Partnership in Mission

We invite you to join the conversation on truth and secularism.

Singaporean theologian Mark Chan mines his experience as an Asian believer to help Christians everywhere evangelize those who have been blinded by the fallacies of relativism in his article Sowing Subversion in the Field of Relativism.

Selected writers respond:

• Krish Kandiah - Positive Pluralism
• Stuart McAllister - An Apologetics of Hope
  
• Ivan Satyavrata - A Warm Invitation

Also see more on the topic from around the web.

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Sowing Subversion in the Field of Relativism

by Mark L. Y. Chan

Globalization and migration have brought religious pluralism—something that Asians have lived with for millennia—to the West. Singaporean theologian Mark Chan mines his experience as an Asian believer to help Christians everywhere evangelize those who have been blinded by the fallacies of relativism.  

The world has always been home to many religious faiths and ideologies. This religious pluralism has become more pronounced for people in the West, due to globalization and migration between countries. A shrinking world brings adherents of different religions closer to each other. We meet people of other races and learn of their cultures and beliefs through television and the Internet. Mosques, temples and non-Western restaurants reflect the increasingly diverse nature of many Western societies.

This is recent in the West, but in Asia pluralism has always been the order of the day; virtually all major world religions started, and have continued, in the Asian continent. In Africa the Church has grown up alongside traditional religions, as well as Islam. So the vast majority of Christians today live alongside people of other faiths. In this we are not unlike the early Christians, who proclaimed Jesus as Saviour and Lord in the face of the many gods and lords of the Greco-Roman world.

Like the early Church, we are called to embrace, embody, and declare the truth that God has revealed himself definitively and finally in Jesus Christ. Through his death and resurrection sinners can find forgiveness and be reconciled to God. So how do we proclaim the finality of Christ, given religious pluralism and the relativizing of truth claims that often comes with it?

Christians must learn to work with adherents of different religions for the common good, without compromising their faith. Some argue that social harmony can be achieved only if religionists stop making exclusive truth claims. The challenge to the Church is to demonstrate this isn't the case.

Pluralism and the Relativization of Truth

Some former Christian thinkers have stopped proclaiming the uniqueness of Christ and instead have embraced pluralism. Whereas no one can deny social pluralism and the co-existence of religions in a descriptive sense, these thinkers have moved to embrace a metaphysical pluralism, with an acceptance that all religions are equally valid paths to God (or ultimate divine reality), and that no one single religion has the final word on the truth. In this, they unwittingly speak for Vedanta Hinduism. 'Jesus is but one among many ways to ultimate divine reality, one avatar among many possible manifestations of the divine.'

This separation of ‘spirituality’ from any given religion sits well with our postmodern culture. The major concern it raises for Christians is found in its deconstructive aspect: its incredulity toward absolute truth, its rejection of overarching stories that give meaning to life; its relativization of truth. These have huge implications for the whole Church in her efforts to embody the whole gospel and bring it to the whole world.

The postmodernist says we do not have access to the absolute overarching truth; all we have are truths, stories constructed from within our communities with no external truth-validity. Truth is therefore tribalized. Since there is no neutral platform from which to judge between competing stories, we must put up with many viewpoints all jostling for supremacy and acceptance. Truth is whatever emerges from this contest. Thus truth is defined by power, and those claiming absolute truth are perceived as simply trying to impose their will on others.

Postmodern pluralists are thus suspicious of religious authorities and pronouncements. To them, the announcement that Jesus is Truth incarnate may well be a front for colonial imperialism, cultural chauvinism or religious intolerance.

The same suspicion applies to morality – categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are attempts to impose one's view on others. Why should we accept other people's definitions of right and wrong? Right and wrong become a matter of private interpretation. Whether people are experimenting with embryos, making money under corrupt regimes, or providing financial shelter for crooked business corporations, postmoderns have no basis for saying they are wrong. Expediency and economic pragmatism are given the last say: what is useful? What best meets a person's needs? What best fulfils his or her aspirations?

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