What Is Christianity All About?

Pluralism, the co-existence of different world-views and value systems in the same society, weakens the certainty with which people had previously held their religious and moral convictions. Minimally, one becomes aware of the fact that other people, who do not seem obviously demented, do not share these convictions—and nevertheless manage to get along in their lives. This awareness makes it difficult to take one’s convictions for granted; now, one must stop and reflect about them. Pluralism has become a global reality. All those “others” keep obtruding.

Inevitably the thought occurs: Could it be that they are right? Perhaps, they are right about some things but not about the ones I care most about. In religious communities this has led to a quest for the core of the tradition, which is non-negotiable, as against more peripheral aspects which, if really pressed, I might modify or give up. I have used the term “cognitive bargaining” to describe this process. As Peter van der Veer has brilliantly shown in his new book The Modern Spirit of Asia, it was Western modernity that has exerted enormous pressure on the cultures of India and China to define a core of their traditions that (however redefined) must be preserved, while different (more supposedly backward or superstitious) ones may be left behind. Thus Chinese intellectuals and political leaders have sought to retain a supposedly central Confucian worldview, while stripping off its links with traditional social and political institutions—no more binding women’s feet, no more imperial ritual. And Hindu reformers have defined a “spiritual” core of Hinduism while renouncing features deemed unacceptable to modern sensibilities, such as untouchability or widow-burning. Even Christianity (actually not that much earlier) engaged with modernity, with similar “bargaining” has been taking place—for example, the resurrection of Jesus (even if redefined) has generally been deemed to be non-negotiable, but not all the other miracles of the New Testament.