Just a Few Other Gospels
Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World
by Michael Ingham
Toronto, Ontario: Anglican Book
Centre
(167 pages; $18.95, paper)
reviewed by Terry Mattingly
The first Parliament of World Religions brought 400 clerics and scholars to Chicago in 1893 and marked the birth of the modern interfaith movement. It also provides a pivotal scene in Mansions of the Spirit, a laity-level work of popular theology by Anglican Bishop Michael Ingham of Canada’s Diocese of New Westminster.
As Ingham tells the tale, the good guy is clearly Swami Vivekananda of Calcutta. The bad guy is the archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson—who symbolizes centuries of dogmatic, simplistic Christians who believe in heaven and hell and that where one spends eternity has something to do with a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and in the sacraments of his Church.
Many of the speakers at the 1893 gathering focused on how the world’s religions fit into a global, evolutionary move toward Christianity, broadly defined. But Vivekananda offered a dramatically different vision, stressing that truth takes many forms and that believers must learn to share each other’s truths—even if they clash.
His bottom line was the same as that proclaimed by many leaders in today’s Anglican establishment: the belief that the world’s many spiritual paths ultimately lead to one destination.
“Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas or sects or churches or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is spirituality,” said the swami. “All religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, are so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite, as determined by the condition of birth and association. . . . Every religion is only an evolving of God out of material man.”
Vivekananda drew rave reviews, especially from the newspapers. But the archbishop of Canterbury, who refused even to attend the meeting, was not impressed.
“I do not understand how that one religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament of Religions, without assuming the equality of other intended members and the parity of their position and claims,” wrote Benson. Four years later, a Lambeth Conference resolution reflected the same views: “The tendency of many English-speaking Christians to entertain an exaggerated opinion of the excellence of Hinduism and Buddhism, and to ignore the fact that Jesus Christ alone has been constituted Saviour and King of mankind, should be vigorously corrected.”
This Lambeth statement, notes Ingham, is a perfect example of an ancient theological perspective called “Christian exclusivism,” which still dominated the Church at that time. However, even a century ago, many Anglicans spoke out against the stand taken by their archbishop and the Lambeth Conference. And in the century since the Chicago parliament, “exclusivism” has come under constant attack.
At the World Congress of Faith in 1986, another archbishop of Canterbury summed up a very different approach to the gospel. Times had changed.
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