This was a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was published on Sunday, February 4, 2001 in its entirety.

Sunday, February 4, 2001

Religion and essential truths

Religion scholar Leonard Swidler is not proposing a new mind-set (Inquirer, Jan. 28); there have always been people who did not think religious truths important or essential. In ancient times, the pagan society of Rome was able to absorb, adapt or accommodate virtually any religious practice because of an underlying acceptance of Swidler's maxim that "the differences in religions are not about essentials."

That is precisely what the differences are about: essentials. It is true that there is a "huge area of common agreement" about things like "what it means to be human." But this agreement arises not because religions are in agreement, but because people practice religion. It is no more amazing that both Jesus and the Buddha washed feet than that they both had feet to wash. Every major religion teaches honesty but this is not, per se, a religious teaching; it is a teaching that could be deduced from our common human experience. The commonalities between religions are largely based on the facts of life that are common to humanity. But religions, however superficially similar, could not be more different in their essentials. Buddhism and Christianity both have ritual washing ceremonies as all humans everywhere have figured out that washing removes dirt. But the novel claim of Christianity is that the washing of baptism actually works to cleanse the soul of sin.

Anyone who begins with the idea that the "differences in religions are not about essentials" is, in fact, claiming that doctrine is not essential or that one doctrine is as true as another. When someone does this, they have not become a "tolerant" practitioner of their religion. Instead, they have ceased to practice their religion in favor of a different one. They have traded dialogue based in love and truth for a sham ecumenism based on denying that anything is true.

The only thing Imperial Rome (much like our modern society) could not stomach was a religion that proclaimed that religious truth does matter, and that it matters more than any other truth. Christianity proclaimed just that; that a real man was truly God, that He was truly crucified and resurrected, and that trusting in this sacrifice is essential for salvation. It is especially sad to see a professed Catholic, heir to the martyrs who withstood pagan Rome in the name of essential truth, trading in the essential truths for a religion of humanity - the religion of Imperial Rome.

Mark D. Steele
© 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.