What is religious pluralism

This chapter introduces the terms of the question: what is the ‘religion’ and the ‘pluralism’ in ‘religious pluralism’? Though their ideas were developed in a workshop at the European University Institute in 2015, contributors here and elsewhere in the volume speak from their own disciplinary traditions, taking different approaches to terminology as a result. Therefore, this chapter works across disciplines, providing an overview of some of the central ways in which different disciplines have approached and understood ‘religious pluralism’. This chapter makes a particular distinction between what Rouméas terms theological, sociological, philosophical pluralisms alongside the idea of religious pluralism as a political ideal. This chapter draws attention to how different methodological and ideological approaches give rise to distinctive understandings of ‘religious pluralism’, as well as to how disciplinary-specific assumptions shape how the concept is interpreted.