as an avatar, an incarnation of God but not the unique incarnation of God.

Without the clear and singular claims of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible a Christian community in India becomes another sect of Hinduism. The Christian community which will not let go of these singular claims maintains its Christian identity but it may also suffer for it. Even today there is this temptation in India. The strong movement of Hindu communalism in India offers full inclusion to minority communities if they will describe themselves as Hindu-Christian or Hindu-Muslim. Christians can worship Jesus Christ in their own privacy, but they must acknowledge first that they are true Indians (defined as Hindu). If Asian communities were to accept this pluralist interpretation of Jesus as offered by Hindus or as defended by Hick, Samartha8 or Knitter9 they would lose their identity and dissipate into the religious landscape. They would be seen as another Asian sect having removed both the offense of the gospel and the center of the gospel.

It is also helpful to look at this pluralistic move, from a traditional to a mythic interpretation of Jesus Christ, from the Muslim perspective. A Muslim may be pleased by this democratization of Christology for the Christians (Jesus is like all other incarnations or Jesus is a prophet of God), but that is not the end of pluralism’s demythologizing. Religious pluralism requires the same relativizing move for all religious claims, not just for one’s own. Religious pluralism is absolute in this claim. Thus the same demythologizing and democratizing of claims must apply also to the Muslim believer. And yet the Islamic community is built around the confession, “There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” Pluralism requires that even though this is an exclusive claim it must be reinterpreted. Obviously few mullahs would stand for such a reinterpretation that would say something like, “Allah is the name for God for the Muslims and Mohammed is the Muslim’s prophet, but there are many other equally valid prophets.” Muslims die for these exclusive claims. Religious pluralism in fact requires that the Islamic community deny its distinctive center built around its central affirmations. Religions hold together around certain basic claims, and we argue here that the life and identity of the very community is lost if those central claims are relativized. This leads us to the second theme.

Suffering Community

It is hard to imagine that a pluralist would ever be persecuted for her or his faith. What uncompromising belief would they hold onto which would be an offense to the oppressor? Most of the terrible persecution of Christians in Asia have occurred not for major aggression and militant evangelistic work, but for minor improprieties, behaviors that most reasonable people would change. And yet Persian Christians would not honor the sacred fires of the Zoroastrians. Japanese Christians (as well as Chinese and Korean Christians under Japanese rule) would not bow down to a Shinto Shrine (a simple genuflect would suffice). Indian Christians today refuse to say that Jesus is a Lord, but insist that he is the Lord of all people, including Lord of the Dalits. Indonesian Christians insist on worshiping God in Christ and so churches are burned down and riots ensue. Absolute claims and absolute loyalty threatens the social harmony of a non-Christian state. Persecution of Christians in Asia has at times nearly or actually erased the Christian church. Such was the case in late Tang China, in 18th century Japan and such has been the case in North Korea.

A pluralist cannot—logically speaking—be so unyielding to a mythic Christ (one of many) as to bring on persecution from those in authority. A pluralist is not a threat to the social order, for the pluralist is tolerant of other positions and other truth claims. And yet the Christian community has survived in Asia both through its clear identity with the Jesus Christ of Scripture and through terrible persecutions. The two are closely related and once again they find their home in Jesus. Not only Jesus’ self-understanding as Son of God, but also Jesus lifestyle of associating with the poor and outcast brought him into conflict with both the religious and secular leaders.10 His self-understanding was affirmed in his actions, and his lifestyle was both radical and attractive to the masses. Absolute loyalty to his lifestyle is based on faith in his self-understanding. He speaks the very word of God to us.

What western pluralists can learn from Asian Christians here is the inseparability of Jesus’ concern for the outcast and Jesus’ self-understanding as the Son of God. India is a case in point. Christian growth among the Dalits (outcast) in India is so rapid in India today that it is difficult to keep up with the villages and families that enter the church each week. These Dalits are often poorly educated or illiterate, and yet their commitment to Jesus Christ is to the Jesus who identified himself as the Son of God. They will not accept a reduced Jesus: a Jesus who is one of the many thousands of incarnations of God. They are committed to Jesus who has power over spirits, over the caste system and over sin and death. “Good news to the poor” is proclaimed, and the “Kingdom of God is at hand.” In light of the rapid growth of the church among Dalits in India, persecution both officially (from the Bharatha Janatha Party—BJP) and unofficially (from angry Hindu village mobs) has increased. If the presentation of Christ in India was not clearly on the side of the poor and outcast, the Dalits would not be coming to faith. On the other hand, if the presentation of Christ was without the clear and unapologetic proclamation that Jesus was God in the flesh, then there would be no reason to convert. The warp of Jesus’ self-understanding, and the woof Jesus’ lifestyle has been the making of the Christian community fabric in India.

