Religious Pluralism

How this subversive ideology is hollowing out our faith

Six times every year, our nation’s top men compete in BUD/S for a chance to earn the title of Navy SEAL. The washout rate is over 50%, and that figure comes after an already selective recruiting process. The high failure rate isn’t a bug, but rather a feature of the program. Young men push themselves far past their limits for the opportunity to become a member of this unit. But why?

It is not because the Navy SEALs are the same as every other branch of the armed forces. Nobody endures that kind of physical and psychological punishment to be equal, they do it to be better. Better trained, better prepared, more capable, more trusted. They do it because distinction exists, and because not everyone makes it through. If a SEAL is not functionally superior to a standard infantryman, then there is no rational reason to put oneself through that process at all.

This reveals a truth about society that has become taboo to acknowledge. Excellence requires hierarchy by definition. Wherever competence, sacrifice, and cost differ, hierarchy emerges. Society is not equal, and attempts to force equality of outcome are a communist utopian pathology.

Obviously not everyone has the intelligence to attend an Ivy League institution. When you cannot make everyone a success, the only way to manufacture equal outcomes is to flatten those who rise. It is marketed as compassion, but in reality it is sabotage cloaked in faux-morality. It is the “logic” behind participation trophies, and it destroys the incentive structure that produces excellence in the first place. If additional schooling, discipline, and sacrifice do not produce commensurate reward, then what is the point? These ideals did not stay in the realm of economics, but trickled down to religion as well.

Pluralism, and especially religious pluralism, functions as the spiritual arm of collectivism. It advances the same goals through softer language. Whereas Marxism attacks hierarchy directly, pluralism dissolves it gently. It insists that everything is equal, every path is valid, and every belief is interchangeable. The rhetorical move is always the same: why go through the extra hardship that one of these flavors requires if the other one that requires less is not any less? Pluralism tells you all of that cost is unnecessary.

“Religious pluralism is how communists convince religious people to accept atheism.” - Gavi Shapiro

This is where people get confused, because pluralism does not deny G-d outright. It takes a more subversive approach. It trains you to treat truth-claims as rude. It teaches that believing too strongly is a problem. It reframes conviction as moral failure. Pluralism is not tolerance, it is an anti-truth philosophy. If every religion is equally true, none of them are worth obeying. When obedience becomes optional, belief becomes aesthetic. Once belief is aesthetic, disbelief is inevitable.

“When truth is interchangeable, disbelief is inevitable.” - Gavi Shapiro

If all religions are of equal value, then what’s the point? Why go through work and hardship if you will end up equal to everyone else anyway? Obviously you wouldn’t. Just as you wouldn’t go through the additional schooling to become a doctor if you’ll make as much money as someone who has a job that did not require such extensive training. These beliefs have the same effect as communism, but on our religious institutions.

“No one creed has a monopoly on the spiritual truth.” - Jonathan Sacks

This sentence sounds cute until you actually process what it means. A religion that cannot say it is true in any meaningful way is not a religion, it is a collection of customs and a social framework. A G-d who prefers nothing, demands nothing, and distinguishes nothing is not a G-d that governs reality. This is atheism in every way except the name, not because it insults G-d, but because it makes Him irrelevant.

“Nothing is true; everything is permitted.”

Chassidus is actually quite explicit about this. Ritual without intention is empty, but intention without obligation is meaningless. Kavanah only matters because the mitzvah is real, commanded to us by the One Creator. Serving Hashem “because He asked” only makes sense if He actually asked, and if not every other path counts as an answer. Pluralism doesn’t simply hollow out practice, it hollows out intention itself. When truth is interchangeable, adherence becomes performance. What remains looks religious, but it is only performative in practice.

A world in which everything is true is functionally a world in which nothing is and this outcome is not accidental. It is the standard operating procedure of collectivist propaganda. Marxism does not wake up one day and ban your religion. It begins by neutralizing it. This is a tale as old as time, and it is exactly the strategy used by the Greeks in the Hashmonaim era: not erasing Jewish identity overnight, but converting it into a hollow, Hellenized performance that no longer resists anything.

First you are told your truth is not unique. Then close adherence is ridiculed as fundamentalism. Then what makes your religion distinct is labeled offensive to others. Eventually, all that remains are hollow traditions that pose no threat to power and only barely pay homage to what once was.

Religious pluralism dissolves polarity by design. It erases chosenness. It treats hierarchy as immoral and distinction as dangerous. The result is a faith that means nothing and therefore does not generate any reason to sacrifice for it.

Actual Judaism will not perpetuate in that paradigm. Just look at the Conservative and Reform movements. None of their grandchildren will be Jewish. Unsatisfied with even that achievement, the religious pluralists have turned their attention to the Orthodox movement in an effort to complete the project.

Judaism perpetuates precisely because it is chosen. Judaism is centered around selection. Just ask any convert, it is not so easy to join. Hashem chose a people, imposed obligations, and demanded a lifestyle that is more challenging than those of other creeds. Why go through all of that if it is declared interchangeable? Why accept additional responsibility, restriction, and sacrifice if the outcome is declared equal to those who accepted none of it? When you erase chosenness, you erase obligation. When you erase obligation, you erase the drive for perpetuation.

Jonathan Sacks attempted to program us with the universalist belief that all religions are equally valid. His universalist framing trained religious people to relinquish exclusive truth claims in the name of “civility.” That move denies divine truth without ever saying the words. It replaces covenant with coexistence and obligation with mutual affirmation. A G-d that made a world where everything is true is indistinguishable from no G-d at all. Religious pluralism is atheism in every way except the name. Those who study real Torah understand this intuitively, because it is coded throughout. They choose where to live based on it. They structure their lives around it. They submit to it because they know it is not interchangeable and because it is not equal.

There are people who spend years studying Judaism, uprooting their lives to convert. They move communities, endure rabbinic scrutiny, and take on commandments that overturn their previous lifestyles. They give up the ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Now imagine telling them that after all of that, they are equal to someone who sacrificed nothing. That their covenant carries no distinction. That their sacrifices were unnecessary. Belief would collapse instantly, not because people are weak, but because the system declared sacrifice irrational. This is why pluralism always precedes secularization.

Hierarchy is part of the natural order. Collectivism cannot tolerate hierarchy because hierarchy produces chosenness, and chosenness produces authority. Marxism seeks to erase this because a world where no one is chosen is a world where no one can claim divine mandate. Pluralism is the tool used to inch toward that goal, using religious-coded language that is just safe enough to pass muster.

This hollowing of belief is what is destroying religion across civilization. The small religious revival we see today is powered by the rejection of pluralism, not its embrace. People are returning to faith because they are exhausted by meaninglessness, repelled by moral equivalence, and starving for something that actually has consequences. Religious exclusivism is a net positive for society. It creates polarity and pushes civilization to actively believe in G-d. It transforms religious institutions from cultural centers back into houses of worship.

A faith that refuses to declare itself uniquely true will eventually stop believing anything at all.