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It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This day was always impactful for me because MLK Jr. showed me what it means to help those beyond yourself. While Martin Luther King Jr. was always taught in school, unfortunately schools did not teach his religious values much, or his friendship with another great Theologian, Abraham Heschel. As a Black man who countered violence towards people of color with non-violence, he still found the time to support those outside of his own community. When you look at Abraham Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachings, they follow in the same line as the Prophets of the Bible. Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized standing up for your principles and for other people, Abraham Heschel emphasized an evolving understanding of God and the Bible, and radical amazement.

However, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Heschel were both inspired by another Jewish philosopher and Theologian, Martin Buber. In MLKJ's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," King references Buber's famous book, "I and Thou," to argue against segregation and treating humans as things. In our continuing progress for ethics and treating humans as evolving ever-changing humans rather than things to be shamed, disciplined, and humiliated, we must continue to help those who need it. It was not until my final year in my Theology degree that I finally read "I and Thou," and reading it inspired the following section from my Senior Thesis on LGBTQ+ Theology:

Many view the LGBTQ+ community as an object to be solved, something that stands out, breaking off from tradition or God, or even something standing still, invisible, a marred past to be scrutinized - an It. [2] For these people, we are seen as a curious species, a rejection of God's Word, or are dissolved into statistics and scientific proddings. Our presence challenges what they have most dear, provokes their world view. Like the unbaptized, they dissect their movement for what small glimpses of God's breathing remains, or the women, whom they assign into categories, or the divorced, dissolved completely from an encounter with God's grace. What relation, what reciprocity, is this?

A queer person does not consist of sins, of a sinful nature, or a broken past. Their whole being cannot be picked apart by blind "love." No amount of prodding reveals the whole being that an encounter does. Their queerness is drawn from their embodied experience - their young elementary personhood when the Self has not been fully realized and discriminated. Only through a drive towards human encounters do many lose sight of their innate Self, taught to reject what's not an It and conform. This rejection is a survival mechanism. These encounters require this rejection of the innate Self. The disappointments with one's craving for human contact drives one to objectify itself and be torn apart and reconstructed, ignoring or cutting off their queerness.

This process each of us takes on, of objectifying human encounters with prejudices and dogmas, dims our sense of wonder. We no longer look at humans as they truly are but as objects to be surmised and categorized. We set up "thick screens" between ourselves and others. And yet, when "plunged into dread or grief," we "grope for solace, for meaning" [3] in human or divine encounter.

There is a difference between arriving at your values from a specific interpretation of a text and arriving at your values from faith itself. As a gay religious person, I must believe on faith that God does not hate gay people because of my experience with being gay and my experiences with God. The problem then becomes how I reconcile these personal experiences with Scriptures. This reconciliation is necessarily more open to wider interpretations, including the historical-critical method. The concept of an Oral Torah (Talmud) or religious traditions generally is a reconciliation of Scriptures with a shared communal experience. Seeing in the Scriptures your experiences gives them narrative authority, but how the narrative is interpreted is also affected by one's experiences. The interpretation of Scripture is a dialogue. As Heschel explains, "The Bible is a seed, God is the Sun, but we are the soil. Every generation is expected to bring forth new understanding and new realization... The source of authority is not the word as given in the text but Israel's understanding of the text." [4] God *desires* that we be in dialogue with the divine. Even while condemning the people of Israel for abandoning justice in favor of "empty gifts" (Isaiah 1:13) and verbose prayer (Isaiah 1:15), God also says "come, let us argue this out" (Isaiah 1:18).

I remember a time when I was speaking with someone about LGBTQ+ issues around the year 2021. I still remember their conviction that the world is too tolerant (toward LGBTQ+ individuals) and that we need more intolerance. What a sad state the world is in when tolerance becomes villainized. And yet, there's a paradox with tolerance - complete tolerance even of the intolerant lets intolerance grow. How do we combat this? With accountability as an act of love. Peaceful protestation and the call to accountability can never be compared to violent takeovers, obstructions, and oppressive tactics. One is done out of love for people, the other is done out of fear and hatred - fear of change, fear of chaos, fear of slippery slopes, fear of diversity, and hatred of the unknown. Education illuminates unity in difference, but indoctrination stirs fear and hatred. The latter bans books, the former increases books. The latter silences, the former argues. The former embraces *The* Unity of Difference, while the latter rejects God and creation. The former welcomes others with kindness and empathy, the latter tramples reactively and upends mercy with political nationalism.

