Multi-Faith Logo
Oboedire | August 21, 2025
The August 2025 issue of The Christian Century magazine includes an article chronicling the increase of those who are being formed by multiple faith traditions. [1] The article was helpful to me in several ways, one of them being making me aware that my own experience of multi-faith formation is in the context of something larger and growing.
But rather than seeing this as a contemporary phenomenon, I now realize it is an experience shared by the first Christians. The writer of Hebrews began the letter affirming that “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways” (Hebrews 1:1). When Paul headed to Athens on his second missionary journey, he found people who were already “extremely spiritual in every way” (Acts 17:22). His observation there was confirmed as he traveled throughout Asia Minor, moving him to write, “Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11). Paul’s experience has been replicated by subsequent missionary endeavors. [2]
harper ident 2024
The dozen years of my retirement has given me the time and space to explore this part of my theology and to experience what I believe the earliest Christians knew and viewed as a sign of God’s providence, love, and care for everyone and everything—the universality of Christ, incarnate in Jesus but also present and active in all the world’s religions.
E. Stanley Jones opened the door to the house I have been exploring for more than a decade. His Christology of the Way sowed seeds that have born fresh fruit for me. [3] Others like Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, Howard Thurman, Matthew Fox, Richard Rohr, Barbara Brown Taylor, Christina Cleveland, and Diana Butler Bass have provided further insight into this. [4]
Far from being abstract theology, I believe the fresh expressions of God’s “many and various ways” pervasive presence and activity is a sign that we are in the midst of a new awakening. I have agreed with Lyle Schaller ever since he penned his conviction that the next reformation would be a uniting one rather than a dividing one. [5] I am glad to have lived to see the birth of this, to experience the wonder of it, and perhaps contribute to its movement. [6]
Given the rise of exclusionary ideologies across the earth, along with their destructive effects, we must bear the fruit (in word and deed) of what the roots of our faith declare, “in many and various ways God has spoken to us.” It is this vision that gives us the moral courage of resilience and resistance and the hope that “though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” [7]
P. S. This post took a different turn than what I intended. I had intended to say more about what I have learned from interfaith exploration. It took longer than I thought to describe my exploration of Scripture and Tradition. So, I will add at least one more post to round out the Reason and Experience aspects of my experience, as per the Wesleyan quadrilateral.
[1] Alex DeMarco, “How I became religiously multiple,” The Christianity Century, August 2025, 40-45.
[2] However, the problem with much evangelism in history is that it did not parallel that of the early Christians. Instead, it was a missionary strategy of replacement (deceptively referred to as assimilation), infused with colonialist cultural captivity, and using words like pagan and savage to describe those whom they sought to save. This language justified the subjugationist enterprise. We can only imagine where we might be in the world today if fulfillment evangelism (of the early Christians) had been the norm for Christian mission rather than disparagement and domination.
[3] E. Stanley Jones, The Way (Abingdon Press, 1946). In much the same way as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, Jones begins by acknowledging the universality of Christ (the excarnate Christ) before and after the coming of Jesus (the incarnate Christ). Jones was a fulfillment evangelist, not a displacement one. His books reveal this in their message, and he expressed it in his round-table methodology that he described in Christ at the Round Table, recently republished by Abingdon Press.
[4] Matthew Fox’s One River, Many Wells and Rami Shapiro’s World Wisdom Bible are compilations that show the interrelatedness of the world’s religions. The Parliament of the World’s Religions is one organization intent on keeping this reality alive. The book, The Community of Religions by Wayne Teasdale and George Cairns further documents this.
[5] Lyle Schaller, The New Reformation (Abingdon Press, 1995). DO NOT confuse this view with the current MAGA “New Apostolic Reformation” theology which falsely roots the Gospel in dominionism. Schaller was an earlier visionary, who saw the coming reformation through the lens of his sociological expertise.
[6] John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings (SkyLight Paths, 2015).
[7] Maltie B. Babcock, “This is My Father’s World.”