Humanizing and Dignifying Cultures: Dialogues with Religious Utopias

Cultures can be divided into two kinds: exclusive and inclusive. Exclusive cultures are oppressed, vulnerable, and dehumanizing. Inclusive cultures are dignifying and humanizing, and they move towards the ideals of egalitarianism, prosperity, justice, etc. Religion, as part of culture, plays influential roles in the formation and promotion of ideals. This promotion can be located in religious utopias, because almost all religions hold utopias as central to their ideals and chart their ideologies towards these. In the context of exclusion and inclusion, the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the vulnerable etc. need to be included into the main stream of social life and this requires values such as liberation, justice, compassion, mercy, charity, etc. No authentic culture is possible without the inclusion of the poor. The awakening of such inclusion is offered by religious utopias. Hence dialogues between cultures and religious utopias and also between various religious utopias are essential. This paper seeks to understand how religious utopias can contribute to the dignifying and humanizing of cultures.