363 - The Irenic Potential Of Religions

The Irenic Potential Of Religions
By Huston Smith

"Do religions that stress love as the prime condition of peace lend themselves more to supporting immediate peace, while prophetic religions (stressing justice as prerequisite for enduring peace) stand more willing to sacrifice immediate peace for the sake of a future peace they hope will be more lasting? These are interesting and important questions, but they are subsidiary. The point that is not subsidiary is that all the high religions have embedded within them a peace potential.... Are there principles that can guide us toward maximizing the peace potential in our several faiths?"

THE greatest danger man faces at this historical moment arises from political pluralism, for nations possess now the power to mash one another in minutes. Religion today is likewise plural. Historically, religious differences have exacerbated political differences more than they have tempered them. To document this we don't have to go back to the Crusades or other wars of religion; in our own life-span there is evidence to spare. Would Pakistan be partitioned from India today if Hinduism and Islam were not disparate? Would there be 600,000 refugees in Jordan today (1,300,000 in Arab lands as a whole) if Judaism were not an historic community distinct from Islam? "Oh, how we hate one another for the love of God!"-with Cardinal Newman's cry still ringing in our ears, the fundamental problem today is clear. Modestly conceived, the problem is: How can we keep our religious differences from exacerbating political conflicts? Ambitiously conceived, it is: Can our religions, despite their differences, help to

Huston Smith is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. This article was first delivered as the major public lecture during the May, 1966, Gallahue Conference on World Religions, Princeton, N.J.

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resolve the political conflicts that endanger us? Can religion in our time be a force for the taming of the nations? Does it have, can it have, what I shall call irenic potential?

I

The question shapes up differently for different kinds of religions. The first class I shall call political religions. Tillich would call these quasi-religions; others might call them pseudo-religions or idolatries inasmuch as they involve, in Toynbee's phrase, "the worship of human collective power." No matter; they command today more final loyalties-more martyrs-than do the religions we represent, so operationally they deserve to be considered as religions. A political religion considers the political plane of existence as more important than all others; it absolutizes one of its possible structures; and it widens the scope of politics to include all life. It can be positivistic (in which case no claims are made for its objective superiority or metaphysical sanctions, and the religion boils down to passionate patriotism); or it can be metaphysical (in which case the political structure in question is thought to be objectively superior and cosmically backed). Political religion can be national (as instanced by some of the emerging African states, for example, Ghana under Nkrumah), or international (as instanced by international communism). Its "god" can be an existing regime or a future possibility currently envisioned as an ideology; in the latter case international communism is again the conspicuous example. The varieties of political religion need not concern us, for they all stand in a single and simple relation to our problem. Their irenic potential is nil. If anything, they intensify political conflicts by infusing them with religious fervor.

What about the so-called "high" religions-Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and the like? These admit of distinctions, two of which might bear on our problem. The first is the distinction between ethnic and universal religions. Ethnic religions (of which Hinduism, Judaism, and Shinto are the usual examples) deliberately mesh religion with heredity, social customs, Islam) claim to transcend such particularities. The second standard way of dividing the major religions is into prophetic (semitically Originated Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and mystical (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism).

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I say these two sets of distinctions look at first glance as if they might be relevant to our topic. One's presumption is that ethnic religions, involved as they are with things like land and ancestry things that nations, too, are concerned with-are likely to get more embroiled with politics than are universal religions. Facts, however, support no such logic. Note the three most religiously charged conflicts since World War II. In the Israel-Arab conflict, Israel is an ethnic religion, Islam is a universal one. In the India-Pakistan showdown, India was an ethnic religion, Islam (as noted) a universal one. On Cypress two universal religions-Islam and Christianity-threw themselves at each other. In no instance did the universal religions display greater capacity to rise above the patriotic, martial passions that were excited. The same equivalence holds for the prophetic and mystical religions. Prophetic religions have been more aggressive than have the mystical ones and have been more guilty of invoking the sword to back cross and crescent. But they have also displayed a greater capacity to criticize their governments and hold raw chauvinism in check.

