Following up on last week’s post about being open-minded and inquisitive, my thoughts this week are a reflection about inter-religious understanding and collaboration.

Right now, on both sides of the Atlantic, fundamentalist religions’ polarization is fueling conflict and aggression. I am thinking about the politicization of Christianity with white Christian nationalism in the United States; the Hindutva movement in India leveraging Hindu identity to demonize and marginalize religious minorities; religious divisions within Europe concerning moral issues like LGBTQ+ rights;  the extreme religious polarization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the global impact of social media in fostering religious extremism by connecting like-minded extremist people across borders.

Inter-religious education, tolerance, and understanding are crucial for the survival of humanity. For our survival and that of our grandchildren.

As I have often stressed, theological understandings do change over time. My own theological understanding of world religions began to change when I was a budding theologian and was greatly influenced by Nostra Aetate the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Non-Christians issued on October 28, 1965.

“In our time,” Nostra Aetate stressed, “when day by day humankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the church examines more closely its relationship to non-Christian religions. In the church’s task of promoting unity and love among all men and women, indeed among all nations, it considers above all, in this declaration, what people have in common and what draws them to fellowship. One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal: God. God’s providence, God’s manifestations of goodness, God’s saving design extended to all people.”

French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), one of the principal architects of modern social science, argued that religion is the most fundamental social institution, and, in one form or another, will always be a part of social life. Today, some 85% of people around the globe identify with a religion. While there are around 10,000 distinct religions in the world today, over three-quarters of the global population adheres to one of these four – Christianity (31%), Islam (24%), Hinduism (15%), and Buddhism (7%).

Another 7% of the global population identify with religions with much smaller followings. Judaism, though one of the three major Abrahamic religions (along with Christianity and Islam) is represented by just 0.2% of the global population (15.8 million), most of whom reside in Israel (7.2 million) and the U.S.A. (7.5  million). Had the Holocaust not wiped out over a third of world Jewry during World War II, it is likely the Jewish population would be twice the size it is today.

While I remain a strongly committed Christian, my own theological understanding has moved well beyond religious exclusivism: the theological position that maintains the absolute necessity of faith in Christ for all people. Exclusivists insist that there is no salvation in non-Christian religions. This position, today, is most often identified with conservative evangelical Christians.

Considering the world’s religions, I suggest we have to work together in what some of my favorite late twentieth century theologians like Karl Rahner (1904-1984), Hans Küng (1928-2021), Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009), and David Tracy (1939-2025) have called religious pluralism. We need to move beyond a simple tolerance for other religions and develop a positive appreciation for what they have to offer.

It is not always easy to be accepting of other religions. A friend reminded me last week that it was ten years ago, on December 15, 2015, that Larycia Hawkins, the first female African-American tenured professor at the evangelical Christian college, Wheaton College, in Illinois, was suspended from her job as professor after she vowed to wear a hijab for Advent in solidarity with Muslims and created a social media storm by posting on Facebook that she agreed with Pope Francis that “Christians and Muslims worship the same God.”

On February 8, 2016, Wheaton College and Professor Hawkins issued a joint statement that they had “reached a confidential agreement under which they will part ways.” On March 3, 2016, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia announced that Lyricia Hawkins would be appointed as the the University of Virginia’s Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow.

Lyricia Hawkins’ story was later documented in A New York Times Magazine feature, on October 13, 2016: “The Professor Wore a Hijab in Solidarity – Then Lost Her Job.”

Nevertheless, today we all need to move from just inter-religious tolerance to collaboration. From collaboration to genuine appreciation. From appreciation to learning from the other. We are all on this journey together.

Global understanding, anchored in inter-religious dialogue and appreciation, is essential for everyone’s life and future.

• Jack