More importantly, the former achieves its success through peace and justice, the latter co-opts power *outside of* justice, order, and established processes, seeing people as objects to be used and abusing the name of the very religions that originated as a remedy to this type of oppression that they are enacting themselves. It is no coincidence that this abuse of religion grows out of the sects that have lost all sense of justice and mercy and strive to impose their religion on others through imperialist missions. They have learned from the past - instead of rejecting religion like the legalist Qin Dynasty and the Nationalist Party of Hitler Germany, they co-opt it to suppress people's voices and votes, and to attack education. For them, using people as objects of humiliation is a powerful and useful force. Yet, the end is the same, fueled by a similar rejection of the need for embodied morality among one's leaders. But with this comes a glimmer of hope - our ability to search out the core of these religions that has so easily been rejected by the nationalists, and a new generation that speaks truth through their lived experience, allowing the divine justice and freedom to speak through them, a "new conscience of society" that continues its progression, and yet so easily connects with the prophets of the past. These are the prophets of the new generation.

> To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I - it" relationship for the "I - thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful.

I have always been gay, and I have always been religious to some degree. Spurred on by the stereotypes and divisions between the religious and LGBTQ+ individuals, I wrote an article that conveys what I believe to be the core of religion. Just as people of color have had to reconcile religion with the segregated churches of the time, the same process is necessary for LGBTQ+ individuals today, and the same process appears in the history of all religions. Religion is reconciling one's experiences with one's history, both communal and individual. It is not just personal experience, but the personal experiences of generations all informing each other. Buber informs Heschel and Heschel informs and is informed by Martin Luther King Jr. Removing one piece distorts the whole, distorts the journey.

Religion involves our need to have structure. We create rituals, routines, and expressions to have structure, to give us purpose, and to learn. Different religions involve different structures, but they all have some structure, from the expressive agony and repentance of banging your hand on your chest during Yom Kippur, to kneeling during Mass, to speaking in tongues to God during services. These are not just rituals, they are expressions that remind us of humility and that evoke emotions, a sense of wanting to do better, of belonging, or of being known by someone who loves us.

Religion involves our need to create and tell stories. A group's history is their story - the story of what they learned about the world, how they came to be, what pressures and hardships befell them, and ultimately, what this story means for today. Truth doesn't lie in historical reality alone, it lies in stories. Stories explain, they give examples, they tell us what to do or not do, but most importantly, they allow us to connect, with the past and with characters.

Religion involves our need to be in a loving community. What is a community that doesn't have a set of goals? The loneliness of today calls us toward community, but community is not suffocating closeness, strict legalism, or loneliness grasping onto loneliness, but "solitude greeting solitude," forgiving one another and celebrating with one another. Humility is allowing yourself to not be God, and forgiveness is allowing others to not be God, accepting our and their humanity and brokenness for what it is. Only then can we celebrate and express our "inner realities" without hiding out of self-rejection (Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Living). Jesus taught us to "love your enemies" and to "do to others what you would have them do to you." The Talmud taught us that "what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, the rest is the explanation of this -- go and study it" (Shabbat 31a). The Torah taught us "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow as yourself" (Leviticus 19). In fact, this Golden Rule is stated in *every* religion. As Henri Nouwen says, our greatest gift is "our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer" (The Way of the Heart, 25).

Religion gives us something to account for and to aspire towards. Hinduism is a religion of multiple pathways: devotion, knowledge, service, and meditation. Each has their place in the world, and each are as valid as the others. Buddhism sees suffering as a result of desire. What we account for in Buddhism is limiting our desires and limiting our actions that cause suffering for others. The Eightfold Path is an aspiration. It gives us a rule to measure our actions, thoughts, and words. It is easy to say "be kind towards others," but much harder to follow it. Guidelines, like the Eightfold Path, the Golden Rule, religious Scriptures, and moral systems, tell us *how* to do it. These systems are naturally based on a community's experiences in striving for these goals.

