"SURVEYING THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, January 27, 2002

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

I'm not going do this all of the time - I don't want my sermons to become too predictable - but again this week, as I've done a few times recently, I'll begin what I have to say with a joke.

Actually, it's not a joke at all. It is a true story, an anecdote from the autobiography of the great philosopher, pacifist, agnostic, mathematician, Bertrand Russell. It is a story I think I told here a few years ago, but it is worth repeating in today's context.

When Bertrand Russell was arrested for draft resistance in World War I, he was taken to jail and interviewed by the jailer who was filling out a routine form about his background. One of the routine questions was "What is your religion?" to which Russell responded "agnostic."

The jailer didn't recognize this word, and asked him to repeat it and spell it. After Russell did so, the jailer looked at the paper and said, "agnostic...agnostic. That's a new one to me. You know, there are so many religions in the world, but we all worship the same God!"

Though I suspect we think ourselves to be somewhat less naive than Russell's jailer, nevertheless, I also suspect that most of us Unitarian Universalists share a good deal of his underlying sentiment. Maybe not, "We all worship the same God," but perhaps something like, "Hey, we are more alike than we are different." Sure, he didn't know what he was saying, but his intentions were good. We see in his comment an attempt to be generously accepting of someone with a different religion, even if clumsily so. For most of us, such a gesture is worthy of approval. As we know, there isn't enough religious toleration around these days.

What I would like to do this morning is look at the variety of religions in the world and consider the effect of that variety on how we think about religion and values. To do this, I will first spend a few minutes surveying the religions of the world to get a sense of the big picture.

For today's purposes, I have only a secondary interest in the content of the beliefs of these various world religions. Over the last few years, I have devoted individual sermons to those topics - specific sermons on Islam, on Buddhism, on Hinduism, on Taoism, on Judaism, as well as on Christianity. I do not wish to review those sermons today, though some of the issues of content will seep through.

Instead, I'm more concerned today with the big picture. The world we live in is, as people say, getting smaller. We are more closely connected to people and cultures around the world than any of us would dream possible. We are rapidly becoming familiar with cultures which previously struck us as exotic and alien. For many generations, when we spoke of Asia, for example, we used the phrase, "the mysterious East," and somehow that phrase made sense to us. It makes less sense as time goes on, for the mystery of other religions and other cultures is lessening as we learn more and more about each other.

With all that as preparation, I am ready to begin a survey of world religions. I'm about to give you a waterfall of statistics, some surprising, some not, some interesting and, I'm afraid to say, some not. These numbers that follow come from a source, a web site, called "Adherents.com," which is the most widely used resource for statistics on world religions.

Groups defined under the Christian umbrella remain the largest religious grouping in the world with about two billion adherents, or roughly one third of the world's population, but they do not make up a majority. No group does. The second largest religion in terms of adherents is Islam, with 1.3 billion adherents, or about 22% of the world. Many of these numbers I'm giving you can be a little misleading. For example, the number of people identified as Christian is growing more slowly than the population, and therefore their percentage is declining. The number of people identified as Muslim is growing faster than the world population, and therefore their percentage is increasing. In fact, the number of Muslims in the world has doubled only since 1970, about thirty years ago. There are credible projections showing Islam surpassing Christianity in percentage of the world's population by 2525, or sooner.

The third largest religion in the world, in terms of adherents, is Hinduism, with just about 900 million, representing some 15% of the world's population. Here comes a bit of a surprise. After Hindus, the next largest category of religious identity is "no religion " at all - those who do not identify with any religion, or are expressly non-religious, atheist, secularists, and so forth. There are about 850 million who fall into these categories, representing about 14% of the population. I admit I was not prepared to find this figure so high, but it should be noted that it also includes people in former communist countries where organized religion had been forbidden over the last generation or two.

