TIO Public Square
How Covenantal Pluralism Can Promote Peace
by Robert P. Sellers
The late Sir John Templeton was a British-American banker, investor, fund manager and philanthropist born in Winchester, Tennessee. Through brilliant buying and selling on Wall Street, beginning in 1938, he became a multi-billionaire, which enabled him, a half century later, to create charitable organizations that bear his name – the Templeton Religion Trust, chartered in 1984, and the John Templeton Foundation, founded in 1987. Sir John’s interest in the progress of both scientific and spiritual knowledge made him something of a renaissance thinker.[1]
Today the Foundation embraces the vision of its founder – “to create a world where people are curious about the wonders of the universe, free to pursue lives of meaning and purpose, and motivated by great and selfless love.”[2] Numerous grants and prizes, some worth millions of dollars, have been awarded by the Foundation over the years, including the Templeton Prize, which recognizes intelligence, moral character and creativity in both religionists and scientists. The Prize, currently valued at more than $1.7 million, has been given to religious figures like Albanian Catholic nun Mother Teresa (1973) and Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama (2012) and to scientists like South African social scientist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (2024) and English primatologist Jane Goodall (2021).
John Templeton - Photo: John Templeton Foundation
The Templeton Religion Trust seeks to pursue the questions that motivated the work of Sir John. He believed that progress in the religious sphere of life is possible, as it is in science or the economy, but that any progress will require “cooperative, constructive engagement across deep religious differences.”[3] Describing himself as an “enthusiastic Christian,” Templeton was nonetheless fascinated by what he could learn from other religions like Hinduism and Islam – which led him to wonder why religions couldn’t also engage in constructive competition for people’s loyalty in a free market-style exchange of ideas.
The Trust has been active since 2012 supporting projects related to religion. Its website explains:
Developments in the sciences regularly lead to new breakthroughs. We’re learning more and more each day, and as we do, we’re realizing how little we actually know about the world, other people, and ourselves. Ever curious, we’re eager to learn, and that’s just how it should be. We believe religion – religions of all kinds – should be no different.[4]
Convinced that the world’s religions can contribute to global peace and that securing and protecting religious freedoms for people of multiple faith traditions will contribute to a brighter future, the Trust has raised a significant question: “What if religions engaged one another across their deepest differences?”[5]
Sir John did not believe that simply tolerating one another’s different religious beliefs, practices or followers is an adequate way to learn “about the world, other people, and ourselves.” Instead, “new breakthroughs” in interreligious understanding and cooperative work across our religious and philosophical boundaries will require engaging with one another.
Templeton’s hunch about the limitations of tolerance for creating a more peaceful, religiously plural world is confirmed by the best religious thinkers and practitioners today. For example, Harvard emeritus professor of comparative religion, Diana Eck acknowledges that tolerance is far better than intolerance, but contends that while tolerance can encourage restraint it cannot create understanding.[6]
Templeton felt it is essential for religious persons to move beyond the tolerance of those who are different to a level of mutual respect and understanding. Accordingly, he proposed “a positive, practical, principled pluralism”[7] – one that the Trust calls “covenantal pluralism.”
Covenantal pluralism is a term comprised of two important concepts, pluralism and covenant.
“Pluralism” is not just the unmistakable variety found in the natural or supernatural world, which is plurality, but not pluralism. True pluralism is also not relativism, which negates differences or minimizes individual distinctions in order to find common ground. Rather, clarifies Eck, pluralism is “the encounter of [diverse] commitments, … [the] engagement with, not abdication of, differences and particularities.”[8]
“Covenant” denotes an agreement, contract, accord, promise, bond, treaty or pact entered into by two or more parties, in which each side pledges that certain activities will or will not be carried out in relation to its covenant partners. In history as well as in contemporary life, covenants established between two individuals, organizations or even nations are more likely to succeed when the participants on both sides consider themselves to be peers. The Templeton Trust insists that the concept of covenant “requires both a framework of equal rights and responsibilities as well as a supportive cultural context of respectful engagement, relationship, and reciprocity.”[9]
Summarizing the meaning of the term “covenantal pluralism,” then, the Trust concludes that the concept “entails the responsibility to engage, respect, and protect one another, without necessarily regarding others’ beliefs or behaviors as equally true or right.”[10] It will be this kind of relationship embraced by citizens of our country that will lead America into a more peaceful and productive future.
In my work as an advocate, organizational leader and writer for the interreligious movement, I have been privileged to speak in numerous venues both nationally and internationally. Two experiences illustrate contrasting responses to our religious pluralism in America. The first took place in Fresno, California, in December 2016, where I had been invited to speak at the Islamic Cultural Center about combating religious intolerance, extremism and hate speech. Looking at the audience composed almost entirely of Muslim individuals and families, I began by reading a letter that had recently been sent to the Imam at the Center:
To the Children of Satan,
You Muslims are a vile and filthy people. Your mothers are whores and your fathers are dogs. You worship the devil. But your day of reckoning has arrived.
