Introduction

Leslie Houlden

The approach to the religions of the world used in this book is phenomenological; that is, it sees them as instances of‘what is’, in past and present, as expressions of the human attempt to relate to God or the transcendent.

For example, it is not self-evident that Christianity and Judaism should be joined together to form one major part of the book. They could have been handled in some other way—geographically, for instance, with the material dispersed in a treatment of religion country by country. Or Islam could have been brought in alongside them, as springing historically from the same biblical roots and sharing monotheistic faith. In any case, Christianity and Judaism, and movements related to them either closely or tenuously, figure inevitably in other parts of the book. For many centuries, and all the more so now, religions do not live in sealed compartments.

All the same, there are excellent reasons for associat­ing these two religions in a work of this kind. Some belong to history, some to the present day. In terms of its origins, Christianity was an offspring of Judaism, and Jesus was a Jew. To say that is, however, not to say all, either about those origins or about subsequent developments. To take first the crucial situation at the start of our era. The Judaism from which Christianity took its beginning was that of first-century Palestine, within the Roman Empire and exposed, often happily, to Greek culture. Within a very short time, the new movement began to incorporate non-Jews on a footing of equality, to extend the expression of its beliefs in Greek intellectual terms, and to focus its devotion concentratedly on Jesus in a way that set it at odds with its Jewish context and began to raise the question of its separate identity.

Such were the beginnings of the relationship be­tween Judaism and Christianity. Their diversity and complexity is worth pondering, if only to put a brake on over-simplified views of their relation­ship, whether then or now. The growth of those seeds has taken endlessly different forms, but, for good or ill, and often with much distortion and anachronism, the mark of those early stages has remained upon them. The continued Christian use of the Scriptures of Judaism is its most obvious and problematic outward sign. The relations between the two are still often discussed in first-century terms, as if the two refigions had not developed with infinite richness and subtlety in the period between then and now. The truth is that, whatever the stereotypes, the relationship has taken many forms, chiefly in the setting of European society, where they have lived together through the entire period.

There is irony in the fact that it has taken the intellec­tual developments of the modern secularised Western world to break the mould. They alone have made possible a historical and phenomenological perspective such as that adopted here. On the scholarly side, one result has been a growing consensus between Jewish and Christian writers on biblical and historical matters, including those relating to Christians origins. Its effects have been felt in the religious sphere itself, as the major Christian churches have abandoned old anti-Jewish formulas, seeking reconciliation, friendship and dialogue. Despite even recent setbacks like the Papacy’s alleged failure to do enough to oppose Nazi persecution ofjews, we have seen Vatican II erasing talk of deicide and a Pope preaching in the Rome synagogue. If the softness of liberal Europe may be blamed for not nullifying the outrageous climax of the anti-Semitic tradition in the holocaust of the Nazi period, its instinct for justice and objectivity can be credited with the emergence of a more detached, historically sensitive and charitable spirit in the relations of the two traditions. Such detachment, overcoming both anachronism and old hostility, is now to be found widely spread among firm adherents of both Christian and Jewish faiths, and it makes its mark not only academically but also in the kind of official pronouncements where change can often be least expected.

Their common exposure to these intellectual developments provides another reason for associating Christianity and Juda­ism in a survey of the world’s religions. Not only have they lived side by side for so many centuries, especially in Europe, but they are the only two of the great religions of the world to have opened their doors, in varying degrees and modes, to scientific investigation of many kinds. Despite powerful forces to the contrary, some crude, some sophisticated, both have found their Scriptures subjected to minute historical and literary scrutiny and their beliefs given over to philosophical enquiry—all this largely by scholars among their own members. In both Europe and North America, the tension brought about by such enquiry, conducted in the secularised atmosphere of the modem university, is perhaps the most important single item on the agenda concerning the future viability of both religions. Will they be able to respond to the questions raised by intellectual analysis in such a way as to maintain a hold on educated Western opinion, or will they lose more and more of that traditional market? Will they become (or continue to become) ghetto move­ments, strange phenomena, outlandish in the setting of Western culture as a whole? Will such a future even be a source of a kind of strength, perhaps a condition of survival? Judaism is well accustomed to such a position; for Christianity, it is in many ways a novelty, contemplated only with difficulty, except where the French Revolution gave an early opportunity to become used to some of its aspects.