Religion involves our need for personal expression. Structure doesn't come without personal expression, and personal expression doesn't come without structure. Speaking from the heart is just as necessary as having words of expression when you cannot speak, and yet speaking from the heart often relies on the words a community has set. Praying from prayer books doesn't limit the personal prayer that happens during the Amidah, throughout the day, or later in the forest. Every action throughout the day can be an expression of prayer, and just as there are multiple expressions in art, there are multiple expressions in prayer, and they can all be utilized.

Finally, religion involves our need to deal with hardships, whether that be dealing with the suffering of daily life, or the suffering of persecution, or the hardships within ourselves. Structure helps us through the day when we don't have the energy or desire. Stories allow us to connect with the past, to learn from the past, and to feel understood. Community gives us a sense of belonging, allowing us to be ourselves and grow without the expectation of being perfect. Moral systems give us something to account for and something to aspire towards, so that we do not stay stagnant. And personal expression engages our need to create. Each and every one of these, while *expressed differently in each religion,* are the common elements of all religions. It is with this that I introduce the Article below, written to show how religions have developed and how each of them grows to meet the needs of a community.

Previously, I had discussed how diverse Christianity is. In this essay, I intend to make the argument that this diversity, which is apparent in all World Religions, is a strength rather than a weakness, and to make the distinction between diverse doctrine and diverse ritual.

Diversity is what fuels empathy, compassion, and innovation. When society is stuck in the same mindset, this hinders its growth ethically, socially, and in terms of innovative ideas. Diverse expression acts as a check on stereotypes and taking ideas for granted. For example, Rome lacked innovation due to its heavy reliance on slavery, because that society took the idea of slavery for granted. When the ethicality of slavery is questioned, and slave experiences are spread and promoted, this counters past justifications of slavery and challenges society to become more inclusive and less prejudiced. Society becomes more inclusive when patriarchy, slavery, homophobia, racism, transphobia, and other exclusivist ideas or hatreds are questioned, and for that, we need to introduce diverse ideas and experiences from diverse peoples.

This is precisely why most golden ages in history have had diverse cultures, religions, and ideas. The expansion of the Silk Road combined with policies of openness allowed for diverse peoples to travel to and from China, creating innovation and a golden age. The Islamic Empire expanded to cover a large area of multiple cultures and religions. Its policy of religious toleration for the monotheistic faiths allowed people to thrive, learn, intermix cultures, and innovate, creating another golden age. The Mongolian Empire, after it had stopped expanding, was also culturally and religiously diverse and had expanded to a large enough area to allow for peaceful wide-ranging travel. This, again, allowed cultures and ideas to intermix, creating more innovation. Had it not been for the Black Plague, the Mongolian Empire might have entered a full golden age. In every one of these instances, the intermixing of cultures and ideas led to greater understanding and appreciation for other cultures as well as innovations such as the number placement system, Algebra, Medicine, Surgery, foods, Philosophy and Theology, Literature, sugar crystals, science, agriculture, ships, the compass, etc.

While diverse peoples move ideas forward, the old ideas are never fully replaced, but are more often modified. Diverse groups come together to synthesize knowledge by combining and refining their ideas in dialogue with each other. While these ideas are refined and modified, others continue forward without modification - they adhere to what some at the time might consider orthodoxy (or fundamentalism). This orthodoxy has usually undergone modifications and refinements in the past, but this history is usually lost on its adherents.

Sometimes, however, instead of refining old ideas, they are replaced with their opposites, creating the other extreme end of the spectrum. Instead of increasing diversity, this can result in a new form of exclusion. If authoritarianism is on one extreme end, then the other end is anarchy - a full rejection of any and all authority. One can also relate this to self-discipline; one end is extreme suppression, while the other is lack of all discipline and self-control. Morally, one extreme is legalism, the other is apathy. Going from one extreme to another is often the result of an overcorrection; society responds to one extreme by overcorrecting to the other extreme. Both are exclusionary in different ways.

