User:Liushenhu/Alan Race

Alan Race is Alan Race is an internationally recognized authority on Interfaith Dialogue, as well as a keen practitioner of Interfaith Dialogue. He became known as a prominent expert in the field with the publication of his book Christians and Religious Pluralism (1983 & 1993, SCM Press). In this he first proposed what has become the major typological representation of Christian attitudes to other religions with the terms: pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism (see below). He has reaffirmed this typology and defended the pluralist position in later works. His most notable later works include: Interfaith Encounter (2001, SCM Press), and more recently he has edited with Dr Paul Hedges the most recent, comprehensive and authoritative guides to the area, Christian Approaches to Other Faiths (2008, SCM Press, and Christian Approaches to Other Faiths: A Reader (2009, SCM Press) . He was also noted as the editor of the academic journal 'World Faiths Encounter', which became 'Interreligious Insight', a more accessible journal of encounter between religions and faith traditions, and of which he is currently editor-in-chief . He is also a leading member of the World Congress of Faiths . He currently works both as a parish priest and as Dean of Postgraduate Studies at the St Philip's Interfaith Centre in Leicester, UK . He continues to be a contributor to both national and international conferences and dialogue events.

Race's assessment of Christian approaches to other religions under the categories 'pluralism', 'inclusivism' and 'exclusivism' is his main contribution to debates in the Theology of Religions. Briefly stated, exclsuvism is the position that one religion alone is true and all others are false, which generally means that only believers in one religion are saved - others are damnned. Inclusivism says that all religions are partially true, but one alone is the absolute truth and others are only good in as far as they measure up to the standards of that one. It offers believers in other religions a chance of salvation by participation in the saving grace offered by the true religion. Religious pluralism is the stance that all religions are, or may be, true, seeing each as a possible mediator of a divine/ God which transcends the limits of any one tradition. Race is one of the UK's leading pluralist Christian theologians, and a supporter of the work of the best known pluralist theologian, John Hick. Other well known Christian pluralist theologians include the Americans Paul Knitter and Leonard Swidler, the German Perry Schmidt-Leukel and the Indian K. P. Aleaz. Race's terminology has been widely taken up and used within these debates.

Race's terminology/ typology has faced criticism from a number of angles. One notable critic is the British theologian Gavin D'Costa who originally supported the typology and saw himself as an inclusivist, but lated rejected both the typology as well as the inclusivist stance. According to him, there can be no such thing as 'pluralism' or 'inclusivism' because any position involves saying that yours is correct that others fit within your worldview. Therefore he argues the only real option is exclusivism. Other critics have suggested that the terminology is biased, as exclsuvism sounds negative, and that therefore the whole typology is biased towards pluralists who come out of it sounding more positive. Race and others reject these criticism on various grounds. An overview of arguments can be found in Hedges and Race, Christian Approaches to Other Religions, chapter 2, where Hedges points out that even those who reject the typology either use it or something similar as well as arguing for its usefulness as a tool to understand the debates.