Religion is now a market commodity, offered in dozens of channels like a cable-TV subscription. We've become jaded and skeptical of hawkers who advertise the ultimate answer, and deliver only bigoted disconnection from the rest of humanity. Seekers weary of the religious ratings war find UU churches, hopeful that we have some quality programming. One religion cannot satisfy all varieties of people. Religious pluralism is extremely relevant.
Different religions constitute different approaches altogether.
In the postmodern world, with its plethora of choices, pluralism can become a new metavalue. Recognizing the worth and dignity of our fellow humans implies that we do not seek to colonize their chosen spiritual paths and shape them into conformity with our own. This is the spirit behind trying to move from tolerance to acceptance as our motto for dealing with diversity. Learning to replace tolerance with acceptance can itself be a profound spiritual transition. With this shift, all the particular features of different religious systems, once brushed under the rug as distractions in the program of identifying the single truth, now come into their own and re-assert themselves.