Universalism (religious studies)

This article deals with the term universalism in religious studies in general.

• This article is not the Chinese universalism , a term coined by Helmuth von Glasenapp as a generic term for the often merging Taoism and Confucianism was coined in China. Jan Jakob Maria de Groot , on the other hand, spoke of Chinese Universism , to which he also included Chinese Buddhism. Today it is commonly referred to as the Three Doctrines

Universalism characterizes religions that address their offers of faith and promises of salvation or their commandments to all people, regardless of their ethnic affiliation and across political and territorial borders.

This ideal humanity on an interdenominational basis is also known as religious cosmopolitanism . The cosmic religion and personal beliefs are also included in religious universalism. In addition, the ideal of religious universalism denotes the idea that everything that exists bears clear traces of God.

The attempt to gain knowledge of God from human reason and from contemplation of creation (nature) is a characteristic of natural theology . Natural theology does not claim to be a religion, it is rather about the spiritual penetration of the world context with scientific methodology.

Concepts of religious universalism

National and social barriers lose their meaning before religious universalism. This concept is clearly differentiated from the national religions and is called world religion . This primarily refers to Buddhism , Christianity and Islam . It is important to enforce their universalistic character through missionary work. The differences between the denominations should also be overcome or the different religions should be merged with one another. In terms of positive pragmatism, the term “religious Esperanto” is used. The concept of religious universalism goes far beyond the idea of ​​ecumenism. In the modern reception the opinion is held that the apostle Paul is the founder of ethical universalism. Paul appears “as an advocate of a global theology that also includes the cosmos, without denying the primacy of Israel”.

Israel's religious universalism

Yahweh is not the God of a particular tribe, but the God of all humanity. The idea of ​​the inner kinship of all people and the universal validity of ethics as well as human feelings exclude any form of religious particularism. This is accompanied by an objective, just and loving attitude towards the so-called pagans . This human feeling is considered to be the root from which the religious universalism of the Jewish religion arises.

Nevertheless, the Jewish religion in its real form is not a universal religion , but one of the great popular religions , as it is inextricably linked with the ethnic-religious group of Jews .

Christian universalism

In the Catholic Church in particular, the thesis of the Christian claim to absoluteness is advocated, according to which Christianity, if it is detached from its ties to a people and introduces Christian universalism, would, for example, make a united Europe possible. The Christian motto “All people are brothers” means, conversely, that those who are not my brothers cannot be people either. Christian universalism tends to exclude all non-believers and false believers from the human population. In Christianity, indifferent and total divine grace makes a universal claim. On the other hand, in particular religions - and even in Islam - there is a place for the other.

In a much broader sense, the Christian teaching is Apokatastasis or Allaussöhnung identified with a reconciliation of the universe and referred to from this aspect as Christian universality. The doctrine of the reconciliation of all is based on the New Testament, according to which God will reconcile the universe with himself in the future.

Unitarian Universalist Association

Based on the idea of ​​Christian universalism in the sense of universal reconciliation ( apocatastasis ), the Universalist Church of America came into being in North America in the 18th century , and in the 20th century it merged with the Unitarians to form the Unitarian Universalist Association . Today's Unitarian Universalist Association has broken away from its Christian roots.

Islamic universalism

The principle of Islamic universalism can be understood as an identity-creating scheme, as it is important for the organization of Hezbollah , for example . In this case, Islamic identity is given priority over national affiliation. Islam is understood as a universal message for all of humanity that includes all national identities. It is believed that Islamic universalism is imperialist. The historian Efraim Karsh draws an arc from the Prophet Mohammed via Sultan Saladin and Ayatollah Khomeiny to Usama Bin Laden. What they have in common is the endeavor to Islamize humanity through the means of jihad . It is criticized that Karsh uses the term imperialism for everything that strives for an empire. The current world system started in Europe and America, while an anti-modern is growing in the Islamic countries. There will hardly be any Islamic imperialism - so the critics of the historian Karsh - as long as there is no democratic order. However, in contrast to the crisis of Christian faith in the West, Islamic universalism appears vital and, in a utopian way, obsessed with the future. The western one competes with Islamic universalism and generates rejection instead of acceptance.

Cosmic religion

The feeling of sublimity and the harmony of the structural relationships that reveals itself both in nature and in human thought is called cosmic religiosity. The human individual would like to overcome his own limitations and experience the totality of all beings as something uniform and meaningful. Cosmic religiosity knows no dogmas and no God who was created in the image of man. For this reason the institution of the church is alien to it. Albert Einstein was of the opinion that one of the most important tasks of art and science is to awaken the feeling of cosmic religiosity “among the receptive and to keep it alive”. In Einstein's three-stage model , cosmic religion embodies the highest level of religious development; it follows fear religion and moral religion. Einstein strove to bring science and religion back together. With his religiosity in knowledge of the world, he felt rooted in the Jewish tradition: “Striving for knowledge for its own sake, love of justice bordering on fanaticism and striving for personal independence - these are the motifs of the tradition of the Jewish people that make me belong to make him feel as a gift from heaven. ”With these words Einstein secularized the Jewish faith to a“ moral attitude in life and to life ”.

