Multicultural Religious-Spirituality in Religious Life Today

Multicultural Religious-Spirituality in Religious Life Today

0.1.Change versus chaos = Integration:  Interaction with other cultures and diverse worldviews – even in international religious communities – would often entail some change in my own worldview. Faced with change we fear chaos.  True, too much change could bring about chaos.  Fearing chaos in the face of change we might tend to fall back to rigidity.  Some people tend to polarise these movements in terms of right and left, or as being conservative or progressive. The solution to this lies in integration.  Virtue lies in the ‘integrated’ middle! 

0.2.  Truth-claims and meaning: When it comes to most truths that we hold dear – most of which are products of a certain brainwashing by the institutions of culture and religion in which we have been brought up – we need to be humble to accept that they are only ‘truth-claims’ and not the absolute truth! Therefore, in the interaction with other cultures and religions it is better to search for meaning rather than truth! Meaning is what cultures and religions provide – meaning to the mysteries of life: Why am I here? How did it all come to be? What is all this about? 

0.3. Core focus of religion and spirituality: More specifically, when it comes to spirituality our focus is on the experience of God here and now. Spirituality is simply the meaning of existence enmeshed with the experience of the Beyond – the Divine/God.  Of course, often the experience of God is mediated through symbols that are provided by cultures. Hence the experience of God here and now means also that I/we experience God in a given historical and cultural context within the body of its symbols.  However, can we absolutise the symbols borrowed from a particular culture? Attempts to do this, is cultural imperialism.  In the context of spirituality, that would be mixing up means for the end; map for the territory. In the context of religion, that would be like putting God into a strait-jacket. 

1. Migration of people: Throughout human history human beings have been on the move.  If humans originated somewhere in Eastern Africa, how did they move to inhabit the whole planet earth?  We do know that this movement happened over a long period of time.  In known history, conquests led to movements of people and interaction between cultures.  These interactions though would have initially seemed one way, that is, the conquerors imposing their language and culture on the conquered, often they were mutual.  And out of this interaction cultures developed, knowledge was exchanged, quality of life improved.  (Consider why Africa, South of Sahara, remained underdeveloped – due to isolation caused by the Sahara in the north and the ‘uncorrugated’ shoreline surrounding it.  In contrast, what was the secret of Europe?  Europe’s supremacy over the world was possible after the invention of ship!) 

2. Religious life in a global city: Today, despite rigid national borders we move much more than previous eras of human history. Thanks to fast means of transport and increased wealth in hand, more people move, more often. Countries like Canada, Australia, USA, and UK are struggling with the whole concept of multiculturalism. Migrants (even illegal ones) struggle in the first generation with the hope of a better life for the next generation.  Negative tendencies in this context are ghetto-mentality and xenophobia.   In this context, religious life has an opportunity: to be a sign by forming multicultural/international communities, and also to reach-out to the migrants.  (Religious Orders founded to reach out to the poor are still relevant in Europe.  They could minister to the migrants because they are the poor of that society!) 

3. Another global phenomenon: spirituality outside religion. On another level, what is happening in the areas of people’s attitude towards religion and spirituality – their attitude towards whatever they consider to be sacred?  There are signs that atheism and even secularism may be on the way out. Human beings are settling down to things of the sacred after a few decades of ‘adolescent rebellion’ against God.  This, however, does not mean religion is back?  Spirituality is being explored outside religion.  People are beginning to refer to themselves as being spiritual-but-not-religious.  In this context…

• “a spiritual person is deeply concerned about value commitments” (Spilka et al). 
• Spirituality is “a search for meaning, for unity, for connectedness, for transcendence, and for the highest of human potential” (Emmons).
• Spiritual persons possess high level of awareness and breadth of outlook; “spiritual person is aware of the interconnectedness of things;” they are “integrated in body, mind, soul, and spirit, and in the various dimensions and commitments of their lives;” they have a due sense of awe and mystery; and many other tangible qualities like gratitude, detachment and love (Beck). 

What would this mean to us, who take our religion seriously? It is an invitation for us to live our religious vocation spiritually.  An apt integration of these dimensions into religious life will render it more relevant.  Hence, our discussion on multicultural religious-spirituality in religious life! We need to exhibit characteristics of integrated spirituality visibly within religion. We live and exhibit, what I call, a religious-spirituality. 

