It has become fashionable in some circles recently to publicly disdain Christian claims as “bigoted.” For Christians to believe that Jesus is the world’s only true savior and lord, or to believe that their faith is uniquely true, is held to be disrespectful to other beliefs. What is most ironic about this charge is that those who call such historic Christian beliefs bigoted are themselves making a truth claim disrespectful to other beliefs.
Before exploring this point further, it is important to recognize that people can indeed hold truth claims, including about Christianity, in uncharitable and even bigoted ways. Many people, for example, adopt wholesale a system of beliefs that are hurtful to others and not necessary to the faith they claim. Many Hindus traditionally approved of sati, burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, even though the Hindu Scriptures did not require this. Many Christians in the United States have perpetuated particular unjust racial or other prejudices as part of a subculture that also claimed to be Christian, without distinguishing genuinely biblical from other elements of their heritage.
Moreover, it is possible to hold even essential elements of one’s faith in an intolerantly narrow way that one’s own faith would condemn. Christians who truly believe we are saved by grace share joyfully with others good news of hope. Some, however, have used their faith to boast in their own superiority, forgetting that salvation by grace means that none of us is saved by being “better” or more deserving than others. We welcome the gift and we share it.
Nevertheless, that people sometimes offer religious truth claims in inappropriate ways does not discredit all truth claims. Even if opinions once differed, it made a difference whether smoking was really bad for one’s health or not (it is). Although most religious claims are not verified in the same epistemic manner as verdicts on smoking, those who presume that all religious claims are subjective without examining evidence risk staking on this assumption something much more serious than the longevity of their lungs. Simply because there are different opinions does not mean that none of these opinions can be true. Further, whether or not one agrees that a claim about truth is true, one can still speak charitably about it rather than attributing it to bigotry!
Most faiths make truth claims. At some point these truth claims may contradict each other. For example, a central claim of Christians is that Jesus is God’s Son; an important claim of Islam is that God has no son. (This particular difference may be qualified, in that Islam means especially that God did not impregnate Mary, and Christians actually agree with Muslims on this point. Both Islamic and Christian Scriptures affirm the virgin birth.) More obviously, some faiths claim many deities; others claim only one God (though often allowing for other spirits); atheists claim no deity at all. Such claims do not readily harmonize.
Some truth claims among religions admittedly overlap. Apart from reflecting gender values of its day and some comments about ancestor veneration, much early Confucian teaching is common wisdom widely agreeable to other faiths. Further, the monotheistic religions obviously share much in common; Islam, for example, perpetuated many ethical principles insisted on in Judaism and Christianity (and in some points, such as rejecting the veneration of images, may have acted more consistently than some Christians of that era). Likewise, the Christian faith emerged as a form of Judaism. Many of us today appreciate Messianic Judaism’s argument that there remains enough overlap for a Jewish person to follow Jesus without renouncing her or his Jewish heritage.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that most faiths believe that they teach something more true and more helpful than other faiths; that is why they are distinctive faiths. Even here, however, it is possible to treat one’s core beliefs as true without despising other beliefs.
But what about the belief that it is bigoted for any faith (or a particular faith) to claim to be more true than others? If one believes that no belief is more true than any others, one thereby asserts a belief that holds untrue most other beliefs—since most other beliefs are beliefs because their believers hold them to be true. Moreover, believing that no belief can be uniquely true is logically self-defeating, because one cannot affirm that one’s own belief about other beliefs is uniquely true! Despite the logical inconsistency, a belief that other beliefs are not uniquely true is not necessarily bigoted; it just cannot be dogmatic that it is correct.
By contrast, it is worse than merely illogical to call bigoted any belief system that holds itself uniquely true. Such a claim is itself dogmatic, assuming the unique right to evaluate all other beliefs. It is also the one and only belief system that, by its own criteria, should call itself bigoted. One wonders why those who point the finger at Christians or others as bigoted for their beliefs cannot see how their own pointing leaves their other fingers pointing back at themselves.
