The scope of this essay is twofold.  First, this essay is a study of religious pluralism.  By pluralism, I refer not to the fact there is a plurality of religions in the world, but to the intellectual responses to this plurality in the field of religious studies.  For some scholars it is a response asserting some measure of equal standing between the major religious traditions.  They maintain that God or the Absolute is speaking uniquely to each religious tradition, and it is through the ecumenical efforts of each tradition that the others will come to hear the unique word that God or the Absolute has spoken to it. The question of truth becomes a question of the reliability of our ideas and assumptions.  Correspondingly, they deny types of uniqueness and absoluteness claimed for one religion or another.  For others, religious pluralism refers to an ideological or normative belief that there should be mutual respect between different religious systems and freedom for all.