Vinoth Ramachandra describes these twin features as the essence of the scandal of Jesus. For our purposes here, we carry the logic a step further and see that the scandal of Jesus becomes the scandal of the followers of Jesus. There is no denying that this fabric holds together, both in the biblical account and in the history of the church. A Christian fundamentalist may be uncomfortable with the scandal of Jesus’ lifestyle and a pluralist may be uncomfortable with the scandal of Jesus’ self-understanding, but the lifestyle and self-understanding are of one fabric. Pluralism, in lowering the Christology of Jesus also removes the power of transformation which raises the outcasts and saves the sinner. Pluralism’s refashioning of Jesus to be one of many makes Jesus indistinguishable from the many other gods for the nations. The pluralist’s Jesus will not produce martyrs in India, but neither will he reach the outcasts.

Witness in Bold Humility

The Greek word for witness is martyria, martyr. And so it is a natural transition from the suffering community to the witness of the community. Pluralism, as we noted, denies the distinctive identity of a minority Christian community, and dichotomizes the self-identity and lifestyle of Jesus. In addition pluralism calls into question the transforming power of Christian witness. What is true of the Christian community, no matter how small that community may be, is meant for all communities. Another way of phrasing this is that the gospel reality of God in Christ is an “open secret” meant for all.11 A community centered on the Gospel is by definition a missionary community. Acceptance of the Messiah is acceptance of his mission. Conversely, privatized Christianity was never an option Jesus left open to his disciples. The one who was sent to the world sends us. This brings us into the very core of our Trinitarian faith. “‘As the Father has sent me, so send I you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

Christian communities in Asia have struggled with their faithfulness to God’s mission often in times of great persecution and social pressure. We note that it has not been the mere presence of religious pluralism that has led to the reduction of Christian mission, but the threat of persecution or annihilation which has led certain Christians to accept a reduced form of culture-Christianity. Persian Christians living under the Sasanian rulers in the third through sixth centuries were a vital Christian community which faced a difficult choice: either become a non-missionary community (a ghetto or melet community), or face extinction. The persecution and the list of martyrs were extensive. Many small communities accepted a reduced mission, limited to self-contained survival. These communities survived by accepting Jesus as “their” savior, and acknowledging that other Persians had the Zoroastrian path to salvation. Each community did what was right in their own minds. One is not to judge the practice of many of these Christian communities, for their suffering was far greater than we can imagine. Our purpose for mentioning it here is to show that the reduction of Christian life to a non-missionary form was a choice that came under pressure of extinction, not a choice to recognize that all other religions are ways of salvation. Pluralism in Asia has often turned into religious oppression, but the mission of the church has seldom turned into self-suppression.

Our concern here is to understand the missionary nature of the church in the context of the modern endorsement of religious pluralism. What is the relationship of pluralism to Christian mission and how can that relationship be understood in ways that honor the Trinitarian and Christocentric nature of Christian community identity? The key, as we will see is two-fold. First, we must remember that the cause of the modern pluralist theology is found in the missionary movement. Secondly, we must say something about eschatology.

Pluralism, as we mentioned earlier is the kingdom striking back; Christian mission pushed the frontiers of the faith into other faith communities and as a result these faith communities became a challenge to traditional exclusive claims of Jesus Christ. But pluralism is not only the product of the missionary enterprise, it is also part of the missionary enterprise. The gospel of Jesus Christ is itself without limits: it is by nature an inclusive gospel, meant for all people. The gospel is to take root in all cultures and therefore it will take on all cultures. We might say that the gospel is meant to both transform and be transformed. As the gospel takes root in a predominately Hindu Indian culture it transforms oppressive structures and the exclusivism of the upper castes. Patterns of worship, moral and ethical behavior which deny the grace and law of Jesus Christ are challenged by Jesus Christ.