The next largest religious grouping is Buddhism, representing about 350 million people, or 6% of the world, and then various Chinese traditional religions, representing 225 million or 4% of the religious adherents in the world. These numbers can also be somewhat misleading since many of the so-called "Chinese traditional religions," are off-shoots of Buddhism.

In giving all these numbers, the source, "Adherents.com," admits In their commentary, that there is quite a bit of difficulty in measuring exact statistics. For example, some religions have relatively strict guidelines for membership, and others are quite loose. These numbers, though, come from self-identification (those who claim to be an adherent of a religion are counted as an adherent). Some religions have a narrow set of guidelines concerning who belongs, such as Baha'i or Sikhs, while other religions have broad boundaries concerning beliefs, such as Christianity which has, literally, thousands of denominations, or Hinduism, whose boundaries are so broad they include polytheism, monotheism, pantheism, nontheism, and atheism.

Defining who is in and who is out of a religion can be problematic. For example, many Christian groups are strict in their definition of Christianity, and will deny many others who consider themselves to be Christian as Christian. A large portion of Christianity rejects the classification of Mormons a Christian, yet the self-identification of Mormons who do consider themselves Christian puts them within the overall count of adherents to Christianity in the world. Or, evangelical Christians often consider the Christian religion to be restricted to "born again" Christians. If that criterion were used, the proportion of Christians in the world would be reduced from 33% to about 11%.

Another problem in determining the meaning of these statistics is how strongly people may be identified with religion. For example, quite a number of people might identify themselves as Catholic or Baptist, simply because that is the church of their youth, or even the church of their parents' youth, even though they have not entered a church, or thought about entering it, for 20 years or more. It is sometimes suggested that if you count only adherents who "practice" their religion, the number of "practicing" Muslims in the world, those who practice the teachings and rituals of the religion, far surpasses the number of "practicing" Christians.

Some of you may have heard reports on a survey done a number years ago of religious affiliation in the United States, that there are three times as many people who consider themselves Unitarian Universalists than there are members in our churches. That is to say, when asked in a survey what religion they were, about half a million people in this country would answer, "Unitarian Universalist." When we in the churches pour over our membership books looking for all these people in our records, the best we can come up with, adding up all UU churches, is less than 200,000. And that is even when we see names of people on the list who we wouldn't recognize if they walked in the door. In our case, the numbers even count people who actually live in Florida or Arizona, but continue as members in good standing! Even with the broadest count, there are at least 300,000 ghost Unitarians hiding somewhere in this country!

We often kid about people out there who share our general values but just don't know about Unitarianism, and we say that "they are Unitarians without knowing it." It appears there are at least as many people out there, somewhere, who know they are Unitarians but can't seem to find the church. In any case, in the survey of world religions, if you count those around the world, not just in the U.S., who consider themselves to be UUs, our numbers jump from up to about 800,000.

Now that I've offered several kinds of reservations to the lists, encouraging us that all statistics should be taken with varying amounts of grains of salt, let me return briefly to the list of world religions.

After the biggies that I just listed, there are quite a few other world religions to be considered. The "primal indigenous" or tribal religions account for 190 million, or about three percent of the world population. The rest of the major religions are under a hundred million: Sikhism, Judaism, Baha'i, Shinto, and so forth. On this list of the 22 biggest religions in the world, Unitarian Universalism in 19^th, with, as I say, about 800,000 adherents, followed by Scientology, Rastafarianism, and Zoroastrianism.

There are of course many, many more religions - about 10,000 distinct religious groups have been identified, and each group can be subdivided into many more. Within Christianity, for example, there are over 30,000 identifiable denominations or groups that are not related to other Christian groups.

Having surveyed all these groups, what is to be said about the world religious landscape we perceive? It is, more than anything, diverse. No religion is in the majority, and no religion dominates, though Christianity and Islam clearly have greater influence than any other.