It seems that no distinctions can be drawn among the high religions regarding their irenic potential. Their theologies provide no basis for predicting how they will behave politically. Their behavior seems to be dictated far more by exigencies of time and place than by their theologies.

Vietnam provides the immediate case in point. The Buddhists have political power, and they are using it. But this has nothing to do with the kind of religion Buddhism is, or with its religious dimensions at all. Vietnamese Buddhism has no political program and no native propensity to get politically involved. But 90 per cent of the Vietnamese are Buddhists; they are unhappy with the way things are going, and (lacking a political opposition party to champion their discontents) they lodge their complaints with the most important existing alternative to the ruling regime. This alternative just happens to be the Buddhist church. One cannot say that religion either compounds or eases the political problems of Vietnam. Vietnamese Buddhism has become political because it has been drawn into a political vacuum. Awkwardly, gropingly, it is making like a political party because a bona fide party representing majority sentiments is needed but lacking.

Back to the point. No claim that a single high religion (or class of high religions) possesses greater irenic potential than others ap-

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pears valid. This fact carries a moral, if only a negative one. It indicates a blind alley. It tells us that the way for religions to contribute to world peace does not lie through spotting the religion (or type of religion) most conducive to peace and proposing that the other religions model themselves after it (or them), for no such "most irenic religion" (or type) exists. We must proceed in a different, more egalitarian, direction by noting, first, that all high religions have irenic potential, then asking how this irenic potential can be increased.

II

The religious experience, as Father Robley E. Whitson of Fordham University points out, "seems always to insist upon an absolute involvement of everything which actually constitutes man, and hence man's social situation precludes a purely individualistic significance for religion. Thus, theological systems inevitably express involvement of man in the broadest possible terms, reflecting an irreducible human interrelationship which somehow has ultimate significance."¹ We can propositionalize this statement as follows:

(a) Religion involves in an absolute way everything that makes man what he is.

(b)Man is made, in important part, by society.

(c) Religion must, at some point, find itself concerned with society.

To these propositions we can add:

(d)Religion is anchored in hope; its gaze is fixed on the ideal, on perfection.

(e) Applied to society, the ideal stipulates harmony; some form of just peace.

Conclusion? High religions have the hope of peace built into their very make-up.

Questions arise at once, Granted that religions have peace built into their inner logics, do they differ in what they see as its pre-requisite? Mystical religions stress love, prophetic religions stress justice. Why the prophetic religions came to take such a lively interest in social justice is not fully known. Was it because the

¹ In his paper, "The Situation in Theology" prepared for the Second Gallahue Conference.

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prophetic passion for righteousness got processed through Greek rationalism and Roman law, giving rise thereby to ideology? Or (and?) was it because the prophetic religions have been more interested in history and its messianic consummation? Do religions that stress love as the prime condition of peace lend themselves more to supporting immediate peace, while prophetic religions (stressing justice as prerequisite for enduring peace) stand more willing to sacrifice immediate peace for the sake of a future peace they hope will be more lasting? These are interesting and important questions, but they are subsidiary. The point that is not subsidiary is that all the high religions have embedded within them a peace potential. This sets the stage for asking: Are there principles that can guide us toward maximizing the peace potential in our several faiths? I propose three.

(1)The first way to augment the irenic potential of our faiths is to be careful about how we relate them to political conflicts. Once nations go to the mat in war, it is too much to expect religions to provide much of a counterpoise; ahimsa and "resist not evil" are alike tabled or casuistically circumvented, and peace churches (Friends, Mennonites) are tolerated only because numercially insignificant. But before conflicts come to a showdown, before tensions reach the point where to attempt to throw a bridge to the adversary appears treasonable, religions can involve themselves with politics in a variety of ways. Let me be concrete and cite two recent proposals that link religion to politics, one of them exemplary, the other carrying (I suggest) certain dangers.