There’s a new sheriff in town – President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And he’s going to start with you Muslims. He’s gonna do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews. You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.
This is a great time for Patriotic Americans. Long live President Trump and God bless the USA.
[Signed] Americans for a Better Way.”[11]
I could have found no better example of religious intolerance, extremism and hate speech than that shocking letter.
The second experience occurred in Hartford, Connecticut, where in April 2019 I was the speaker for a banquet celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Connecticut Council for Interreligious Understanding. The banquet hall was filled with people from across the state who had gathered to underscore their commitment to religious difference and to celebrate the ways their lives were better because of their interreligious friendships. I began that speech by saying:
I applaud the impressive history of the Council, and appreciate the important work being done through this organization to educate youth and adults in Connecticut about the rich diversity of religions and their followers in your state. You have a memorable slogan – “When we understand each other more, we hurt each other less.” This is a powerful truth which summarizes the virtue of love that is such a central tenet of so many religions.[12]
These responses to religious pluralism, so diametrically opposed, illustrate two primary ways that Americans approach the differences which exist in our religiously plural society.
One way is reacting to religious diversity with fear of the unknown or the unfamiliar. It is to accept as truth whatever we read on social media and to pass those messages along to others – regardless of how harsh the judgment, absurd the innuendo or flagrant the lies. It is to demonize the Religious Other simply because they worship differently than we. It is to be guilty of gross stereotyping, putting everyone into categories based upon the bad behavior of the worst examples we might see. It is to denigrate religious ritual, discount sacred objects or devalue human life. These unkind actions may actually provoke someone to desecrate those temples or worship spaces, destroy statues and other trappings of devotion or even injure or murder those who are not just like us.
People who react out of fear to those who are different, who slander and intimidate with hate speech and even violence are certainly not “Americans for a Better Way.” They are, instead, more representative of “fascism,” defined as a “far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology … [with a] dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy [and] subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race.”[13] It is not unreasonable to refer to “the new sheriff in town” and his self-appointed deputies as “Fascists for a Much Worse Way.”
The other response to religious diversity is appreciation and celebration of the differences around us. It is motivation to build relationships, even friendships, rather than to be fearful and cautious, to open our hearts and arms rather than to turn our backs and retreat into our own religious silos. It is recognizing that people of other faiths are our spiritual cousins in the Human Family and our neighbors in the Global Village, that most of them harbor the same kinds of dreams and hopes and confront the same sort of challenges and problems as we do within our own “tribes.” It is engaging in interfaith dialogue and participating together in cooperative actions that address the problems common to all of us, regardless of our spiritual traditions.
People who react with gratitude, respect, curiosity and kindness to those who are different are helping to create community. They are turning religious competitors into partners and working together with them to build a future marked by peace and harmony. They are pledging together with their neighbors to learn more about the world, one another and themselves. They truly are Americans for a Better Way!
But it is not enough for multimillion-dollar Foundations and Trusts to advocate covenantal pluralism among those who are loyal followers of their important work. Rather, we all need to agree together to participate in respectful dialogue across religious boundaries that leads to cooperative, shared efforts to create and sustain community and address our common problems. In our local settings, with friends, acquaintances and strangers who are adherents of religions other than our own, we must become engaged in the “positive, practical and principled” work of covenantal pluralism.
If and when we do this, not only the Templeton Religion Trust will be pleased. I believe the Spirit of the Divine will be also.
Sources
[1] “John Templeton Foundation,” Wikipedia.org, accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation.
[2] “Our story,” John Templeton Foundation, accessed at https://www.templeton.org.
[3] “Areas of Focus,” Templeton Religion Trust, accessed at https://templetonreligiontrust.org/areas-of-focus/.
[4] “Templeton Religion Trust,” Google.com, accessed at https://www.templetonreligiontrust.org.
[5] “Moving from tolerance to pluralism,” TempletonReligionTrust.org, accessed at https://templetonreligiontrust.org/areas-of-focus/covenantal-pluralism/
[6] Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” has now become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 70.
[7] Templeton Religion Trust, “Moving,” Op. Cit.
[8] Eck, Op. Cit., 71.
[9] Templeton Religion Trust, “Moving,” Op. Cit.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Andrew Castillo, “Fresno Islamic Center receives letter threatening Muslim genocide, praising Trump,” The Fresno Bee, November 28, 2016.
[12] Robert P. Sellers, “Responding to a world where hate and violence are no longer surprising: how interreligious organizations can make the world a better place,” Anniversary Banquet, Connecticut6 Council for Interreligious Understanding.
[13] “Fascism,” Google.com, accessed at https://www.en.m.wikipedia.org.
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