It should be noted, however, that when it comes to moral issues that harm people, opposites are a progression. Reacting to slavery with anti-slavery is a necessary polar-opposite. Anti-slavery, then, becomes a modification of the society, but a polar-opposite of one aspect of that society. This nuance is important. We do not slowly progress through slavery, delaying its end to some indefinite future, but act with justice here and now. The reduction of one’s privilege does not justify the continued harm of others. The target should always be what is just for all, which means negating the harms to all groups of people and bringing them to an equal footing.

We have discussed three different ways that ideas are continued within societies: orthodoxy, refining old ideas, and replacing them with their opposites. The latter might be called *overcorrections* if the intention is to undo harm caused by orthodoxy, but which results in some harm to other groups of individuals. The dangers of orthodoxy and overcorrections are that they lack diversity, and therefore lack checks and balances. It is very easy for orthodoxy to ignore the experiences of minority groups and to reject contemporary advancements based on the false notion that orthodoxy is immutable. Similarly, overcorrections tend to ignore the diverse experiences of people in the past who refined the very ideas that eventually became orthodoxy. In this way, they both reject the validity of any and all past experiences that refined the ideas of their time.

When we compare the above observations to religions, we see similar patterns. Most religions start as a check on stereotypes and taking ideas for granted, because they grow in response to a violent surrounding society and often undergo some form of persecution at some point in their lifetime, especially early on. Usually, a leader or a group will respond to the violence of the surroundings by condemning it and offering a different path forward centered around love, compassion, and caring for minorities that are being neglected within that society. When the ethicality of violence and selfishness is challenged, a more productive society can emerge, challenging society to become more inclusive and less prejudiced. This began first with advocating for orphans, children, strangers, and the poor. It expanded to include people of other cultures, religions, and your enemies. Now it is expanding again to include those of other ethnicities (again), women, and LGBTQ+ people.

The Silk Road provided an opportunity for religious people to spread their ideas and create innovations in theology and religion. Merchants would learn from the local peoples their religious practices and take those ideas with them to other places. This provided an opportunity for people to learn about other cultures and take them on as their own when they offer something of value to the individual. This process of spreading a religion and then adapting it to the peoples applies to all World Religions, but particularly Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism.

The spread and innovation in religion is particularly apparent in Buddhism, which adapted to the peoples it spread to; each new individual brought forth new understandings of Buddhism based on their backgrounds and their needs. In the first century CE, Buddhism spread to Central Asia and China, and by the 3rd century CE, Buddhist institutions were well established in the Silk Roads’ desert oases. This changed Buddhism greatly, moving from viewing The Buddha as a sage to worshipping The Buddha as an omnipotent god by the time of the Kushan Empire. This begins with the Indo-Greek King Menander (or Melinda) who corresponded with a Buddhist scholar on The Buddha’s acceptance of gifts and his passing away. Menander’s culture worshipped gods that took gifts from the people. His culture also contained ideas of the afterlife. The idea of a person who completely passes away and is unable to accept gifts was foreign to this culture. So, the Buddhist scholar emphasized that the Buddha “passed away into that kind of passing away in which no root remains” and that he “accepts no gift.”[1] However, when pressed on whether one could still give gifts, the Buddhist scholar, while emphasizing that it does no good, relents that it also does no harm.

As Buddhism changed into **Mahayana Buddhism,** a form of Buddhism that was more understandable to, and met the needs of, foreigners, it developed the concept of **bodhisattvas,** or those who were close to nirvana but chose to postpone it to help others along the path toward nirvana. One of these bodhisattvas was Bodhisattva Mahasattva Avalokitesvara, “the giver of safety,” who would release you from “suffering troubles.”[2] Travelers found value in Buddhism, so they would donate to monasteries to establish “relics of the Lord” that would provide the “bestowal of health.”[3]

During the Tang dynasty, China welcomed and embraced students of other religions within the dynasty and prompted them to translate their works into the local language. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Nestorian Christianity were all present within the dynasty. Some of the travelers who went to China and translated works into Chinese were the **Sogdians,** an ancient East Iranian civilization that brought Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeanism along the Silk Road and to China. Eventually, the Tang dynasty moved toward a harsh policy of unwelcomeness towards Nestorian Christians, Zoroastrians, and Manichaeans. Additionally, Muslims within the dynasty were almost wiped out due to a rebellion against the Tang dynasty. All of these factors pushed these groups out of China to settle elsewhere, like Quanzhou, Southeastern China, and eventually, Cairo, which becomes a center for Muslim and Jewish communities.