The negative example is taken from an essay titled "Buddhism and Christianity as a Problem of Today," which appeared in Japanese Religions, III, 1 & 2 (1963), and was written by the distinguished professor of philosophy and religion at Nara College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Abe Masao. In this two-part article, Professor Abe proposes that Buddhism and Christianity join ranks in opposing "scientism, Marxism, and nihilism," these being the "major anti-religious powers" of our time. Of the three proposed adversaries, I single out Marxism, it being the one that has explicit political implications.

There is, of course, some logic in this proposal. As against Marxism, Buddhism and Christianity share a higher regard for the trans-

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cendent and more concern for human inwardness; that is, for problems that do not admit of solution via social reform. Being for transcendence and inwardness, they have no alternative but to be against the planks in Marxism that deprecate these things. But to be against Marxism is another matter. For Marxism contains other planks, some of which-concern for justice, appreciation of the importance of life's physical base, resolution of alienation, and the dream of a classless society-are exemplary, so that to oppose Marxism puts one in the awkward position of opposing these virtues. Moreover Marxism is the professed ideology of nations and parties; unlike "scientism" and "nihilism," Professor Abe capitalizes the word. Consequently, to oppose Marxism involves pitting oneself against nations or parties whose nature is constituted only in fraction by their indifference to inwardness and transcendence. Our opposition is imprecise; we begin by opposing irreligion and end by opposing (on religious grounds) political and economic programs whose validity has not been weighed. Nations and parties who challenge us in other than religious areas should be opposed, if they are to be opposed, on other than religious grounds.

I may have misunderstood Dr. Abe, but if I have not, I suggest that his proposal could have ramifications detrimental to his more fundamental concern that religions be approached, today, "from the situation where we find ourselves now," which involves keeping one eye on the burning question: "how can we establish ... world order?"

Professor Robert C. Zaehner of Oxford has also taken a religious look at Marxism, and in Matter and Spirit (alternatively titled The Convergent Spirit) proposes a different stance toward it. Instead of focusing on its irreligious features, Professor Zaehner sees Marxism as an eruption in our time of the age-old, essentially religious, dream of human solidarity. He writes:

From the beginning there have been, within religions, two tendencies vidual ever deeper into himself, down into the "kingdom of God" that "is within you," and the other integrating him ever more closely with the religious community.... In modern times [the latter tendency] has re-emerged in the Marxian hope of an infinitely perfectible world which is to come into being once the last of the social contradictions has been surmounted and man is no longer exploited by man.²

² New York: Harper and Row, 1963, p. 17.

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Furthermore, whereas Professor Abe sees Marxism "negating the transcendent, suprahistorical aspect of religion and reducing it to an immanent principle ... 'the law of history,"' Zaehner sees Marxists and Christians at one in affirming

a power that is greater than man, greater than nations, and greater than individual religions ... the power that Marx identified with matter itself and which [a Christian] would identify with the "Spirit of God" that "moved upon the face of the waters" before time began, the Spirit that is ever busy kneading mankind into a coherent mass however much individual men may kick against the pricks.³

I am sure the importance of Professor Zaehner's analysis is evident. An invitation to reconciliation, it seeks to bridge the most dangerous spiritual chasm of our time-that which divides communism from the west. To the extent that it succeeds, it provides a passage over which religious sentiments can flow to reduce this yawning aperture.

(2)A second way to augment the irenic potential of our religions is to strengthen their ecumenical spirit. Every religion, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith of Harvard reminds us, contains forces making for openness and forces making for closure. Sufism and philosophy work to keep Islam open, while legalism, fundamentalism, and the Muslim Brethren work to hold it shut. In Hinduism, communalism as represented by the Hindu Mahasabha, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Ram Rajya Parishad, and the Jana Sangh turn narrowly inward,⁴ whereas Vedanta, Radhakrishnan, Indian philosophy, and the Ramakrishna Mission look outward in openness. Daisetz Suzuki and Zen generally represent Japanese Buddhism at its most open; Soka Gakkai, if it represents Buddhism at all, represents it at its fanatical worst. Examples could be multiplied. The point is simply that there exist in every religion elements which can be used to build bridges and elements which can be used to dig moats. Bridge-building is a way to increase irenic potential.

