Is an ethnocentric view of "religion" a valid one?

Question

Some years ago, I took a college course called "World Literature." My daughter is currently taking a course called "World Literature." The similarity ends right there with the title.

The one I took started with Greek mythology of Homer and Greek tragedies, included Boccaccio, and featured plays of Henrik Ibsen, philosophy of Nietzsche and Proust, and fiction such as Don Quixote. To be fair, we did have some Eastern selections, such as Bhagavat-Gita and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam--the things a person needed to have read to be considered educated about the literature of the world.

My daughter's course includes selections from South Africa, Japan, China (the Peking Opera is a scream), Central and South America (magical realism, for example), and many places that were most definitely not mentioned in the course I took.

I suspect that the cultural history in the United States has been to be ethnocentric, making the assumption that the only contributions to our culture that "count" came from the Mediterranean areas through Europe to North America. Clearly, that era is passing in the approach to world literature.

If it is now true that to be well educated in literature, one must read literature that originated in countries all over the world, is it possible that the same may be true of the world's religions? Is it possible that our ethnocentric view of religion can hamper our understanding of God and that we would benefit greatly in studying more closely at least the MAJOR world religions that are currently practiced?

Can it be that God would pick one small, isolated group of put-upon hard-luck souls and make them the ONLY people who could communicate with God? Or is it possible that God sent the same opportunities to learn "the ways of God" to many people in many diverse places--and we're only now able to study all of the various belief systems and synthesize an accurate message?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

You're right; a large portion of the population in the U.S. do look to their ancestry through Europe. Those people tend to be WASPs--white Anglo-Saxon Protestants--or to a lesser extent, Catholic. Even those whose ancestors emigrated from other ethnic pools in Europe, if they are Christian, often seem to believe that Christianity is the "only" religion that has a direct connection to God. They seem to think that only Christians could possibly have heard God's message to mankind--and that's definitely ethnocentric thinking.

So yes, Christianity, particularly the branch that's considered "conservative" and often "fundamentalist," does seem to be ethnocentric.

However, many scholars of religion agree that people from many different geographical locations have managed to "hear" messages from God, filtered through their own times and cultures. All I can say is that I don't know God's motivation and plan for the world, and if I can find a message that helps me feel closer to God, I'm all for it--even if it comes from a Buddhist or a Native American spiritualist.

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

Thanks--you helped clarify my own thinking. Good answer!

Answer 2

Jesus sent out 72 disciples, and He intended for them to visit all 4 corners of the earth. If there is one true faith - and I believe there is - no amount of knowledge of other faiths will change that. It's useful for discussion and it's always good to know where other people are coming from and what matters to them, but if there is an absolute Truth, taking bits from other faiths won't help us to find it.

Iow, an amalgam of faiths wouldn't create a true faith or show us who God really is, it would just be a man-made amalgam.