The great world religions have developed ways of understanding human experience in its totality. To this extent they are “ways of life”. Whatever truth the followers of the many religious traditions believe has been given to the world it applies to everything - habits of worship, personal attitudes and relationships, cultural expressions in dress, diet and family life, and public recommendations for ethical action in society.

Religious truth may come from a revelatory source – a set of scriptures, a prophet or enlightened person, an experience of encounter through the natural world – but its message is intended to apply to every area of human activity. A religion, in other words, is self-sufficient for the purposes of reaching its goal.

A problem emerges when we recognize that any one religion does not propose the same goal as other religions. The goals may be termed variously as enlightenment, eternal life, salvation or liberation.

The religions roughly follow a pattern which can be described in four stages as :

• diagnosis of world deficiency
• divine disclosure
• recommended practice
• ultimate goal

where all have:

• a diagnosis of human life which has gone wrong, lost its way or missed the mark as an arrow might miss the bulls-eye of a target.
• a source of inspiration or revelation that brings new knowledge or spiritual insight
• a recommendation for religious practice that aims to transform the present world
• a perceived goal in relation to an ultimate principle or power that has become known in the world.

The idea of a Global Theology arises when we realize that there have been numerous pathways where followers of a religious practice have attained a degree of transformation in life that seeks to fulfil a religious ideal.

Religious teachings have developed a number of strategies for coping with the recognition that a number of religions have brought a transformed understanding to the world and a renewed sense of the meaning of life. “My” religion may be true but what about the religion of “others”? Is another religion true in the same sense or with the same force of conviction as I believe my tradition to be true? Approaching this question is to start to move towards Global Theology.

There is one assumption that needs to be brought out into the open at this point. It is the assumption that the world religions deserve to be grouped together under the term ‘religion’. In other words, there is a family relationship between the religions that drive us to group them together as being concerned with life in a way that seeks to transform it in relation to higher reality in some sense. It is important to draw attention to this because there are numerous voices who would deny that the religions should be grouped together at all. They are different histories, systems of thought, and contain different experiential expectations. Global Theology has to make sense of the often huge differences between the belief structures of the religions and their sense of mutuality and belongingness. If there was nothing that brought them together then they should not be called ‘religions’.

Ninian Smart has identified 7 dimensions that are present in all religions to varying degrees and with varying significance.