Religion and Religions

Abstract

Max Charlesworth’s work in the late 1990s on ‘the scandal of religious diversity’ raises serious questions that have not yet been sufficiently recognized and certainly not resolved. How does ‘religion’ as a universal or at least very widespread phenomenon relate to the concrete world religions as institutions? This and other issues raised by Charlesworth are explored here: Are diverse ‘revelations’ incommensurable or is this the result of linguistic and cultural difference? Does relabelling such as ‘the Absolute’ or ‘Ultimate reality’ for ‘God’ resolve any difficulties? Is pluralism descriptive or prescriptive? The chapter concludes with an appraisal of Charlesworth’s unjustly neglected ‘Credo for the religious believer’.