[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 6

[Dan Lusthaus]

----- Original Message ----- 
>> Usually one to a customer (though they may have integrated additional 
>> traditions), and when we ask someone what their religion is, it is pretty 
>> clear to all concerned what the question entails and what the proper 
>> answer would be.

To which Richard replies:

>I'm not sure where you get the "one to a customer" claim.

Which part of "usually" did you miss?

Unitarians -- as even a quick peek at the liturgical literature reveals --  
pride themselves on their eclecticism. Quakers, of certain stripes, have 
done similarly. You DO need to get out and see how the rest of the world 
lives and thinks, Richard. For starters, how about a road trip through the 
Bible Belt -- it's already reached your backyard, not an insignificant 
spread of the US -- and they elect too many national representatives to be 
ignored or simply looked down upon anymore. They don't all listen to 
Limbaugh.

There is a growing ecumicalism in the US (not so much anywhere else). My 
wife enjoys reading the weekly wedding announcements in the Sunday NYTimes, 
which tend to include Hindu-Jewish, Chinese-Jewish, etc. weddings, sometimes 
with a main officiant from one or the other tradition, sometimes with joint 
officiants, sometimes with two separate ceremonies, etc. Enough of a trend 
to show up with some regularity and for finding clerics on all sides willing 
to accomodate that.

That was not the issue.

What the eclectic approach has yet to demonstrate is the ability to become a 
"tradition," i.e., something followed by the children, grandchildren, etc. 
That is part of what a "religion" entails. If Joseph Smith had wandered from 
NY into the desert and died there alone and forgotten, rather than 
establishing a morman "tradition," he would have been a kook, and Mormanism 
would not be a religion. (Whether or not anyone still considers Smith a 
kook, Mormanism is still a religion.) Eclectic parents seem to have a 
difficult time producing children with similar religious tastes.

So this new ecumenicism is an interesting experiment, so far too eclectic to 
merely repeat the sort of subsumptive reductionisms of Theosophers, etc., 
who find a place to accept to "all" religious traditions, as long as they 
are understood to fit into the theosophical grid (e.g., Buddhists have a 
monotheistic god, they just don't know it because they are too distracted by 
their via negativa discourse).

And the ecumenicists know that they are mixing previously unmixed 
traditions. I alluded to that with the parenthetical: (though they may have 
integrated additional traditions)

The Sikhs started that way ("There are no Hindus or Muslims in the eyes of 
God" - Guru Nanak; as he discovered, that meant, contrary to his intent and 
expectations, that he had to be something else, a third thing). Now Sikhs 
are a separate and distinct religion.

Dan