Exclusivist Position Research Articles

Between Religion and Psychotherapy: Responses to Violence in a Secular Age

The aim of my article is to present and critique two different approaches to the problem of violence. On the one hand, I will discuss the religious standpoint present in the deliberations of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. On the other hand, I will examine the secular concept of ethically-oriented psychoanalysis by the American psychiatrist, Robert Drozek. Both thinkers, as I will show, take an exclusivist position towards the question of the moral transformation of human beings. According to Taylor, only a religious perspective, based on the recognition of a transcendent good, is capable of liberating man from the drive towards violence. In his opinion, the secular approach represented by various forms of psychotherapy is insufficient in this respect, because it eschews moral–spiritual language. Drozek, on the other hand, believes that it is psychoanalysis and not religion that can be healing for us. In this paper I will argue for an inclusive position, according to which both religion and ethically-oriented psychoanalysis have transformative potential. I will try to show that the exclusivism of Taylor and Drozek is not tenable, and that the religious and secular perspectives they represent need not be seen as being in opposition to each other.

The Development of the Asylum Law and Refugee Protection Regimes in Portugal, 1975–2017

This article examines the development of the legislation on asylum law and refugee policies in Portugal. The assessment begins in 1975, the year when democracy was re-established in the country, following the 1974 Carnation Revolution, and ends in 2015, the year the European asylum crisis started. We want to discuss whether, during this period, the policies established indicate an open regime, with an integrationist perspective, or whether they proclaim a closed regime with an exclusivist position; in other words, whether the asylum system promoted an active policy of receiving and integrating refugees, or whether the policies pursued intended to limit the access of refugees to the borders of the state. In order to understand these developments, we analyze asylum application figures and asylum laws, trying to understand the main circumstantial contexts that influence them, namely Portugal’s integration in the European Union.

STAKEHOLDER VS. SHAREHOLDER DEBATE: SOME SKEPTICAL REFLECTIONS

Two major theories about the moral responsibility of corporate managers dominate business ethics discussions - shareholder and stakeholder. The former states shareholders hire managers of the firms in which they own a share or have an investment and these managers owe it to them to manage the firm in a profitable way and make it prosper. The latter states corporate managers are morally responsible to advance the well being of all who may be affected by the management of the corporation.Another slightly different version of this dispute involves three theories presented by Milton Friedman, Ralph Nader and Miller-Ahrens-Machan. Friedman advances the exclusivist position that company managers should focus solely on the bottom line, make the firm profitable, and nothing else (within the rules of the game).1 Otherwise they get involved in matters that should be dealt with by the public authorities. Nader holds that since corporations were originally created by government (the king or royal court), they are arms of public policy and this means economic democracy, with managers doing what the voters want them to do.2 Miller-Ahrens-Machan argue that the primary obligation of managers is to make the firm profitable and then there can be other matters with which managers should also be concerned - the quality of the community, employee satisfaction, the arts and sciences, what have you. This is the view that profit should dominate but not be the exclusive concern.3Depending on which of these views is perceived to be right, different policies are followed for more particular issues, such as insider trading, hostile takeovers, outsourcing, and so forth. The following will make the point evident in more concrete terms.Driving to my gym on the weekends I see many motor-cyclists on the road riding their variously modified and decorated Harleys and similar choppers. There are a couple of hangouts - like Cook's Corner - where they gather Saturdays and Sundays. All I encounter is the bikers going and coming and standing around chatting outside the restaurant. Must be fun, they seem to be doing it everywhere. I saw groups of them riding in Germany, England, and Austria this summer. Talk about globalization!Near Cook's Corner, in Lake Forest, California, where El Toro and Santiago Canyon Roads meet, some photographers sit during the weekends taking photographs of approaching bikers. A sign alerts bikers to this, should they like to get a shot of themselves riding their cool looking chops, alone, or with their significant other behind them. These photographers make a few bucks during the weekend, probably enough to help them a bit with their own budgetary needs.Cook's Corner, however, like so many other restaurants, isn't a very steady business. A while ago it was up for sale and there have been rumors that it might just close. Also, the bikers might just abandon the place, should they find some better establishment at which they wish to gather. That would be the end of the local photographers' weekend job.Go down a few miles to my gym that has had so many changes of management that their policies regarding guests and family and numerous other matters have been yo-yoing about at a break neck pace. I have been with them for two years and about eight different management teams have come and gone. Indeed, the gym has folded recently. Next to the gym, little shops have sprung up - a barbershop, a nail and hair place, a cleaner's, and a coffee house that seems to be an independent outfit - it's called Michael's Coffee. In fact, there is now another fairly large establishment next to the gym, a sports medical center, including a chiropractor.As a result of the gym's closing, these adjacent businesses would also lose most of their customers. By the tenets of contemporary business ethics, however, the gym isn't responsible to satisfy the economic goals of its shareholders but must, both as a matter of ethics and law, consider the stakeholders' economic interests. …

