Will There Ever Be Just One Religion?

OF EARTH’S population, three fourths belong to non-Christian religions or profess no religious faith at all. One fourth say they are Christians. To list individual religions would be staggering. The Encyclopedia of American Religions lists 1,187 primary denominations in the United States alone!

Most religions do agree on one thing. As historian Arnold Toynbee said: “They all believe that man is not the highest spiritual presence in the universe.”

Do you agree that there is some supreme spiritual Person watching over you? If so, are you satisfied that he is worshiped in vastly different ways by both professed Christians and non-Christians? Even more important, is that supreme spiritual Person satisfied with the many forms of worship? Why can’t there be just one religion?

Before unity between religions can come about, we should see unity within them. In a special report published in The Christian Century, the former moderator of the United Presbyterian Church, Howard Rice, said: “‘If the world outside the church were to take a really hard look at us,’ . . . it would proclaim, ‘See these Christians, how they fight one another.’” Within the church, he said there has been “a crumbling off of congregations one by one . . . congregations bent on breaking away.”

Within the Catholic Church there is growing dissent. One survey after another reveals that a vast majority disagree with the Church’s antibirth-control stand, its forbidding divorced people to remarry, its claim that the pope is infallible when he speaks on matters of faith and morals, and its stand on many other issues.

Rather than consolidating, there is a fragmenting taking place, with offshoots of parent denominations setting themselves up as separate sects. Robert C. Whittemore, professor of philosophy at Tulane University, reports that in the United States in recent times, “more than 35 new sectarian groups have sprung up across the nation. ‘Christianity is being challenged today as never before by new religious mores . . . and attitudes.’”

Can non-Christian religions point to a better example? Under the heading “The Arabs​—Always uniting, never united,” The Economist says: “There are so many forces making for Arab unity that it is a wonder that the Arabs stay apart; and so many reasons for disunity that it is even more wonderful that they are not perpetually at war.”

Something More Than Religious Unity Is Involved!

The religions of the world are also deeply divided by their nationalistic and political loyalties, which, in fact, take precedence over loyalty to God. Nationalism is itself the worship of collective human power within local limits. Nationalism divides people, even of the same religion!

On this score, historian Toynbee issued this strong warning to professed Christians: “In any part of the Western World today, one may be confronted with the spectacle of the local national flag​—a symbol of the idolatrous worship of some local state—​being carried into a Christian church, and sometimes one even sees the Cross and a national flag being carried in church in the same procession. Whenever I see that, I find myself filled with foreboding. Here are two rival religions: traditional Christianity and neo-paganism. They are irreconcilable with one another . . . In the inevitable future war to the death between them, which of them is going to win? Here are their symbols, side by side, being borne aloft, with an apparently equal veneration, within the walls of the same consecrated building. For how long can they continue to co-exist?”

Does the World Council of Churches have the answer? That Council describes itself as “not a universal authority controlling what Christians should believe and do; but . . . nearly 300 churches of widely varying traditions.” It, like its counterpart, the U.N., merely acts as a forum where differences can be aired. While going through the motions of a worldwide Christian unity, they strongly adhere to their own separate expressions of faith and doctrine. Furthermore, this Council does not admit non-Christians to membership.

But is all of this reason for despair? Is God dependent on religions’ getting together before his purpose toward mankind can be accomplished? Never!

Is There Just One Right Religion?

Rather than expect religions to unite, it is wise to find the religion that pleases God. In view of the fact that there are so many religions, it is not reasonable to conclude that the religion to which a person’s parents introduced him in his youth is necessarily the true one.

To a Samaritan woman who had her own religion, Jesus said: “You worship what you do not know . . . True worshipers will worship the Father with spirit and truth, for, indeed, the Father is looking for suchlike ones to worship him.”​—John 4:22, 23.

Not all worship, therefore, is true. Worship with “truth” means accepting God’s written Word, the Bible, and all it teaches as the truth. It means rejecting all opinions and traditions of religious and irreligious men that conflict with the Bible. The one true religion cannot compromise with human traditions and political ideologies.

The apostle Paul wrote: “We know . . . that there is no God but one. For even though there are those who are called ‘gods,’ whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ there is actually to us one God the Father.” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6) For the one God of truth, there has been and could be only one true religion.

God’s purpose is to have the whole universe united in a perfect bond of love and unity, through true worship​—and that in the very near future.