What is Inclusivism and what has it got to do with Christianity and St John’s?

Of course, “Inclusivism” isn’t really a word—no spell check will catch it. And anyway, our secular post-modern post-Christian culture already considers itself inclusive: of religion, of gender, of sexuality.  It prides itself in being tolerant and open-minded, and liberated from ways of thinking that have led to the oppression of minority groups in the past.

Inclusivity has its roots in the Enlightenment and a growing awareness that possessing objective truth was not as simple as previous generations had thought. The philosopher Kant, in trying to solve an impasse in 18th century philosophy, pioneered an approach that has its final expression in the relativism of our present day. He said that we can not know things as they really are in themselves, only as they appear to us; there is Truth, but we cannot know what it is.

This approach to reality has left the Church harassed.  After all, Christianity claims knowledge of the Truth: that is, of the saving will of God made known through the person of Jesus Christ.  In response, its members have taken many different routes. Some Christians have re-interpreted Holy Scripture, and found in the Bible an unerring source of objective truth. God’s revelation is absolute and unchanging, and this provides a great deal of certainty in an uncertain world. In its extreme form this approach can deny modern science and embraces ideas such as creationism.

Other Christians have evolved with the times, taking on board scientific discoveries, psychological theories, philosophical reflections and the experience of living with other cultures. An Inclusivist approach is one which rejoices in being a child of its time because it believes God rejoices in our time too. We do not live or think in a vacuum and we cannot deny the intellectual advances of our own age.