In my days as a church historian in Thailand, I started an online bibliography of English-language materials on Christianity in Thailand (here), and over the summer I've been adding entries as time permits. In the process, I came across a brief article entitled, "Friendly exclusivism and aggressive inclusivism," which provides a fascinating window into the chasm between these two ways of thinking. The basic point of the article is that Christian exclusivists are generally friendly even kindly in their views while inclusivists are not. In the course of his argument, the author writes,In the West inclusive thinking is becoming ever more popular, and exclusive thinking is less and less acceptable. The main reason is the slow disappearance of logical thinking. When two statements are contradictory, one or none can be true. But they cannot both be true. Let’s say I claim ‘there is a wall over there’. Somebody responds ‘don’t be so fundamentalist, I have the right to the opinion there is no wall-actually, wall’s don’t exist’. I’ll happily grant the right to that opinion. But I’ll only start to consider this person as a serious participant conversation when he walks through the for him non-existent wall.The author has already explained that Christianity is an exclusive religion, which means there are right beliefs and wrong beliefs; Buddhism is an inclusive one, which means that it can see incompatible beliefs as being parallel to each other. In the quoted paragraph, our exclusivist friend makes it clear that a Christian faith based on the exclusive claims of Christ is logical and serious. Inclusive thinking is illogical, lacks seriousness, and apparently can even insist on something as silly as believing a wall that clearly does exist doesn't exist.
The example of the wall is an unfortunate choice, because those who do not accept an exclusive gospel also do not reject physical realities, such as walls. In fact, we are far more likely to accept such physical realities as evolution and an age of roughly 14 billion years for the universe. Our exclusivist friend is more likely to reject evolution and think that the universe is only a few thousand years old. The example, however, also indicates how illogical inclusive thinking is to our friend. It is so illogical to him that he apparently honestly thinks that inclusive thinkers are able to believe patently silly things. They are not just illogical, then. They also have a loose grip on reality.
Our friend is not being perverse. He is not being stubborn. He is not ignorant or foolish. He lives in a different universe, one in which black-and-white, I'm-right-you-are-wrong thinking on matters of faith makes perfect sense. It has a millennia old heritage and the backing of passage after passage in scripture. The rest of his brief article also makes it clear that he feels under attack by those who see things inclusively.
In fact, the wall is there, the universe evolves and is tens of billions of years old, and exclusivists are not kindly lovers of humanity any more than those who see things more inclusively. We look at reality differently, and it is apparently impossible to bridge the chasm between our two ways of thinking. For what it is worth and as one who struggles to be inclusive, open, and accepting, however, from an inclusive perspective it is not unusual of exclusive thinkers to think that those who disagree with them are illogical, prone to accepting silly ways of thinking, lack seriousness, have a loose grip on reality, and are aggressive. Exclusivists must, by the necessity of their own logic, reject the possibility of dialogue across the chasm. For them, compromise is an ugly word. And, although they do not see or feel it, their way of thinking is frequently intolerant and aggressive—at times prone to forcing its beliefs on others because it is right and those who disagree are wrong. As a rule, it can also be disdainful of and disrespectful toward any thinking not its own. As I say, the chasm between these two ways of thinking is so deep, so wide that it appears unbridgeable.
