a radically inclusive christ who honors and respects other faiths...

One of the most profound blog posts I've read was shared on Valentine's Day 2019 by Fr. Richard Rohr. In his current series, "Jesus and Christ," he puts into words a truth I have struggled to fully articulate for decades. Namely, that the radically inclusive ministry of Jesus means that everything and everyone has a place within God's love. 

The only thing Jesus excluded was exclusion itself: Think about what this means for everything we sense and know about God. After the Incarnation of Jesus, we could more easily imagine a give-and-take God, a relational God, a forgiving God. Revelations of Christ—the union of matter and spirit, human and divine—were already seen and honored in the deities of Native religions, the Atman of Hinduism, the teachings of Buddhism, and the Prophets of Judaism.

Rohr fortifies this confession of revolutionary inter-faith solidarity in a way that is bolder than previous commitments to deep ecumenism. 

+ First, Rohr clearly celebrates that other faiths have recognized and shared the heart of God well before the historical Jesus lived. Whether it is the wisdom tradition of First Nations People in the Americas, the radical inclusivity of ancient Israel's prophets, the Hindu teaching that honors the essence of the universe within each individual, or the unity of seeming opposites in Buddhism: this confession of revolutionary inter-faith solidarity is bolder than many of our previous attempts at deep ecumenism. It refuses the patronizing categories that Christians have used in the past that authentically yearned for theological equality while imprisoned in limited imaginations. I think of the Vatican II writing of Karl Rahner. He chartered new inter-faith territory in his description of an anonymous Christian. "Non-Christians could have in [their] basic orientation and fundamental decision accepted the salvific grace of God, through Christ, although [they] may never have heard of the Christian revelation."

"Anonymous Christianity" means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity. A Protestant Christian is, of course, "no anonymous Christian"; that is perfectly clear. But, let us say, a Buddhist monk (or anyone else I might suppose) who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity. (Indeed a person could) intellectually profess disbelief but [be] existentially ... committed to those values which for the Christian are concretized in God.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Christian#cite_note-FOOTNOTED'Costa1985132-1)

This exploration was positive in its era as Rahner ached to include the righteous of all faiths within the grace of God. But, given the rigid theological hierarchies of his tradition, the best he could come up with was a patronizing Christo-centric apology. Matthew Fox has done important work in this realm, too. As James Russell Lowell's text for the hymn, "Once to Every Man and Nation" tells us: "time makes ancient truth uncouth."Rohr is now able to recognize that the heart of God we see incarnated in Christ Jesus has been present in creation and other religions since the beginning of time

The Christ is always way too much for us, larger than any one era, culture, empire, or religion. Its radical inclusivity is a threat to power and arrogance. Jesus by himself has usually been limited by the evolution of human consciousness in these first two thousand years. His reputation has been held captive by culture, nationalism, and much of Christianity’s white, bourgeois, and Eurocentric worldview. Up to now, we have not been carrying history too well, because “there stood among us one we did not recognize... one who came after me, because he existed before me” (John 1:26, 30). He came with darker skin, from the underclass, a male body with a female soul, from an often-hated religion, living on the very cusp between East and West. No one owns him, and no one ever will.

+ And second Rohr is able to use our Christian tradition and its holy texts to support the emerging radical inclusivity that has been calling for recognition since the beginning of time.  Of particular importance are the stories Jesus told - and the celebrations he attended - that embody the essence of God's heavenly banquet. "Many non-Christians actually came to the “banquet” more easily (than those already inside the tradition) as Jesus says in his parables of the resented and resisted banquet (Matthew 22:1-10; Luke 14:7-24) Rohr continues: again and again, “the wedding hall was filled with guests, both good and bad alike” (Matthew 22:10).So what are we to do with such divine irresponsibility and largesse?" His conclusion is that these stories point to a "God who cares about all of creation's children." Consider these words from Wisdom 11-12:

Thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things,

and thou dost overlook our sins that we may repent.

For thou lovest all things that exist,
and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made,
for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it.

How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it?
Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved?Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living.
For thy immortal spirit is in all things.

Therefore thou dost correct little by little those who trespass,
and dost remind and warn them of the things wherein they sin. 

I am particularly moved by Rohr's next insight re: the inclusion of the Hebrew Scriptures within the Christian canon: "Does God really have favorites among God’s children? What an unhappy family that would create—and indeed, it has created. (Yet) the inclusion of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Christian canon ought to have served as the structural and definitive statement about Christianity’s movement toward radical inclusivity. So how did we miss that?"

God said to Moses: “I AM Who I AM” (Exodus 3:14). God is clearly not tied to a name, nor does God seem to want us to tie the Divinity to any one name. This is why, in Judaism, God’s statement to Moses became the unspeakable and unnamable God. We (too) must practice profound humility in regard to God, who gives us not a name, but pure presence.

I can't help but recall a quip Thomas Merton made re: monks and priests. He had been questioned about what he was learning from spending time in meditation with Buddhists monks. "Well, we clearly use different words," he replied, "but in contemplation we wind up in the same place." Then he smiled and added something like, "Monks seem to be ok with this. Monks don't have words or hierarchies they must defend - all the problems come when the priests of any tradition show up!" I think Rohr and his center is on to the same bold conclusion. I can't wait to live into its promise in the years to come.