Christianity and Religious Plurality: Historical and Global Perspectives

Book Look

Christianity and Religious Plurality: Historical and Global Perspectives

Wilbert R. Shenk and Richard J. Plantinga, eds.. Cascade Books, 2016.

Reviewed by Larry Poston, professor of Religion, Nyack College.

Synopsis

This volume is comprised of papers presented at a 2003 symposium that “emerged out of a sense that the pluralism paradigm was exhausted” (p. 20). The editors of this work consequently suggest that instead of the concept of pluralism—an “ideology that all religions are expressions of a common essence” (p. 4)—one should instead speak of plurality—an acknowledgment that human societies have always contained multiple religious systems that remain clearly distinct from each other.