Those elements in both religions which resist a future in a cultural ghetto do it sometimes for the deepest religious reasons: a refusal to lose hold on God-given truth, from whatever quarter it derives. They take many forms: the liberal Jewish movements in North America, bringing historical perspective to bear on the Torah, whose tensions with traditional Hasidic Judaism are so vividly depicted in the novels of Chaim Potok; liberation theologians and basic church communities in South and Central America, seeing their Catholicism as the response of the gospel to the injustices of the local political setting; liberal forces in North American Protestantism resisting the resurgence of biblical fundamentalism and the intolerance of‘the moral majority’; American Orthodox Christians begin­ning to question the tenacious conservatism of Orthodox Christianity on matters such as biblical criticism and the role of women in the Church; and liberal theologians and churchmen in Europe criticising the antiquated authoritarianism of the Papacy or the traditionalism of those who oppose changes like the ordination of women.

Some of these tensions direct attention to yet another feature shared by Judaism and Christianity in the modern world. It is the combination of universality and parochialism which has come to characterise both, each in its own way, and more problematically in the case of Christian­ity. To Judaism indeed, such a combination has long been second nature. From before the beginning of the common era, Judaism held together a sense of single identity and wide cultural diversity, relating to the different cultural settings in. which Jews had come to live. That capacity has not diminished in recent times. In the present century, it has received a new impetus and visible focus in the creation of the State of Israel.

In the case of Christianity, the combination has taken new and paradoxical forms. In Catholicism, there has never been a time when the universality of the Church has been more obvious, available to every television viewer, in the pastoral visits to every corner of the globe by Pope John Paul II, as it was indeed in his election to office, a Slav breaking a centuries-long Italian monopoly. Yet there is a constant pressure, symbolised above all in the use of the vernacular instead of Latin in the liturgy, towards more and more diversification in the light of local needs: may clerical mar­riage be permitted here, or wider birth control there? May there be alliance with guerrilla movements in this setting, or with feminist protest in that? Similarly, all the major churches have developed in recent decades organisa­tional structures on the international scene. The ecumenical World Council of Churches has come to be paralleled by world denominationalism— universal organs of Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism and Methodism. Anglicanism indeed, stimulated by the growth of the British Empire and with its episcopal structure, began to possess such an expression of itself a hundred and twenty years ago. At the same time, as such centralised organs have grown in formality, on an issue like the ordination of women, some Anglican provinces have felt free to proceed without seeking universal agreement.

The approach taken in this part of The World’s Religions is in many ways straightforward and traditional. While being phenomenological, in the sense of treating of Christianity and Judaism as parts of‘what is’, it is for the most part simply historical in arrangement. In successive essays, the reader is presented with an account of the development of ancient Israel and Christian beginnings, and then of the Church through Eastern and Western Europe, together with an account ofjudaism’s life in its midst. From the sixteenth century, with the gradual spread of Christianity to India, South and North America, Africa and elsewhere, the approach becomes more regional as well as historical. A final essay, contemplating a vast and varied scene, highlights certain tendencies in the present situation of Christianity, which may (or may not) turn out to be points of creativity and change. Others have been indicated in the course of this introduction, relat­ing them also to Judaism. The future of both religions is of course unpredict­able. For Judaism, no doubt the biggest single tangible factor is the State of Israel, itself poised between religious and secularised Judaism and related precariously to both its Islamic Arab neighbours and Western (above all American) post-Christian society, from which so much of its culture and so many of its citizens derived. For Christianity, the relatively long-standing ecumenical movement still has life within it and unity negotiations between the major churches proceed relentlessly but with few notable results, treading a well-known circuit of ideas and largely unremarked by most Christians. It is accompanied by constant small acts of initiative, responding to local needs and circumstances. These are, as we have seen, sometimes liable to be at variance with the centralised organs of the churches. In all these ways, Catholicism, mainstream Protestantism and Orthodoxy have much in common. In the meantime, the centre of gravity of Christianity, in terms of numbers and vitality if not of the official structures, has undoubtedly moved to Africa and South America, with considerable anarchy, and with unforeseeable consequences for both Christianity itself and for the other religions alongside which it lives and worships.