Raising the Roof

As I was flipping through Time magazine yesterday, a short article on Claremont Graduate University caught my eye. Claremont has now extended its Religious Studies to include the full trio of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This all under one roof… hmm, interesting. Apparently, by implementing this change it has increased enrollment by 10%, so it’s been alright for the school’s pocketbook. I suppose this change in policy shouldn’t surprise me. After all, we do live in a pluralistic society. We as Americans like convenience. If a student goes to Claremont unsure of whether they want to be a pastor (or priest), Rabbi or Imam, they can decide on their religion conveniently without having to switch schools.
I was curious to what a school’s purpose statement would look like while offering these three religions side-by-side (along with Mormonism). I figured the purpose statement wouldn’t mention Jesus Christ, because Islam wouldn’t see Him as God, and wouldn’t claim He was anything more than a prophet, and Judaism wouldn’t see Him as Lord or king. But if you leave these out of Christianity… well, you don’t really have Christianity anymore, do you?
So I got on Claremont’s Website and found some of the school’s purpose statement. It is as follows:
“The School of Religion wants its students to experience what it means to be both inside and outside a community of faith. We hope to train individuals – students, researchers, educators, and leaders – from a variety of religious traditions and secular perspectives to be able to participate in a civic life of unprecedented religious diversity. The distinctive vision of the school is to create and promote a study of religion that produces graduates who are ‘religious multilinguals.’ We hope this perspective promotes religious understanding and tolerance.”
I feel the statement “We hope to train individuals… to be able to participate in a civic life of unprecedented religious diversity” makes a pretty big claim. The school is aware there is religious diversity in Jerusalem, right? The end sentence I find interesting as well “We hope this perspective promotes religious understanding and tolerance.” It sounds like they have their fingers crossed on that one.

Multiculturalism and multilingualism have their place, but it’s difficult to keep the skeptic in me fully behaved on this one. Yes, people with diverse religions can battle out their differences verbally on the campus greens, and it might give them food for thought on their faith of choice, but it seems like you have to surgically remove the backbone of each of these religions to make it happen cordially. If religious diversity and tolerance are Claremont’s primary aims, I can see this attracting a certain demographic of people, but to upcoming graduate student candidates I would shout "Run away!". Tolerance and diversity have a nice ring to it in an academic purpose statement, but at the cost of throwing away an iron-sharpens-iron atmosphere. Is tolerance and diversity important enough to die for? It is worth thinking about. It might be this generation’s emerging religion.