This is a Post-Monotheist world we're living in. Hence, most of what people pass as Monotheism in nowadays is nothing but Henotheism through and through.
That is:
Instead of orienting oneself toward One God and One Adam = One Source of Everything and Unity of Mankind, we have this:
My God and My Adam
My God (Yahweh/Jesus/Allah/Etc.)
My Adam (the Jew/Christian/Muslim/Etc.)
That is NOT Monotheism - pure and simple.
* * *
What H. R. Niebuhr says here applies to ALL:
When we turn from the question about Monotheistic faith in relation to religion as piety to the question about the relation of that faith to the "organized religions" in the West -- Judaism and Christianity -- two observations force themselves upon us:
First, the struggle for monotheism has been continuous in the history of these societies and is at present being carried on in them;
Secondly, though we call Judaism and Christianity "religions" they are not only concerned with religion as personal or communal piety but seem to be efforts at the incarnation of monotheistic faith in total life.These two facts seem interrelated but we must attempt to construct the whole picture by attending to each one in turn.
Those of us who call ourselves Christians have been prone to see the mote of particularism in our Israelite brother's eye while disregarding the plank in our own.
The God worshiped by Israel, we note, was almost always somewhat an Israelite god.
Israel, we tend to say, thinking of itself as a chosen nation, meant when it spoke of its election that it had been especially favored by a deity who was more the holy One of Israel than the Lord of heaven and earth.
Hence it tended to believe that it had been endowed with special privileges more than charged with special responsibilities.
So it thought of itself as the holy nation in such fashion that there was no access to God except through membership in its community.
While it is strange that Christians should charge Jews with this error as though it were peculiarly Jewish, it does seem clear from any study of the Hebrew Scriptures that the history of Israel is marked by an almost continuous struggle between social monotheism [henotheism] and radical monotheism [monotheism as such].
2. RADICAL FAITH IN "ORGANIZED RELIGION"
Radical Monotheism and Western Culture
H. Richard Niebuhr
