the twenty-first century that faces us, we will begin to see modifications of
Christian exclusivism as well as a resurgence of conservative exclusivism
among those whose identity is profoundly threatened by a world where
Christianity is often relegated to the realm of private experience.

The Franciscan friars, who attempted to convert the Pueblos, were ad-
vocates of the exclusive character of Christianity. Henry Bowden informs
us that the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico were "conditioned to confor-
mity since childhood, [and] accepted the new social forces that had en-
tered their culture like the point of a wedge." ¹⁴ However, their "confor-
mity" was not absolute; they were more syncretistic than conformist. That
is to say, they were a people with long experience of adjustment and ac-
commodation to the stories, rituals, and technologies of other peoples.
However, the Pueblos were not accustomed to giving up their own tradi-
tion, their own knowledge of the ultimate order and meaning of existence.
Like many other Native American nations (the Yaqui, for example), they
were a people who "kicked extra points." Conversion was a matter of
adding to, or completing, what they had already been given by their an-
cestors. Conversion was complementary and supplementary. As Bowden
admits: "The Pueblos did not know that the Spaniards planned to use
their initial accommodations as the means of transforming native life into
their own model of civilization, including its religion." ¹⁵

As a people become aware of a multiplicity of claims about the ultimate
order and meaning of existence, they are faced with the necessity of re-
sponding to those others whose claims seem to render them a separate peo-
ple. If they find it difficult to discern those others as elements in their own
selfhood, they will reject the ideas and ways of those others. Two models of
response to religious diversity that emerge in such circumstances are those
of conquest and conversion. We have examined the inner sense of these
models and hopefully have shown how they are never totally absent from
human behavior. Pluralism is difficult to accept. It is not easy to contem-
plate "the multiplicity of other people who dwell or might have dwelt" in
and among us. Pluralism requires a religious sensibility that recognizes the
symbolic character of religion and culture, the manner in which these hu-
man achievements point beyond themselves to a reality that makes the ac-
ceptance of others a creative probability. Conquest and conversion are
sometimes responses to diversity that allow us to try to possess what can-
not ultimately be possessed--the otherness of our own selfhood.

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