Johannes Nissen, The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Eugene, Ore., Pickwick Publications, 2013, 210 pp.

Johannes Nissen, The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Eugene, Ore., Pickwick Publications, 2013, 210 pp. In his introduction, Johannes Nissen explains that his concern in writing this book to consider how from a Christian perspective, and in particular via the fourth gospel, we may be engaged in a dialogue with the diversity of our (p. 1). He places the emphasis on the religious quest, that is, the personal aspect of faith meeting faith, rather than the encounter between religions as faith systems. In the context of the contemporary landscape, he finds a study of the fourth gospel particularly relevant to address the question of how we can maintain genuine Christian integrity while at the same time being open to people of other faiths (p. 3). His book does not interpret the whole gospel as would a commentary, but addresses contemporary questions and challenges on the basis of selected readings. Nissen explains the rationale for the choice of texts by their special relevance for dealing with the contemporary quest and encounter, and their key role for an interpretation of the theology of the fourth gospel. Why the passion narrative would be excluded may be questioned in view of the second criterion mentioned. However, the commentary never neglects to point to the cross as the cornerstone of John's theology. Part one of the book explains in its first chapter the significance of the language of symbols and metaphors in John, drawn not so much from social and political life as in the Synoptics, but mainly from biological realities, such as birth, life, growth. Nissen then chooses to treat some of the most important symbols in John: the Word, Rebirth, Water, Bread, Light, Truth, Love, Way, Tree. All these chapters have a similar structure. The reader first learns about some of the major historical and exegetical issues in the text of the gospel, then is introduced to contemporary perspectives and texts by seekers in the North and South, with particular references to publications documenting inter-religious dialogue experiences in Denmark. Both in his exegetical remarks and the dialogue with contemporary authors, Nissen refers to important missiological issues in a careful and detailed way. Issues thus addressed are, among others, the relation and distinction between inculturation and syncretism, old or modern gnostic understandings of John's gospel, and the insistence on incarnation, continuity and discontinuity between human longings for salvation and John's understanding of Christ's message. A pivotal point in the encounter of Eastern and Western spirituality is the uniqueness of Jesus' incarnation --it is not one among many. Belief in resurrection as opposed to the idea of reincarnation is likewise presented as a core part of Christianity. In the second part of the book, Nissen addresses issues of dialogue brought about by a study of John's gospel in thematic chapters. He summarizes insights drawn from detailed studies and relates them to missiological challenges. Chapter 12 highlights questions of inculturation and contextualization. Nissen understands John as responding to people influenced by a pre-Gnostic syncretistic feeling, and he shows how John takes up the concerns of his contemporaries and deliberately makes a portrait of Jesus that is attractive to readers in such a context. The consequence has been that some biblical scholars have not hesitated to consider the fourth gospel as gnostic or docetic. However, John's insistence on the historicity and reality of the incarnation, as well as his emphasis on the reality of Jesus' death on the cross, make such a misunderstanding impossible. Chapter 13 provides a good introduction to the debates on models of dialogue with religions. After an accurate description of Christocentric exclusivism, Christocentric inclusivism, and theocentric pluralism, Nissen argues that no comprehensive solution is available from the Bible, except that it seems that the biblical texts in general would not justify a pluralist nor a radical exclusivist position. …

Three Paths—Whither?

