Reinhold Niebuhr

…only a great multitude of diverse, and sometimes contradictory, traditions can serve to illumine the meaning and mystery of human existence…[for it is the] principles of religious pluralism in an open society which [allow] the various religious faiths and traditions to contribute their treasures to our common fund. This pluralism must necessarily include the right of non-believers to convict the believers when faith is not fruitful of justice. It also includes the right and duty of the empirical and historical disciplines to subject religious symbols to scrutiny and criticism. Without this latter development, religious traditions may, and frequently do, degenerate from an obscurantist degradation of faith as “basic trust” into faith as belief, belief in propositions which may be historically dubious, though the symbols are the bearers of the meaning of the mystery of human existence.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and His Communities, 27.