Christianity is the world's largest religion with more than two billion followers. With a large number of followers comes large diversity in the way people follow the religion because different people have their own way of understanding religion. Christians, on the basis of their view about faith, can be categorized in three broad brackets. These brackets are exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Many a times, critics of pluralism say that pluralists are not true Christians because they do not take their faith seriously. I argue that one can be a true Christian even if they are a pluralist. Before digging deeper in the topic, it is important to understand what the words exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism actually are. .
According to Google.com, exclusivism is "the action or policy of excluding a person or group from a place, group, or privilege." In terms of religion this would mean that people of a certain religion, for instance, Christianity would completely exclude the religious beliefs of other religions. It is the belief that Christianity is only religion whose belief system is true and the other religions have an incorrect belief system. An exclusivist would say something in lines of - Christ is the only God, his path is the only true path and a true Christian has to constantly follow his path. Their attitude towards other religions is that of uncertainty and they think that other religions are non-leading to God. Exclusivists usually discourage the interpretation of the Bible and follow it more literally. They might think their strength is deeper faith in Christianity but that may or may not be true because Bible also asks a Christian to be tolerant. A weakness with exclusivism is that they have a lack of knowledge about other religions and are not tolerant to their beliefs. .
Next is the bracket called Inclusivism. Inclusivism makes an effort to tolerate other religion and expand their space to welcome other religion under their bracket in a sense.