Three Paths—Whither? Leonard Swidler Keywords Alan Race, Kenneth Rose, exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, baptism, salvation We are celebrating the thirty-third anniversary of a then-new articulation of the religious understanding of the ultimate meaning of life as coined by Alan Race: exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism.1 This tablature has been both insightful and inciteful, as can be seen by its almost universal reference among theologians. Many simply accept it as obvious, now that it has been stated; some emphasize its perspicacity by denouncing it, and still others by presenting it as “variations on a theme,” such as “inclusivist pluralism” or “pluralist inclusivism.” Doubtless, Race has created theological categories with which every serious contemporary religious thinker has had to wrestle for the past three decades, and doubtless they will for more decades to come—positively, negatively, or variationally. Simply put, the exclusivist position claims that its institution alone contains the means of “salvation.” This was expressed as early at the third century by the Christian bishop Cyprian of Carthage with the words: Salus extra ecclesiam non est, “Salvation outside the church does not exist,” and was repeated regularly over the centuries, right into the present for conservative Protestants, and into the middle of the twentieth century for conservative Catholics. For example, even just a half-dozen years ago I had a white Protestant undergraduate student at Temple University (despite its name, a state university) who, somewhat embarrassedly, stated in class that sadly his non-Protestant classmates (and presumably me as well!) were all going to go to hell upon their demise unless they converted to his evangelical brand of Protestantism. I have also met Muslims who held a similar exclusivist position. Then, there is the odd kind of exclusivist atheist who claims that she or he knows that at death we all just “evaporate.” [End Page 197] The inclusivist position is considerably more nuanced, admitting that, yes, there are religions/ideologies that contain some of the means of salvation, but my religion includes all of those means. For example, when in Catholic primary school in the 1930’s, I was taught by “Sister Mary Holy Card” and “Monsignor O’Hooligan” that there were three kinds of baptism: baptism of water, baptism of blood, and baptism of desire: 1. Baptism of water was the standard one, which made you a Catholic. 2. Baptism of blood was the one of persons who were martyred for committing themselves to Christ, even though they had not yet been baptized—such as the catechumens, who in the early Christian centuries had to go through a long instruction period before being baptized. 3. Baptism of desire was of persons who, through no fault of their own, did not learn that Jesus was the Savior of humankind but, if they had, and lived properly according to their consciences, they would have desired to be baptized; hence, they were reckoned by God to have done so virtually. An ironic twist on that Catholic inclusivist teaching occurred in the late 1940’s when I was an undergrad at St. Norbert’s College in DePere, Wisconsin. Jesuit Father Leonard (I am embarrassed by this eponymous connection) Feeney had gained a certain minor fame as a poet and was the Catholic chaplain at Harvard University. He rejected the inclusivist position that I had learned in Catholic primary schools and publicly proclaimed a rigid exclusivist position based on the above-mentioned doctrine, extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church no salvation)—as noted, first articulated by third-century St. Cyprian (also the name given to me as a Norbertine novice—is there a message in these two coincidences?). Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, whose favorite nephew by marriage was a non-Catholic, could not stomach the idea that he would be destined for hell. After trying in vain to quiet Feeney, Cushing petitioned the Holy Office in Rome to render a decision on the matter. Cardinal Francesco Marchetti-Selvaggiani of the Holy Office wrote back in 1949, telling Feeney to desist from such teaching; he refused, and, on February 13, 1953, he—in strange irony—was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for continuing to claim that outside it no one could be...

Arendt’s Promise to Civil Society: Bridging the Social and the Political

In Arendt’s political theory the concept of civil society is often read as an extension of her concept of the social and is therefore dismissed as irrelevant to her political vision. This view leaves Arendtian theory in an exclusivist position with regard to contemporary political contexts and experiences. My aim in this essay is to address this problem by discussing the relationship of Arendtian theory and the concept of civil society in the context of contemporary political experience. This calls for not only a particular reading of the social in Arendt but, more importantly, for a joint reading of Arendt’s concept of the council state and civil society. Here, civil society is defined as the associations institutionalized by the voluntary engagement of active citizens, which definition, I argue, is compatible with Arendt’s concept of politics as action, plurality, and participation.