Do these religions have much in common? Yes, of course, they do. There is quite a number of significant difference in belief - the various creeds are not mutually shared. But what religions all do share have little to do with the content of belief. It has rather to do with an attitude, a motivation for belief. What is universal about religion is our motivations. People all over the world do not share very much religious belief, but people all over the world are religious for the same reasons.

There are common, shared, human needs that lead us down the paths of religion. We want to make sense out of life. We want to understand our relationship with the universe. We want to know what is right and wrong. All of these needs are found in all cultures, and give rise to our distinctive religions.

A Buddhist may seek personal fulfillment by practicing spiritual disciplines such as mediation, sharpening the mind and spirit. A Hindu may seek personal fulfillment by conquering desires and emotional attachments to worldly things. A Christian may seek personal fulfillment by surrendering his or her will to the teachings of Jesus, as interpreted by the church. A Jew may seek personal fulfillment by carefully observing all the traditions and rituals and rules of their religious heritage. What is most significant is not so much the way in which they seek fulfillment, but the very task of seeking it.

For Christians, the act of prayer, or communicating with God, is very important to their religion; for Buddhists, the discipline of meditation, or seeking inner harmony, is very important to their religion. Christian prayer and Buddhist meditation are very different practices. What they have in common is that Christians and Buddhists both bring a very similar attitude and a similar yearning to those experiences -- the quality of a "religious" attitude, of experiencing something as having ultimate value.

One of the functions of all religions is ethics. And given the diversity of cultures in the world, it may be surprising that the ethical rules arising out of religions are so similar. Each religion, as Huston Smith pointed out in the reading, has its own version of the Golden Rule, for example. All major religions of the world teach honesty, charity, and compassion. Most people in the world, when they wrestle with ethical issues, do so through the perspective offered by their religious tradition, and most seem to agree on their ethics.

Religions ask questions about the meaning of human existence. Different religions go about it differently. What we find in studying the world's religions is that each religion seems to have a different favorite question. Some of religion's common questions are as follows:

First, what is the purpose of life? Why are we here?

Second, how can I cope with suffering in life?

Third, how do I find personal peace and contentment?

Fourth is the question of ethics. How do I know what is right and what is wrong?

And fifth, how do I know truth? On what can I depend?

These are five of many questions that human beings the world over ask themselves, and usually turn to religion to answer. And the fact is that religions tend to focus their attention on one question above the others. Here are a few examples.

First, what is the purpose of life, or why are we here? This is a favorite question of Hindus, and they answer that the purpose of life is to discover the fact that we are God. Our destiny is gradually to uncover the God within us, the Brahmin, and thereby achieve oneness with the divine.

Second, how can I cope with suffering in life? This is the favorite question of Buddhism. The answer is that as you approach enlightenment, you realize that suffering is an illusion because this life itself is an illusion.

Third, how can I find personal peace and contentment? Islam has an answer to this one. The word "Islam" itself connotes "the peace that comes when one's life is surrendered to God." Personal contentment comes in aligning oneself to divine will.

Fourth, how do I know what is right and what is wrong? Judaism is one of the most ethically-centered religions, and has given us the Ten Commandments, along with many other rules of personal ethics.

Fifth, how do I know the truth? On what can I depend? Christianity, more than almost any other religion, places a high premium on correct belief. It is the only religion I know of that has considered itself to be logically and rationally "true" in any literal sense. For most other religions, "truth" is a metaphor that simply helps us understand life better.

In this morning's reading Huston Smith, the scholar of world religions, observes that the different religions can be seen as a stained glass window, whose sections "divide the light of the sun into different colors."

This metaphor allows for and honors the differences, recognizing that each religion offers a very different reflection of the same light. The religions provide a different perspective on the same questions, answers which are not necessarily incompatible, but which vary significantly in their emphasis.