While trade often helped religion spread, religion has also created a need for innovation in trade. The Islamic prohibition on money laundering led to the creation of a credit system where Muslims created partnerships with financers and traders. This system is then copied by other peoples, including Jewish traders. The adoption of the Coptic Calendar by all trading communities was due to the ship departure scheduling issues that came with different religious calendars in which different communities ceased work on a different day.

A more welcoming Empire leads to the appearance of more religious traders, which increases diversity, creates understanding between different cultures and religions, and can spur innovation in both religion and other areas, like trade. A less welcoming Empire, however, leads to lack of diversity, lack of innovation, lack of understanding between cultures, and therefore, the fleeing of whole groups of people who would have otherwise benefited the Empire. Other Empires have taken a more welcoming approach for this very reason. Persia was religiously tolerant. The Cyrus Cylinder shows Persian King Cyrus’ policy of rebuilding previously destroyed temples and repatriating displaced peoples. While Cyrus was a Zoroastrian, the Cylinder also mentions Marduk, a Mesopotamian god and patron of the city of Babylon. The Cylinder ultimately shows Cyrus’ tolerant attitude towards diverse cultures and religions. Alexander took a similar approach to religious tolerance, but his empire ultimately fell due to its instability from a lack of administration building. The Islamic Empire was religiously tolerant of the “People of the Book,” that is Christians and Jews, as well as tolerant of Zoroastrians. This religious tolerance, inspired by the approach to Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians in the Qur’an, and although limited to second-class status, helped spur a golden age. The Ottoman Empire also took a similar approach to religious toleration.

To show how religions refine ideas and how people collectively come to agreements on ideas and scripture canons, we will look at Christianity within its first three centuries of development. In the first and second centuries CE, Christianity developed mostly organically, much like other religions develop when they first begin. Jews who experienced Jesus, his messages, and his death spread the message broadly within the Roman Empire. Some of these people wrote texts sharing these experiences. Communities formed around these individuals and these texts; the texts become part of a community and its liturgy. Communities might share texts with each other, creating a dialogue of different ideas that refine each other. Some writers use these texts as a basis for writing a more accurate text, much like the author of the Gospel of Luke used the Gospel of Mark and other sources to create what he deemed a more accurate version of the Gospel:

> Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. — Luke 1:1-4 (NRSV)

Each experience emphasizes different lessons and different parts of Jesus’ message. The writings of this time were not historical in the way we, in contemporary times, think of historical. The accuracy of a text was all about its overall message, not necessarily its details; the details were used to convey the message. When Jews spread their message of Jesus orally, they might modify details for the purposes of a lesson, combine multiple experiences into one story, or refine details based on other experiences they’ve been introduced to, and this results in variations. These variations are present in all four Gospels and Paul’s retellings of the Gospel. Not only do these variations provide a better image of Jesus by emphasizing different lessons and experiences, but these variations give strength to what’s common between the different sources.

In fact, scholars have compared all of the Gospels and found many similarities as well as many differences. What is consistent among all these perspectives is an individual who was crucified, died, and resurrected. When Jews take on these experiences, they connect them to their background, their Jewish upbringing and their Jewish Scriptures, and to their surroundings, the culture of the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic influence of the area. They cite and prod their Scriptures (the Old Testament, or Tanakh) to clarify these experiences of Jesus. Jewish ideas were first refined by Hellenism, then by the surrounding Roman society, and now by these new experiences, but this is not the end of the story, as Gentiles are eventually brought into the mix.