Stakeholder vs. shareholder theory of the ethics of corporate management

Two theories dominate business ethics – shareholder and stakeholder. By the former, shareholders hire managers to manage the firm to make it prosper. By the latter, corporate managers are morally responsible to advance the well-being of all who may be affected. Another version of this dispute involves three theories – Milton Friedman's, Ralph Nader's and that of Miller-Ahrens-Machan. Friedman advanced the exclusivist position – managers should focus solely on the bottom line, period (within the rules of the game). Otherwise, they get involved in matters that should be dealt by the public authorities (what public projects to support, etc.). Nader holds that since corporations were originally created by government (the king or royal court), they are arms of public policy which now means economic democracy. Miller-Ahrens-Machan argue that the primary obligation of managers is to make the firm profitable. There can then be other matters with which managers should be concerned. This is the view that profit should dominate but not be the exclusive concern. Depending on which of these views is right, different policies follow for various more particular issues, such as insider trading, hostile takeovers, outsourcing and so forth. In this article, I will argue that the shareholder is superior to the stakeholder theory.

The Elusiveness of Protestantism: The Last Expatriations for “Apostasy” from the Church of Sweden (1858) in a European Perspective*

By studying the responses to the last expulsion for “apostasy” from the Swedish National Church in 1858, this article examines how an international Protestant identity was constructed in mid‐nineteenth‐century Europe. It is the argument of this study that a comprehensive identity — including both evangelicals and theological progressives — could be built around the notion of religious liberty. The advocacy of religious freedom became a line of demarcation that separated this group from the Roman Catholic Church, as well as from those Protestants that were firmly attached to an exclusivist position. In order to manufacture this unity, strategies that had been used to fortify the Catholic–Protestant divide were now also used to establish distinctions between different forms of Protestant belief. It is the argument of this article that this unity definitely broke with the theological disputes of the 1860s.

Acceptance of the Other as a Similarly Valid Path and Awareness of One's Self-Culpability: A Deepening Realization of My Religious Identity through Dialogue

As the title of my paper indicates, two features of my identity have become more vivid as the result of my participation in the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter (IBCTE) sessions. The first of the two stemmed from my rude awakening that not everyone involved with our sessions accepted the assumption that the other was a similarly valid soteriological path. In one of our sessions a few years back, the discussion moved to a topic of the nature of ultimate path, which, as it turned out, began to raise some extremely sensitive issues. An unusually tense atmosphere hung over the discussion table, a rare turn of events for our usually jovial dialogue group composed mostly of liberalminded members. One of the Christian members gave voice to her fundamental view that Jesus was the sole path through which one can be saved. It was clearly what anyone would regard as an exclusivist position. In asking for further clarification, she reiterated her view that her Christian faith necessitated that she took that position, and that I as a Buddhist was, therefore, not included in that soteriological scheme. I responded to her that I understood that I would not be in her scheme since I was not Christian, but would I nevertheless be saved? After some hesitation, in so many words, she replied that I would not be! Had she been a member of a more conservative group, it would have been easier to accept that kind of a response, but coming from an academic with liberal leanings, her comments caught me off guard. But on the other hand, I appreciated her honesty in being true to her understanding of the tradition, for it seemed to me that it was not an easy thing for her to say. This short encounter has been etched firmly in my mind and, ironically, remains for me the most memorable moment among all of the IBCTE sessions attended. I did not pursue the matter further at that time (aside from the fact that time had run

Christian–Muslim relations into the twenty‐first century

Islam and Christianity have had a mixed relationship over the centuries. Often these two traditions have taken an exclusivist position portraying the other in negative terms. Muslims and Christians have often lived in tension with each other over many issues such as mission and dawā, political and religious oppression as well as mutual vilification. Increasingly in the last few decades, there have been calls for dialogue from both traditions to be undertaken at the level of scripture, religious leadership and socio‐cultural traditions. Christian and Muslim communities have begun to come together in the spirit of pluralism and mutual recognition. It is this spirit that must guide each of us to understand the importance of a new way of reading the sacred texts, one which is cognizant of and responsive to the pluralistic realities of the twenty‐first century.

