Religious Reductivism

Jews are "chosen." Christians are "saved." Muslims have the "last word."

In the end, for many of the world's "faithful," religion reduces to the claim that "God loves me/my people more than you/your people."

To the extent to which this is the case, and for as long as it is the case, those "children of Abraham" who insist upon reducing religion to one-upmanship are unworthy of the great traditions to which they are heir.

To choose such pettiness over magnanimity and charity, to choose such ugliness over the soaring beauty of scriptural poetics, monumental architecture, and deep ethical reflection, reveals a shameful personal shallowness that beggars description.

To commit the sin of religious reductivism is to fail to deserve one's own inheritance.