Christianity starts taking on a new shape when Gentiles are introduced, particularly through Paul. Paul was a Jewish Pharisee who claims to have persecuted Jewish Christians, but then converted after having an experience of seeing a resurrected Jesus. One of Paul’s recurring questions is the effect of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and who is affected by it. For Paul, the effect of Jesus’ death is salvation, but salvation from what? Both Jewish and Hellenistic ideas enter here. Salvation is an escape from sin and an evil force that causes people to sin. Many questions still remain, however: How is this done? How does this relate to Mosaic Law? And who gets salvation? Paul tells us that salvation was given by Jesus defeating this force of evil through suffering, dying, and resurrecting. One must accept this salvation by believing in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

However, this makes Mosaic Law redundant to Paul. Mosaic Law was originally offered as an ethical system that one must follow to stay on God’s side (to put it in oversimplified terms). However, Paul’s conception of Mosaic Law is very different from the Jewish conception for most of Jewish history - Mosaic Law to Jews is an ethical and practical system that does not require one to be perfect all of the time. One can make amends, and God accepts this just as well. For Paul, however, Mosaic Law becomes a burden that one cannot escape, something that makes humans realize their imperfection. In this way, Paul justifies the existence of Mosaic Law while giving priority to salvation through Jesus. Certainly, Hellenistic and Roman ideas are entering Christianity at this point, if not prior. The final step is dealing with who gets this salvation. For Paul, salvation is available to all, which is why he brings in Gentiles. Paul spreads his message, and it eventually gains traction in the Jewish and Gentile Christian communities.

While there were apparent authorities, that is the apostles, including Paul, we cannot overstate their control. These authorities only become so through *the people listening to them.* They had no political power, and they were part of a small fringe sect that was being persecuted by the Romans and by **some** of the other Jews. As people experience new situations and as ideas are spread, these ideas are ultimately refined and adapted to the peoples they come across.

Many of the writings and letters are organically spread throughout communities. Only until the second century CE do we get the first Canon for Christians - Marcion’s Canon, which included only a reduced Gospel of Luke, removing its Jewish elements, and Paul’s letters. Marcion’s antisemitism and rejection of the Jewish background of Jesus and his followers drives the rest of the Christians to construct their own canons. Different Theologians form different canons, adding and removing different books. Eventually, within the course of three centuries, a consensus starts forming for most of the books. The last books to gain a consensus were the non-Pauline letters, Revelation, and Jude. While most of the books are present in canon lists prior to Christianity becoming tolerated and established as the state religion of Rome, the final list of 27 books was finalized after the Council of Nicaea.

The **Fundamentalism** that develops within Christianity in North America in the late 19th century is a reaction against modern science, evolutionary theory, modern biblical criticism, and **religious liberalism,** which all cast doubts on the scientific accuracy and historicity of the Bible. The history of how the Bible is interpreted is reduced and rewritten, ignoring that for much of Christianity the Bible was read mostly allegorically and non-literally. Similarly, the history of how ideas were refined over time is disregarded for *five fundamentals* that ignore the diversity within Christianity and the potential to reconcile Christianity with modernity. The **Evangelical Alliance** was formed out of those who saw liberalism and liberal Christianity as a denial of the faith. In 1895, the movement listed the five fundamentals necessary for true faith, which the Presbyterian Church adopted shortly after:

Liberal Christianity was already questioning at least one or two of these fundamentals: the inerrancy of scripture, and the virgin birth. Today, some are also uncomfortable with the fourth fundamental, Jesus’ death as a substitute for our sins, and with the fifth fundamental, Jesus’ physical resurrection and impending return. This underscores the recurring struggle within Christianity between orthodoxy and diversity, between immutable theology and evolving theology. Fortunately, Liberal Christianity did not stop at the behest of Fundamentalism. It continued to evolve, setting forth the **Social Gospel** that questioned laissez-faire Capitalism and its result of inequity and social injustice, which was demonstrated by the professor of Church history at Baptist seminary, **Walter Rauschenbush.** Liberal Christianity will continue to advocate for social justice to this day.

Aside from Liberal Christianity, there were other liberals and *modernists* who dismissed and rejected the Bible and Christianity as one religion among many others. Instead of refining the religion, they moved to the opposite end of the spectrum. This resulted in a *negative Fundamentalism* or Atheist Fundamentalism. Instead of recognizing the imperfection of the Bible, they wholly rejected it as made up with no historical or ethical value whatsoever. Over time, within scholarship, this will move back toward the center, recognizing that, with care, parts of the Bible can be used for history when paired with outside sources, and that other parts of Bible have a wealth of knowledge and ethical ideas. However, at the time, both Fundamentalism and negative Fundamentalism excluded diversity and rejected the validity of ideas outside their fundamentals, seeing literalist interpretation as the only way of reading Scripture.

