JH - Gross, Zuckerman, Spickard

Rita Gross: Religious Diversity: Some Implications for Monotheism (Gross)

In this article, Rita Gross summarises what she identifies as the historical and contemporary context of religious diversity. Gross argues that from the bases of human weakness and intrinsic xenophobia, cultural conditions and religious teachings have often encouraged hostile and imperialist attitudes between different religious traditions. Gross argues that as religious diversity has been present historically, and will continue to be present, it is necessary for religious organisations and religious teachings to encourage a genuine religious pluralism. Only genuine pluralism, Gross argues, can mitigate against the violent conflicts and social problems created by religious imperialism and allow for the greatest growth of both religious traditions and their adherents.

Gross envisages religious pluralism being nurtured first through religious teachings that stress tolerance, which will then lead to curiosity, which will then lead to understanding and empathy, which will then lead to dissolution of previously harboured negativity, which will then lead to critical study and interreligious dialogue, which will then lead to “deep and warm appreciation”, which will then lead to personal satisfaction with one’s own tradition, which will then lead to “mutual transformation” which Gross specifically contrasts with syncretism.

Unfortunately, Gross’ article is riddled with critical lapses and inaccuracies. The thesis – essentially that religious pluralism is good, can be encouraged, and will result in a new form of religious adherence that contains the best bits of different religions – is nowhere strongly founded, argued, or proven. Instead, Gross’ article reads as a catalogue of historical, psychopathological, and cultural assumptions, many of which are patently untrue, and many of the rest highly dubious. Gross’ attitudes, particularly toward “monotheisms”, the history of “Judaism”, individual attitudes to religious participation, the soteriological context of syncretism and inter-religious dialogue, and “Eastern” religious traditions and culture, are based on errors and invisible syllogisms that compromise any semblance of an argument that might otherwise have been formed.

Phil Zuckerman: Religion is Socially Learned (Zuckerman 2003)

Phil Zuckerman’s “Religion is Socially Learned” is an introduction to key concepts in the sociological study of religion. Zuckerman identifies ‘socialisation’ and then outlines the importance of this to religious identification. Socialisation, according to Zuckerman, is the process of acculturation by which social identities are largely shaped by agents of social and cultural influence, and is most taught by parents, family and close friends.

Zuckerman’s obvious thesis is that religious identity is socially learned, and he draws upon a broad range of critical sources to demonstrate ways which this is manifest – mostly centred on the United States of America but also with reference to other places in the world. Zuckerman admits that such an approach leads to critical enquiry of the extent to which religious identity is an almost arbitrary cultural phenomenon, but points out that the such an approach can not explain religious identity completely.

Zuckerman’s article is accessible and his arguments soundly constructed. His tendency to confessionalism (albeit from an empirical perspective) dilutes his conclusion (which is essentially that some will say faith is the basis of religion, some will say there’s no evidence) and asserts an undermining philological influence on his explorations of religious experience, but for the most part his approach is critical and his biases declared. Perhaps Zuckerman’s most important contribution to academic religious discourse in this brief article is his foray into the rhetoric and normativity of religious experience, an area of study that will be of central importance to the academic investigation of growing contemporary Western ‘experiential’ movements manifest in Pentecostalism, Western Buddhism, New Age, and so on.

Religion: Spickard (Spickard 2007)

In this article James Spickard describes basic systems of culture that characterise the current global environment. Spickard explains that culture, as he sees it, is less about micro-phenomena as it is about the broader, communal assumptions that particular groups have about themselves. Spickard explains that globalisation is significant for its global export of certain cultural assumptions – individualism and human rights prime among them. Spickard explains that religious association can operate similarly to ethnic association, and this is important to globalisation due to the contemporary ‘naturalness’ of rights and ethnicity.

The article describes the impact of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 creating the idea of modern nation-states, which then in turn created particular ideas of ethnic citizenry or membership of a nation-state. Following the increasingly economic globalisation and an idea of a global economic community, local ethnic differences become much more important as local economic differences can be largely eradicated. Accordingly, intra-state conflicts in current times are now mostly associated with ethnic differences than other factors. Spickard explains that religion has played a significant role in the development of the modern globalisation, particularly through the agency of missionaries supporting and enabling aspects of Euro-American colonialism, and the development of the idea that said colonialism brought light to the “heathen darkness” – culturally and religiously.

Throughout the article Spickard explains that contemporary cultural ideas of individualism, human and economic rights must be understood in their quasi-religious context, as religious scholars must learn about religion through analyse what has been sacralised by people. Spickard’s article is interesting and exploratory and illuminates possible causes for much contemporary conflict.


Gross, R. (23/3/2009). "Religious Diversity: Some Implications for Monotheism." Cross Currents, from http://www.crosscurrents.org/gross.htm.
Spickard, J. (2007). Religion. Religion, globalization, and culture. P. Beyer and L. Beaman. Boston, Leiden.
Zuckerman, P. (2003). Religion is Socially Learned. Invitation to the Sociology of Religion. New York, Routledge.