4. What is Religious-Spirituality?  It attempts to seek meaning, connectedness and transcendence flowing from the experience of God within structures of creed, code, cult and community.[1]

It is related to Gordon Allport’s description of mature faith or intrinsic religion:[2] The individual expresses an internal order of religious sentiments which are maintained in a multiplicity. The mature religious sentiment exhibits a willingness to break out of the comfort zone of magical thinking and self-justification. It inspires a consistent moral behaviour.  It is built on a belief that ‘God is’ rather than ‘God is precisely what I say He is’; it is tolerant and inclusive.  It expresses harmony that engenders freedom.  It is fundamentally heuristic, that is, there is something tentative about belief that is open to discover new spiritual understanding.

It is also related to the outcome Fowler’s last two stages in the life-long faith development.[3]  Fowler envisaged life-long development of faith in six stages. Mature faith could emerge in the last two stages of development as Conjunctive Faith and Universalising Faith, which could also be reached within the context of structured religion.  Conjunctive Faith often emerges during mid-life as the recognition of the paradoxes of one’s faith that go beyond reason.  There is a graceful movement towards bringing together the apparent paradoxes of faith. Although one may not uncritically accept contradictions, “God” is seen to include mystery and paradox.  At this stage, there is also an attempt to integrate religious symbols and the truths that the symbols signify.  Finally, at the stage of Universalizing Faith, which is reached by a tiny minority of population, Fowler posits a movement toward a state of faith that seeks inclusiveness while still maintaining firm and clear commitments to values of universal justice and love. They are able to live their lives to the full in the service of others.  Individuals who reach this level in faith within religious contexts express the prophetic dimension of religion challenging the status-quo of structured religion. 

5. Religious-Spirituality is three dimensional.  Flowing from the above description of religious-spirituality we can delineate three movements in religious-spirituality: a movement towards the self, a movement towards the transcendent (God), and a movement towards others and the world.  Joanna McGrath talks about “upwardly directed ‘vertical spirituality’”, “inwardly directed ‘interior spirituality’”, and “outwardly directed ‘horizontal spirituality’.” 

Figure 1: Corinne Ware, Discover your Spirituality Type, 1995

6. Implication of multicultural/international communities on religious-spirituality.   Strangers bring gifts. In the context of religious-spirituality, strangers bring a variety of spiritualties expressed in a myriad of symbols.  Just as we talk about personality types we could also consider spirituality types.  While there could be some commonalities of spirituality types among people hailing from the same culture, they could exhibit different spirituality types just as they have different personality types. A religious order might opt for a preferred type of spirituality, inspired by the type of the founder(s).   Figure 1 presents one model of spirituality types.

7. Three paths towards God:  I would generally summarise all these types in the classical three margas (paths) borrowed from Indian spirituality.

• Jnana Marga (The Way of the Intellect): seeking God by the use of reason.  These people could be reading books, interested in maths and science, and these lead them to the mystery of the universe and hence to God.  St Thomas Aquinas is a good example of this.  Intellect is not to be abandoned before God.
• Bhakti Marga (The Way of Devotion): seeking God through specific spiritual practices – rituals, meditation, singing, dancing. Generally, emotions play an important role here.  I see there are two types here. One, of a quiet type: contemplative practice.  Teresa of Avila and the Carmelite mystics, among many others, are exemplars of this model of spirituality.  Two, the active type of devotion as seen in the contemporary Charismatic movement.
• Karma Marga (The Way of Action): seeking God through reaching out to others in charity.  Plain enough. Typical example in the Catholic tradition: Vincent de Paul (“Leave God for god), and St John Bosco.

Here, we are talking about the dominant style.  Most people combine the three. I see the spirituality of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, for instance, a combination of Karma and Bhakti. 

8. Towards Integration: In international/multicultural set up it becomes important not to absolutise one type of spirituality over another.  A community (religious community, formation set-up, a parish community) will do well to provide a variety of means to realise the spirituality of individuals and cultural groups. And as individuals mature in spirituality they become open to types of spirituality different from their own – they feel comfortable, or at least, tolerate other types.   They begin to focus on the essential: experience of God in Jesus!