The lack of diversity that comes with strict adherence to immutable fundamentals and literalist Scriptural interpretations has resulted in stereotypes and harms to many peoples and communities. For example, if one is to take the Gospels literally without recognizing the important historical context, it is easy to use them to justify antisemitism and Jewish stereotypes. Examples of this could include blaming Jews for solely killing Jesus, vilifying Jews as “Christ-killers” or as being rejected by God, and claiming that they are evil or legalistic. Many of these come from New Testament texts written by authors that conflated Jewish sects and self-distinguished Christianity against Judaism, the book of Acts and the Gospel of John being some of the worst offenders. Similarly, if one is to reject the possibility of allegorical interpretations of Scripture, one risks imputing beliefs to religions and religious people that are not accurate to them. Even among those who reject the Bible or Christianity we see a tendency to read the Bible literally, and this comes from a lack of exposure to religious people’s practices and religious diversity.

The consequences do not stop there, unfortunately. Religion has been used to justify slavery, racism, homophobia, islamophobia, and other hatreds, often on the basis of some interpretation of Scripture. However, not all interpretations of Scripture are valid. Religious people must constantly refine their interpretations, bringing new understanding to the text and adapting them to the needs and experiences of contemporary times and contemporary peoples. Homophobia can no longer be justified, so religious people must adapt and refine how the Bible is interpreted. There are many ways to interpret the Bible, including through historical criticism, literary criticism, and contextual theology. One can also use the hermeneutic of suspicion, where a text is read with skepticism; the narrator’s views are not taken for granted, but there may be lessons that are repressed within the text. These diverse tools add multivalency to Scripture.

There are two criticisms that can be used against religion: that diverse beliefs (or doctrines) show religion to be false, and that religions are dogmatic and don’t allow for diverse beliefs. When the latter is shown to be false, some then go to the former argument. The distinction between diverse belief and diverse ritual is often lost on people because in many societies there is a lack of exposure to religious diversity. Not all religions are dogmatic, and many religions emphasize rituals or ethical actions over belief.

Rituals are diverse because they adapt to the needs of each individual. Every ritual that meets the needs of an individual is a valid expression of religion. Beliefs are diverse because they adapt to the background, worldview, and experiences of an individual. Every theological belief has the potential to contain truth. The importance of religious diversity is not only to break stereotypes, but to share experiences, to share beliefs and rituals, and to see what fits into your worldview, what has the potential to contain truth, and ultimately, what meets your needs and helps you grow as a person. After all that we’ve covered, I’m not just arguing for the need for religious diversity, but also that religious diversity already exists, we just have to search out for it.

I recently seen an article that I had found particularly distressing. It implied that any influence cannot be a purely good thing if one holds some bad opinions, and cannot be a purely bad thing if one holds some good opinions. I believe this to be a very dangerous and flawed argument to make. The exclusion of people because of the possibility of having some bad opinions or influences erases the future possibility of the good influences that they may bring. For this reason, *all inclusion and dialogic influence of diverse opinions is a purely good thing only,* and the *ability for dialogic influence* should not be stifled because of statistics, profiling, or stereotypes. Above I have discussed the harms of *orthodoxy* and *overcorrections,* but now I will discuss why their inclusion in history and in the overall conversation are inherently good for progression.

While orthodoxy and negative fundamentalism are harmful due to their exclusionary thinking, their existence can be used for good, can have a good influence on progress, and most certainly has a good influence on the overall dialogue of society. We do not intentionally stifle or erase either of these viewpoints, we use and synthesize them into the larger movement of progress by responding to them and recognizing their good elements and their bad elements. This means teaching the history of racism to argue for anti-racism. This means recognizing the history of dictators and harmful presidents in order to teach us what not to do, and what to look out for in the future. This means learning the arguments of Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Mussolini, and others so they can be rebutted. This means learning how terms change and get misappropriated to harm an existing group of people who were already using that term with different meaning. This means recognizing stereotypes of groups of people and how they can be played upon to cause harm to that group or unify a group with hatred. Yes, this also means recognizing religious fundamentalism, fundamentalist atheism, and their arguments so that they can be rebutted.

