By the Gods--Or Not: Religious Plurality in Xena: Warrior Princess (Critical Essay‪)‬

Introduction [1] The protagonist of Yann Martel's 2001 novel, Life of Pi, is a young Indian boy who attempts to be Hindu, Christian and Muslim at the same time. When the leaders of his three congregations discover his duplicity, they protest that simultaneously practicing multiple religions is not possible (1)--an opinion that would be shared by most real-life practitioners of the three religions. Religious plurality has been an increasingly vexing philosophical and theological problem since the rise of the social sciences in the nineteenth century. How is one to explain the apparent efficacy of the various religions in facilitating meaningful and ethical living in light of their ostensibly contradictory truth claims? Can a person legitimately practice more than one religion?