How do the popular religious concepts...?

Question

...of people with a Western, Christian-based cultural heritage get in the way of understanding religion in other parts of the world?

I'm asking this of *religious* people. I am a very traditional Catholic myself.

Answer 1

They don't, if you take it upon yourself to learn about the other religions.

Answer 2

I think there would be some misunderstanding of certain concepts and bias in that not all the religions of the world profess the same deification of Jesus as most of mainstream Christianity.

I think the first thing is to keep an open mind. Study or learn of the concept in a fashion that you can apply to yourself; nativise it to the point of which it can be applied to you. After all, all religious concepts must be understood and verbalised, and it simply is to let go of one's own inhibitions and biases to see the bias on the other side.

I was a Catholic Christian, but became a Baha'i (imagine an extended family of Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals and a Jehovah's Witness, with a Baha'i amidst them, and you'll get the dynamics!). Yet in my own past, I had veiled eyes, because I looked at religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. through the eyes of a charismatic, Bible-reading, soul-saving Catholic Christian. If I had realised that the key to understanding another requires self-sacrifice, then I would have resolved my attitude years ago and would not have been so inclined to save souls to Christ as much as follow His exhortations of Love and all the generalities of Christian charity.

Hindu theology, reincarnation, differing Buddhist intepretations of concepts such as the Trikaya, need this self-sacrifice of personal ego-identity of belief and religion in order to understand it, even if it be a remote and minute one.

I still remember some of my readings with obvious offenses to Muslims because Christian culture was not like Islamic culture. Culture and religion can sometimes be so entrenched and mixed, that separation from them can be difficult (Sikhism and the Punjabi language, for example). I see that Christian culture in the 1900's based its degrading evaluation of other religions and concepts on its own cultural Christianity.

Anyways, God bless, pax tecum et dominus tecum!

Answer 3

I'm a traditional Catholic also.
We generally express our religion through our culture.
When missionaries first came to North America,
they really tried to impose their culture on the natives.
Instead of trying to understand their religious expression.
The Church today is saying that GOD has revealed
himself to all peoples & cultures;-} HE has no favourites.
Every religion has their own version of the Golden Rule.

Answer 4

We seem to think that people in other parts of the world have had their own 'protestant' reformation and are tolerant of people of other religions in the way we are in the West. This surprisingly is not true. Muslims, Hindus, Animists and Buddhists are surprisingly passionate and violent in their attacks upon other people for no other reason that they are not the same brand of religion as they are, Sunnis and Shites for instance. Americans look at the genocide in Iraq and say, 'But they are both Muslims!'

Answer 5

It's called ignorance I believe

Answer 6

a very good question...we shouldn't let that happen. But it does all the time. Doesn't it?