Cosmopolitanism is the view that all humanity belongs to a single community. People belong to a world community more than to a local community.  “The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community.”

Cities. For some the word evokes thoughts of skyscrapers, taxi cabs, subway systems, and an integrated nexus of life, lifestyle, and labor. For others the word brings to mind a hurried pace they would better off avoid, a cultural environment where people are reduced to business machinery and secularism rules from an unimpeachable iron throne. It is true that cities, increasingly so, have a flavor all their own. In fact, it has been repeatedly acknowledged that urban centers around the globe look more and more like each other and less and less than the rural areas immediately surrounding them. Tokyo, Atlanta, Dallas, Sydney, and Beijing are a lot more like New York City than Buffalo.

What is Sacred Cosmopolitanism?

This fusing of cultures, this urbanism, is an incubator for a cosmopolitan worldview. Cosmopolitanism is the view that all humanity belongs to a single community. People belong to a world community more than to a local community.  “The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community.”[1]According to Diana Butler Bass, in her work Grounded, social scientists describe the twenty-first century as cosmopolitan. In this sense, “Boundaries have thinned between nations and cultures, and we participate in multiple worlds and our lives are simultaneously local and global.”[2] How does this affect religious perspectives? Butler Bass answers that this takes the form of what she calls sacred cosmopolitanism:

Sacred Cosmopolitanism is “an awareness of the connections we share with God and others here on earth… something that is visible in religious attitudes, membership, and practices and revealed stories, experiences, and data. In certain ways, this awareness has always been with us. In the past, this understanding has embodied humankind’s greatest aspirations, and it has guided artists, prophets, gurus, mystics, and saints through the ages. But what was once the vision of only a few has now become a theological revolution of the many.[3]

This sacred cosmopolitanism is “a borderless kind of spiritual awareness.”[4]

The Cosmic Border Crisis

Borderless is a nice way of putting it. Boundaries are done away with. As Butler Bass clarifies, “It is an understanding and experience of God that goes over boundaries. The boundary that once divided Creator from creation, that boundary that divided nature from the human community, the boundaries that divided human communities, and finally the boundary that divided God from humankind.” [5]

This is classic Oneism, a cosmic border crisis where categories, concepts, and characteristics of creation are smuggled into our understanding of God. Butler Bass is advocating the same boundary-bulldozing that has defined every religious system since Genesis 3. And yet, Butler Bass is not completely wrong to say that such a resurgence of what “was once the vision of only a few has now become a theological revolution of the many.” Orthodox Christians must be as aware of the theological climate as those of a more liberally-minded persuasion. Is sacred cosmopolitanism a force that can push us toward greater cultural collaboration, unity, and human engagement with the world. Does a “borderless kind of spiritual awareness” animate us to do God’s work in the world?

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