We see the same thing happening in religions. Joshua to II Kings (called the Deuteronomistic History among scholars) in the Bible is a compilation of pro-David and anti-David stories. Pro-David becomes orthodoxy, but the Bible includes both. The final compilation surrounds the pro-David stories with anti-David (and anti-monarchic) stories. By doing so, it directly uses what was orthodoxy to challenge it and show the harms of Kings. Additionally, it creates nuance in David’s character and in the retelling of History. Both positions and their influences are purely good because they teach us things. We do not erase from History one to promote the other, because then the reasons that led to the other are also erased.

We also see this in the Talmud. The Talmud happens to be a collection of questions and arguments of *diverse viewpoints* all responding to questions and to each other. The possibilities one Rabbi is able to see are not the same as what another Rabbi is able to see. Each Rabbi brings up considerations that none of the others would have thought to bring up. Not all of the positions of each Rabbi are codified (in later codes of Jewish Law), but *every Rabbi* was an important influence in the overall conversation. The *prevention or erasure of* even one Rabbi would have erased questions that others had responded to and may have even erased some opinions that eventually became (or will become) codified at any point in time. A Rabbi does not need to have only good opinions to be a *purely* good influence in the dialogue.

Again, we see this in the New Testament, with the multiple varying narratives of the Gospel. Each one brings something new to the dialogue. They are all unconditionally good. This decision to include them all because each brings something to the dialogue is also the reason why fundamentalist and literal word-for-word readings of the Bible fail; those methodologies fail to account for the diverse viewpoints of each Gospel and book of the New Testament. To put it in other terms, those methodologies erase the diverse voices of each Gospel.

Let me reiterate the very point I want to make. Dialogic influence of diverse opinions is *always* purely good, generally. To suggest that the *influence of religious people, or anti-religious people, on politics therefore isn’t an unalloyed good* would not just be incorrect, but also dangerous. There is another layer here that I do not want to miss: this is not just about *dialogic* influence. The very setup of the italicized sentence above is overgeneralized to begin with. Whether the *general influence* of a person is good or not depends on their *actions, the validity of their arguments, and what they are using their speech for,* not what group they belong to, not whether they are religious or anti-religious, and definitely not whether they are a particular gender, sexuality, or race.

This does not mean, however, that we erase the harms of one’s dialogue. Rather, we recognize these harms but do not prevent one from speaking (their dialogic influence) just because of the *possibility* that they may have bad opinions. For example, we must recognize the harms from those who have changed the term “woke” or “wokeness” into a derogatory term because of stereotypes that are being weaponized against a group of people. This is not unlike how the elites of Israel (or perhaps the authors) in the Bible weaponized the early polytheistic or henotheistic beliefs of some of their people in order to prop up monotheism, or how Romans weaponized the language used by the early Christians to create stereotypes about them, set them apart from the rest of society, and persecute them. Don’t mistake recognizing the harms of the past for an “overthrowing of the entire system,” and don’t overthrow an entire system by ignoring the good within those you disagree with.

If we are to have an effective influence on the conversation of progress, we must remain humble. This means recognizing the value of those we disagree with, recognizing the nuggets of good in orthodoxy or its polar opposite, recognizing that we don’t know everything, recognizing what we don’t know, and *most importantly, recognizing that there may be things we have not thought of.* This is the whole point of *diversity.* When you are so self-assured in your theoretical interpretations of statistics, your interpretations of the causes of certain behaviors, your focus on crime-catching over *crime-prevention,* your focus on a late definition of “sex” or “gender” to the erasure of all other definitions, or your focus on individuality without morality and justice for all, then you are not progressing the conversation, because progressing the conversation means being humble enough to change your own ideas through self-doubt. Only then will you stop obsessing over whether people no longer want to engage with your content because they don’t agree with you, otherwise known as “cancelling.” What it ultimately means to have free will and self-autonomy is one’s ability to disagree and to *ignore* or engage with dialogues that they want to *ignore* or engage with, *including* the freedom to disassociate themselves with opinions they disagree with. And through this, the dialogue of progress continues.

2024-01-15 Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Religious Diversity

Introduction

The God Who Sees Me

Prelude to the Article

The Article: The Case for Religious Diversity

Addendum: On Influence

Footnotes