Ideal of religious universalism

The Würzburg religious dogmatist and philosopher Herman Schell followed the divine ideal of positive aseity , the absolute independence of God, which carries the basis of his existence in itself. The roots of Schell's universalism lie in this ideal. The foundations of religiosity were broader for him than the boundaries of the circle that the Catholic Church gave him. Schell had the idea that everything around us bears clear traces of God. From this he developed his basic ideas about the universalism of the divine will to salvation, for example in the doctrine of the sacraments. His idea of ​​reducing baptism to its spiritual and mystical meaning and liberating it from its external form was based on this. This ideal is based on the conviction that God is equally effective in all religions and works in a universal way through all of nature and in the consciousness of people.

Connection with political universalism

From the perspective of politics, religious universalism can combine with imperial motives. However, this connection between religious and political universalism is not mandatory if religion is understood as a supra-political instance.

Religious pluralism

Religious pluralism - also known as religious plurality - assumes that every religion has a path to salvation and the right relationship with the divine, which is therefore open to all people. Due to the phenomenon of immigration, the diversity of religions is seen as one of the major political challenges. The transformation processes of political arrangements of religious plurality in European nation states is interpreted as a re-institutionalization of citizenship. Immigration and globalization are fundamentally changing the relationship between politics and religion. On the one hand it is about the question of the religious neutrality of the state or of public life, on the other hand it is about the collective identity of the people's sovereign. In this context, the question of multicultural citizenship is raised. Basically, it is a matter of replacing the conditions of social integration with “questions about the cultural and structural requirements for the realization of democracy and human rights in de-territorialized and post-national domination contexts”.

Religious Liberalism

Religious liberalism has many facets and is based on the philosophy of the Enlightenment and idealism. It is also known as liberal theology . Accordingly, religion and theology should be practiced on the basis of humanism. Religious liberalism strives for greater independence from dogmas, church traditions and beliefs. In his sense, belief is a personal matter to man. According to this understanding, belief can arise through experiences that trigger a deep resonance in people. Religion begins with the experience of man that he belongs to a comprehensive reality, a larger whole that carries him in life.

Web links

• Literature on religious universalism in the catalog of the German National Library

Wiktionary: Universalism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ limited preview in the Google book search
2. ↑ limited preview in the Google book search
3. ↑ Thomas Macho: The fascination of the thirteenth apostle. (No longer available online.) Cicero - Magazine for Political Culture, September 8, 2009, archived from the original on February 15, 2016 ; accessed on February 15, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Julius Lewkowitz: The emergence of ethical and religious universalism . In: Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Hrsg.): East and West: illustrated monthly for all of Judaism 1.191-23.1923.4 . tape 11-12 , pp. 555-562 ( uni-frankfurt.de [accessed February 15, 2016] 1.58 MB).
5. ↑ Theses, titles and demons - European day of the cath. Theology. Ruhr University Bochum, January 16, 2002, accessed on February 15, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Love without mercy. Die Zeit, June 15, 2000, accessed on February 15, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Erik Mohns: The Hezbollah - Chances and obstacles in the transformation of a guerrilla into a political movement in the Lebanese post-war society. (PDF) In: Working papers on problems in international politics and developing country research. Geschwister-Scholl-Institut of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2005, p. 75 f , accessed on February 15, 2016 . 
8. ↑ Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Islam imperial. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 5, 2006, accessed on February 15, 2016 (book review. Efraim Karsh: Islamic Imperialism. A history.). 
9. ↑ Herbert Kremp: Why is Western universalism so hated? Die Welt, November 14, 2010, accessed February 15, 2016 . 
10. ↑ Albert Einstein: Religion and Science. (PDF) (No longer available online.) 1939, archived from the original on February 15, 2016 ; accessed on February 15, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ^ Burkhard Gladigow: European history of religion since the Renaissance. (PDF) In: Zeitenblicke 5 (2006), No. 1. Retrieved on February 15, 2016 . 
12. ↑ Markus Pössel: Einstein's cosmic religiosity. (PDF) Cicero - Magazine for Political Culture, December 23, 2004, accessed on February 15, 2016 . 
13. ^ Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon (Ed.): Aseität . tape 1 . Leipzig 1905, p. 850 ( zeno.org [accessed February 14, 2016]).
14. ^ Hugo Paulus: The religious bell. (PDF) In: An unpublished study on the Würzburg theologian Herman Schell (1850–1906) by his student Hugo Paulus (1878–1951). Vincent Berning, 1914, pp. 106 f , accessed on February 14, 2016 . 
15. ↑ limited preview in the Google book search
16. ↑ Henning Ottmann: Limits in a world that is becoming more and more limitless . In: Joachim Fischer , Hans Joas (Ed.): Art, Power and Institution . Campus, Frankfurt am Main, New York 2003, ISBN 3-593-37378-5 , pp. 285 (studies on philosophical anthropology, sociological theory and cultural sociology of modernity).
17. ^ Matthias Koenig: Citizenship and Religious Plurality in Post-National Constellations. (PDF) April 2003, pp. 220–226 , accessed on February 14, 2016 (dissertation in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Marburg). 
18. ^ Wilhelm Gräb: The liberal theology is current. Religionsphilosophischer Salon, December 18, 2011, accessed on February 15, 2016 .