"Christian Exclusivism is Unfair": How to Respond

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“Christian Exclusivism is Unfair”: How to Respond

In many skeptics’ eyes, especially given a westernized milieu, Christian exclusivism presents a major stumbling block to belief in Christ. “How is it fair to say that Christianity is true and all other religions are false?” Christianity inherently represents a moral failure—one of intolerance, exclusion, and prejudice. 

Guidelines for thinking through this objection:

1.     Other religions are also exclusive

Like all organized systems of faith, Christianity makes truth claims. Christians are not alone in that. To believe in a religion is to adopt certain truth claims according to that religion. This is true of all religions, not just Christianity. Chief among Christian beliefs is the belief that God exists and that God is a Trinity. Muslims and Jews, for instance, believe in the first but reject the second because they both teach Unitarianism (the view that God is a single person). Just as Christians make a truth claim about the number of persons in God, so too do Muslims and Jews make a truth claim about God’s singular personhood. If Christians are right about this claim, then Muslims and Jews are wrong, and if Christians are wrong, then Muslims and Jews are right. The fact that one religion’s truth claims entail the denial of another religion’s truth claims is not a matter of intolerance but a matter of logic.

2.     Other religions are not exhaustively wrong

Among the entirely of religious truth claims, there is room for much overlap. As shown in the previous example, Christian, Jews, and Muslims can all agree on a plethora of propositions, such as God exists, God is maximally great, God created human beings, God has sent prophets, and human beings fail morally Various religions can be acknowledged by Christians to contain some sense of truth. Where differences arise are the essential truth claims of each religion, such as the belief in the Trinity, incarnation, resurrection, salvation, and sacraments. Christianity does not require that every single truth claim of every other religion be rejected, which, again, is a matter of logic.

3.     The skeptic is equally exclusive

If the skeptic is in fact an atheist, he or she is also rejecting a multitude of religions. Atheism denies the supernatural, and thus any religion that asserts the belief in the supernatural is automatically deemed false. If Christians are guilty of intolerance, then the skeptic is equally guilty. Even worse than Christianity, which denies other religions, atheism denies all religions. According to the standard objection, there is nothing more exclusive than atheism.

4.     Objective truth claims

If atheism is equally guilty according to its own standard of intolerance, then the only thing left is to adopt religious pluralism, the belief that all religions are equally valid. Fortunately this is an unnecessary move. Merely rejecting a view is not equivalent to an intolerant stance. It is, rather, a matter of logic, as seen under the first point. Admittedly, there could be a semblance of intolerance among religious affiliation if its truth claims are subjective—that is, strictly based on personal preference. Christianity, however, far from making subjective truth claims, makes an overwhelming number of objective truth claims that are historically verifiable. The resurrection, for instance, has been under massive scrutiny, and continues to be debated in the academy and in popular apologetics. Hence, Christians believe that Christianity is more reasonable, based upon its objective truth claims, than other religions. To assert that Christianity is unfair for believing certain truth claims is a misunderstanding of the kind of truth claims it makes.