In reviewing the religious landscape, there is one major observation I'd like to share. It seems to me that as time goes on, there is a blurring of distinctions among the religions. The world is quickly becoming more pluralistic and open to diversity of culture and belief. It is far more common that faith traditions encounter one another and open dialogue toward understanding. Increasingly, much of the world sees that our future is secure only to the extent that we accept and honor each other's differing cultures and traditions.

It used to be that religions defined themselves differently from one another almost entirely according to doctrine or creed. There seems to me a very different distinction going on in our globalized world. Each of the religions I've identified has schools that are open and tolerant and accepting of others, and each religion has factions that are closed and narrow and judgmental of those who think differently. In today's world, the elements of any religion which are open and tolerant and accepting have far more in common with the tolerant schools of other religions than they do with fundamentalist factions in their own tradition.

Religious alignment seems to have more to do with an attitude toward toleration than it does with creedal belief. There is a blurring at the edges of religious doctrine. Fundamentalists of any sect are closer in kind to fundamentalists elsewhere than they are to their own faith tradition.

As time goes on, it seems to me that we will increasingly see that lines will be drawn, not so much around creed or doctrine, but rather around openness and tolerance. The Islamic leaders who find common cause with Christians of good will are going to have more in common that Christian fundamentalists will have with open minded Christian leaders. Jerry Falwell and the Ayatollah Khomeini will be on one side of the religious spectrum, and open-minded Christians and Muslims will be on the other.

This, I believe, will be the very beginning of the blurring of religious distinctions. It will not be as important how my beliefs differ from yours as it will be what we share in common in terms of values.

It is happening in our own culture, I believe. It used to be that mainstream Christianity held such doctrines as hell and the trinity as litmus tests of devoutness. That, in my observation, is no longer the case, except for evangelicals and fundamentalists. Increasingly, the distinctions are being blurred. We are finding we have far more in common with liberal Christian churches than we ever dreamed. It is my conviction that this model will increasingly extend to world religions whereby the distinctions of doctrine will be blurred and the commonalities of values will appear stronger.

In looking at the differences among religions, we can find our place in the universal human story. As Kenneth Patton, one of the great Universalist students of world religions wrote,

"In universal faith, in which all wisdom and goodness are made one, we find a home for the human spirit, the farthest dimensions of our aspirations."

READING from "The World's Religions" by Huston Smith

To the question of how (the world's religions compare with each other), three answers suggest themselves. The first holds that one of the world's religions is superior to the others. Now that the peoples of the world are getting to know one another better, we hear this answer less often than we used to; but even so it should not be dismissed out of hand.

The second position lies at the opposite end of the spectrum: It holds that the religions are all basically alike. Differences are acknowledged but, according to this second view, they are incidental in comparison to the great enduring truths on which the religions unite.

This appeals to our longing for human togetherness, but on inspection it proves to be a tricky position. For as soon as it moves beyond vague generalities -- "every religion has some version of the Golden Rule"; or, "Surely we all believe in some sort of something" -- it founders on the fact that the religions differ in what they consider essential and what negotiable. Hinduism and Buddhism split over this issue, as did Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Because this second position is powered by the hope that there may someday be a single world religion, it is well to remind ourselves again of the human element in the religious equation. There are people who want to have their own followers. They would prefer to head their own flock, however small, than be second-in-command in the largest congregation. This suggests that if we were to find ourselves with a single religion tomorrow, it is likely that there would be (another) one the day after.

The third conception of the way the religions are related likens them to a stained glass window whose sections divide the light of the sun into different colors. This analogy allows for significant differences between the religions without pronouncing on their relative worth. If the peoples of the world differ from one another temperamentally, these differences could well affect the way Spirit appears to them; it could be seen from different angels, so to speak.... The Koran comes close to saying just this in Surah 14:4: "We never sent a messenger except with the language of its people, so that the messenger might make the message clear for them."

CLOSING WORDS

Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;

Its temple, all space;

Its shrine, the good heart;

Its creed, all truth;

Its ritual, works of love;

Its profession of faith, divine living.

(Theodore Parker)