This Buddhist's View of Jesus

This Buddhist’s View of Jesus Rita M. Gross The topic 1 of developing a Buddhist view of Jesus is challenging to me on many levels, for many reasons. Not the least of them involves my own unhappy childhood and young adulthood being trained as a member of a version of Christianity that expressed an extremely exclusivist position regarding religious pluralism. Nevertheless, I have long practiced Buddhist-Christian dialogue as a Buddhist, in part as an antidote to that unhappy past, as a deliberate attempt to heal the wounds inflicted on me by an exclusivist and doctrinaire version of Christianity. So why does this task of developing a Buddhist view of Jesus remain difficult? In part this task is difficult because it is unfamiliar. In my world religions classes, I routinely present Jewish views of Jesus, but there is little reason to discuss Jesus in the perspectives of other major religions and I have almost never broached the topic. In my feminist theology classes, I again discuss feminist reactions to Jesus, but there is little reason to present a feminist Buddhist perspective on Jesus. Little Buddhist literature about Buddhist reactions to Jesus and few Buddhist assessments of Christianity exist, though the reverse is not true, 2 which perhaps indicates that fellow Buddhists have also felt little need to develop a reaction to or a position about Jesus. But it is also difficult because in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, we often discuss more abstract and less troublesome topics than the traditional Christian evaluation of Jesus, with its undeniably exclusivistic and universal truth claims. Thus, in many ways, I have been able to keep a distance between my own experiences of Christianity and my own experiences of Buddhism. Encountering Christians in Buddhist-Christian dialogue and teaching Christian feminist theology are really much simpler than trying to untangle my own Buddhist reactions to central Christian claims, including especially claims about the ultimate and universal significance of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is clear that my task in this essay is to react to Jesus as a Buddhist, something I have not done formally in any other context. Therefore, I have proceeded with the assumption that my task is to find the relevant Buddhist categories for interpreting Jesus in Buddhist terms, to delineate them briefly to non-Buddhists, and then to apply them to Jesus or to Christian claims about Jesus. This assignment is not as innocent or as easy as it seems at first reading. The first difficulty is determining who or what one is reacting to in the exercise of developing a Buddhist view of Jesus. Depending on who or what one understands Jesus to be, or depending on which Christian claims about Jesus one comments upon, a Buddhist could have radically different views about Jesus. So clearly, the first task in developing a Buddhist view of Jesus is to determine which Jesus will be discussed. Then, secondly, it is difficult but important to maintain the primary focus as a Buddhist focus, using Buddhist rather than Christian categories to control the discourse. I say this because [End Page 62] much of the literature seems to compare Buddhism to Christianity, placing Christianity and Christian categories in central focus and matching concepts from the Christian point of view. I want to match concepts with Buddhist categories as my central reference point, fitting the Christian Jesus into a Buddhist framework. How should I, as a Buddhist, determine what is meant by the Christian category Jesus? As is evidenced by the radically different images of Jesus in popular Christianity, by much recent scholarship on the Gospels, and by a diverse body of Christological writings, Christians themselves would be hard pressed to give a definitive or a short answer to the question “Just who or what am I supposed to be discussing from a Buddhist point of view?” Am I to talk of the historical Jesus, of the Jesus of the Gospels, of the Jesus of the early church, or of Jesus as understood through central theological doctrines, such as Trinity and Incarnation, which are actually much later in their genesis? My assignment, which is to discuss “the Jesus of Christianity,” 3 does not really solve that problem, since there...

Towards a Global Theology of Revelation

It has recently been customary to group Christian attitudes toward other religions as either “exclusivist.” “inclusivist” or “pluralist.” The traditional Christian position has most often been exclusivist, focused on the idea that Christians have the truth and others are in error; and, more specifically, that salvation is available only through Christ. and thence only within the church. On occasion there has been a somewhat broader, incipiently inclusivist approach, which has seen the divine wisdom as given in some measure to all people. But still it was judged that the full truth is found only in Jesus Christ; and in general, the practical effects of this were the same as those of the exclusivist position: salvation,was still seen as confined to those of the Christian community.

The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions

In the debate about Christian attitudes to other religions, a threefold typology has emerged depicting differing Christian responses: pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism. (This typology is not restricted to the Christian debate alone.) Traditionally, pluralism is opposed to exclusivism, the former claiming that it is arrogant and untenable to make exclusive truth claims, and that all religions are potentially equal paths to salvation and truth. In contrast, I argue that pluralism must always logically be a form of exclusivism and that nothing called pluralism really exists. The main purpose of my paper is to show that there is no high-ground in the pluralist position, for in principle its logic is no different from the exclusivist position. If this is established, then the debate can proceed with more substantial issues regarding the justification and clarification of truth claims.