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Book Review: Plurality and Ambiguity

For the writers of this book, Christian 'uniqueness' is to be construed as 'chauvinism', as an 'imperialism' that renders Christianity 'superior' to all other religions. This is a very muddled idea. Certainly a misguided sense of superiority and its effects are part of historic Christianity, inextricably woven into the fabric of Christian tradition. But within that tradition such threads, which indeed threaten to unravel the whole, have always been understood as constituent of a cloth dyed with the colour of an original 'fall' as well as of an original 'grace'. Christian imperialism, as an historic datum, is thus consequent on what might be called the 'risk' of incarnation. There is a sense in which God is hostage to human freedom, but it is in this divine 'vulnerability' that Christian faith locates the 'uniqueness' in which it trusts and hopes. Within the Christian tradition any tendency to treat the faith as an ideology has been condemned as an aberration, calling for metanoia rather than, what is here on offer, the substitution of another ideology. It is, I think, deeply disturbing that these writers, presented as 'reputable Christian thinkers' (p. viii), can so easily abandon traditional Christian self-understanding. The Church has understood itself as a community that, however falteringly, is called to bear testimony to the God of love who died for the world so that the world might live in the love of God. Now it is asked to see itself as a means by which to effect social welfare and promote the values of liberal democracy, and for what reason? Because, we are told, it is reprehensible to advance claims that contradict the beliefs of others. It is unjust or 'exploitive' to confess Christ as the 'norm' of all human wholeness (p. xi). The question of truth is rendered irrelevant. This book, couched, as Driver tells us, 'in Western terms, addressed to Western audiences, and aimed at the Western conscience' (p. 206), can be recommended as a fine example of Western woolliness; the pathos of trying to please everyone. The 'pluralism' it advocates is religion for the consumer market; comfort for the liberal conscience.