The time is ripe for doing so. "Ecumenism" is in the air-the way that word has jumped to prominence is evidence of man's growing sense of both the need for, and the possibility of, a truly planetary man. "Ecumenism" expresses a mood, a disposition. It is, as George Williams has pointed out, "a word of the atomic age, of the

³ Ibid., P. 18.
⁴ Cf. Donald Eugene Smith, India as a Secular State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 454-83.

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jet age, of the age of unprecedented social and international mobility, opportunity, and peril."⁵ It: reaches out to experience the primordial unities of unexpected togetherness in today's turmoil, and to tap the reservoirs of love and power impounded and stagnated in ethnic, class, national, confessional, and communal divisions within the family of a mankind so long prone to bitterness and belligerence. "Ecumenism" acknowledges spiritual proximity, a deeper sense of community that does not repudiate, though it may reconstruct or recast, former continuities and loyalties.

Specialists in conflict resolution tell us that the most effective way to unite dissident factions is to confront them with a common enemy. If this be true, it augurs well for religious unity, for all the high religions face today a common adversary. Call it scientism or secularism,⁶ this adversary considers science the only valid index of truth, and technology the prime resource for human fulfillment. The differences that divide the world's religions are as nothing compared with the gulf that separates them all from this secular mind-set. As Professor K. N. Jayatilleke of the University of Ceylon points out, "The problem of the great religions today is not so much whether this or that religion is true or false, but that the religious conception of man and the universe has been greatly undermined by ... science and technology."⁷ Since not only science and technology but the outlook which absolutizes these is rapidly blanketing the globe, spokesmen for the various faiths are going to find themselves increasingly driven to common cause: how to defend the transcendent (which they all affirm) against naturalism's claims to exclusive adequacy.

Fortunately, at the very moment that we are pressed by galloping secularism into a common defense, the way opens for us to see objectively (pressured or not) the extent to which our cause is a common one. We see this by virtue of our increased understanding of symbols. We know now that because persons use different symbols they are not necessarily at odds; the meanings these symbols express may be much more alike than the symbols themselves. From this one cannot conclude that on the meaning-level we are all saying, religiously, the same thing. It does follow that we find ourselves

⁵ "Dimensions of Roman Catholic Ecumenism," International Association for Religious Freedom, Papers on Religion in the Modern World, No. 1, p. 1.
⁶ I use the word philosophically, not politically, where (as in India today) it refers to a state pledged to treat all religions equally.
⁷ In his paper, "Buddhist Relativity and the One World Concept," prepared for the Second Gallahue Conference.

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happily faced with a new method for discovering where our real differences lie. And it looks as if we are going to discover along the way that our differences are smaller in ratio to the things that unite us than we had supposed.

We could document how far we have already travelled in this direction by taking a swing around the globe and pointing out recent signs of openness in each of the various religions, but time does not allow. I shall limit myself to a single example: "The Declaration on Non-Christian Religions" which emerged from Vatican II. Following a moving introduction (Section 1) on the common task of promoting unity and love among men and nations in the light of the common origin and destiny of mankind, Section 2 canvasses appreciatively the moral and spiritual values of all religions and expressly Hinduism and Buddhism. Section 3 spells out the common ground of Christian and Muslim monotheism and calls for a mutual forgetting of historical hostilities in order, for the benefit of all mankind, to work for mutual understanding and social justice. Section 4 covers much the same ground with respect to Judaism; and though the statement on Jewish innocence in the crucifixion is less forceful than many wish, anti-semitism is unequivocally condemned. Finally, a firm conclusion (Section 5) exhorts all men to foster universal brotherhood as children of the Father of all to the end of eliminating every form of discrimination and harassment stemming from race, color, condition of life, or creed. The document is earnest of a quiet and controlled revolution in institutional charity. Never before has an official document of the Christian church gone so appreciatively into the meaning of religiousness outside the Christian fold. And though some of our Asian colleagues may view Christianity as "Johnny-come-lately" in this matter, this does not diminish the step that has been taken.