But this is only one side of the story. At the same time the gospel itself is transformed to become Indian. The very words of Scripture are translated into Tamil or Hindi or Urdu. The Scripture is read with Indian or Pakistani eyes and it becomes a word to and for a local context. Jesus becomes the savior for the local Punjabi village, while still being the savior of the world. Because the gospel itself is transformed it has the power to transform. The gospel becomes relevant as a social irritant when it is transformed by local cultures. This incarnational move of the gospel in mission is never ending. As long as there are cultures and people who have not met the Jesus of their culture, the mission of the gospel is incomplete. There is an absolute plurality about the gospel. In this sense we need to recover the sense of plurality and inclusivity of the gospel, because these are concepts which are very much a part of the missionary nature of Christianity. The gospel of Scotland is not to look like the gospel of the Sea Dyak, and yet the gospel is meant for all these peoples.

This pluralism of the gospel may be very strange for us in the West, but that is because our gospel has been the dominant expression of Christianity for so long. We have become numb to the dynamic pluralistic nature of the gospel of Christ which is found on the missionary frontiers of the church. For many churches in the West the gospel has become so unitextual and bland, we might even say tame, that it is difficult to imagine that Pentecostal or African indigenous Christianity is really Christianity. But we must remember that the gospel is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is the gospel for and in all the nations. If the gospel is not transformed in a culture, it will not be able to transform that same culture.

The great Indian church leader M. M. Thomas once created a lively debate when he wrote about “Christ-centered syncretism.” The problem was the last word. Syncretism had become a word reserved for mixing of religions in such a way that the original religions are lost. Syncretism described heresy. And yet Thomas was trying to recover the word to describe just how dynamic and profound is the process of contextualization. In a similar move, we must not consign the term “pluralism” to the trash pile of heresies. The word describes something important that happens as the church remains faithful to its missionary calling. The modern pluralism debate was spawned on the missionary borders of the faith and for that reason alone the word should be retained. We need this word to describe just what a strange and glorious banquet it will be when people from every tribe language are feasting in the kingdom of heaven. It is truly a banquet honoring the One (Jesus Christ) in the many (all nations). This is the fundamental meaning of Christian pluralism.

This leads us to the final observation regarding pluralism, eschatology. Various visions of the heavenly existence are given in Scripture (mansion, banquet, throne, heavenly city), but all of the images relate to the centrality of Jesus Christ as Lord (“I go and prepare a place for you”) and Savior (“the Lamb who is on the throne”). It is a pluralistic existence. “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9b). In this pluralism the one includes the many. Another way of expressing this is that the universality of the gospel is both commanded (“you shall be my witnesses”) and portrayed in Scripture (“every nation, tribe…”). But also the particularity of the gospel is both commanded (“in my name”) and portrayed (“the Lamb who is at the center of the throne”). Thus the universality of the gospel is witnessed to in the particular. The heavenly banquet is a pluralism of prodigal grace; grace overflowing through the life and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the particular and universal host, broken for the world.

This Christian pluralism is expressed in Asia every time a Malaysian Chinese goes to Cambodia to witness to Jesus Christ. Every time an ethnic Chin missionary in Burma (Myanmar) moves to Rangoon to tell the ethnic Burmese about Jesus Christ we see the particular expressed in the universal. Ethnic divisions are broken down when this gospel is proclaimed. Political and social divisions are broken down as Jesus’ life and self-understanding are proclaimed.

I attended a wedding in a Methodist church in Singapore in the early 1990s. The bride and groom were Tamil Indians and both were converts from Hindu families. Many of the wedding guests were Hindu. The groom, however was a seminary student and so he invited the whole pluralistic group from the seminary to attend. There were Chinese from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia. There were two Americans, one Ethiopian, a couple from Sierra Leone some students from Thailand, a group from Myanmar, a young lady from the Philippines and another couple from Pakistan. All were invited to the wedding feast, but the ceremony and the feast were services of worship honoring Jesus Christ who saved this couple and who brought them together. All were invited to worship God in Christ singing praises and lifting prayers of thanksgiving. The gospel is gloriously inclusive and pluralistic, centered on Jesus Christ. Pluralism is demanded of the gospel, but it is always a Christ-centered pluralism for which we strive and for which we pray. “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 5, No. 5 (Sep/Oct 1999).