(3)The third way to increase the irenic potential of our faiths is to strengthen our confidence in them. Unity is not enough. It is conceivable that secularism might pressure the religions into sensing how much they have in common while simultaneously eroding their confidence that this common religious factor is valid-that it has hold of something important which secularism, to man's detriment, omits. If this confidence is eroded, religion isn't going to prompt any kind of distinctive conduct, irenic or other. The point can be expressed in a formula: no distinctive sense of the world, no dis-

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tinctive behavior in the world. The fact that Jesus was able to act in love was not unrelated to the fact that he was convinced that those who so acted would be fulfilled, absolutely and completely, in the immanent Kingdom of God.

We just noted the possibility that secularism will undermine all religions' confidence in the validity of their perspectives. But the opposite possibility is also open. Reasoning together and in dialogue with secularism, the great religions may come to see more clearly: (a) what the distinctive religious stance on life is, and (b) what beyond secularism it has to offer.

Not that we are about to discover the eternal essence of religion. That is a hope as vain, perhaps, as the hope of defining the essence of life. But the challenge of technology may help us to see some things about religion more clearly. As a colleague of mine, Samuel Todes, puts the matter, it can make us see that it is not religion's job to relieve life's specific distresses--poverty, disease, pain, drug-cry, and the like. That's technology's job. Secularism is right in saying that whereas religion promised to relieve life's distress, technology does the job. To see this is a great gain, for it means that once technology comes into the picture, religion can withdraw from the business of trying to relieve distress. It can turn that job over to technology.

What is left? What technology seems unable to supply is the positive. It can relieve distress, but it cannot deliver happiness, or (better) fulfillment. The reason seems to have something to do with the fact that man is by nature agent as well as patient, and for this reason fulfillment can't be given him; it must be won. Enter religion with its irreducible existential emphasis, telling us that eternal life can never be conferred, it must be achieved. After everything possible is done for man, be has still to work out his own salvation-"with diligence," said the Buddha; "in fear and trembling" say voices closer to home. This salvation requires its own world. It follows that, since fulfillment has to be won, its world, too, must be forged; it can't be passively taken over. Religion always brings news of another world, but it is not a world that is ready-made. It is a world every man must make for himself. As Luther put it: every man must do his own believing, as he must do his own dying.

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The contours of the world-or rather worlds-of faith we shall not attempt to sketch, By definition they differ from the worlds of common sense and science which are accessible to all. The point is that unless the religions have such worlds of faith to counterpose to the worlds of common sense and science, the actions of the "religious" will not be distinctive. If the "religious" get to the point where they are of the world as well as in it, their behavior will be indistinguishable from the behavior of the worldly. We return to restate our third principle: The irenic potential of a faith increases with confidence in its distinctive perspective.

III

We live in a time when the problems that confront us are so vast and so complex that not only individuals but whole disciplines and institutions wonder if they can do anything about them. So with spokesmen for the religions; we are led to wonder whether what goes on in religion makes any difference one way or the other, really, to the way the world goes. We have reason to wonder. Yet before we conclude in the negative we should listen to two informed opinions from outside the field of religion. The first is from a political scientist, David Apter:

One difference between religion and other forms of thought is that religion has more power. So fundamental is its power that one cannot examine individual conduct or desires without reference to it. In that sense religion cuts into human personality in a way in which ordinary ideological thought rarely does.⁸

The second statement is by a man of affairs, James Wechsler, editor of The New York Post. Wechsler recently wrote:

Perhaps the ultimate irony of history is that, if there is to be any escape from the entrapment in which modern man finds himself, the architects of the new beginning will be the world leaders of the Roman Catholic Church-Pope John and now Pope Paul-and a modest Buddhist named U Thant who heads the United Nations.... I do not know of any better prospect.... It is time ... that we begin to look beyond the battlefields of Vietnam and ask far more reflective questions about man's destiny.⁹

⁸ "Political Religion in the New States," in C. Geertz (ed.) Old Societies and New States (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1963), P. 64.
⁹ The Progressive, XXX, 3 (March, 1966), p. 14.