A more realistic pluralism would hold that it is possible to believe some false things and still be truly related to God. That would mean Christians accepting that there are truths about God which have not been disclosed to Christianity but have been disclosed to others. Other faiths would have to make similar concessions and admit that each faith may embody a final revelation about God - but because we humans are partial and fallible, our understanding can never be final In that sense, each tradition is incomplete. There may be timeless codes but there is no timeless interpretation As St John puts it, there is more yet to be revealed.

And God allows so much diversity and disagreement because he intends us to learn from it. Truth about life can be singularly portrayed through poetry, philosophy and physics but a work which tries to do all three at once may fail in each.What is then required is not a search for a lowest common denominator but, instead, one for the highest common factor. Instead of looking for the minimum on which all can agree, faiths should be looking for the maximum. Only then can religions contribute to the moulding of shared values for our wider society. That would build a pluralism which is not mere tolerance but which gives every minority a feeling of participation - and in which the majority feel sufficiently secure to tolerate even those whose cultural paradigms do not coincide with theirs. Only with such a post-Christian liberalism might the great faiths secure the prospect of a constructive debate with secular humanism.The reward might be a marriage of the benefits that secularism has brought us - like the emphasis on the freedom of the individual - with the overriding sense of the common good which religion brings.

Domestically, it might help find a better balance between the conflicting claims of the individual, the group and society as a whole. On a wider stage, the West may even discover that the international solidarity of Muslims in many lands offers insights to help counter the deficiencies of the nationalism which has proved the great acid of the 20th century.It was perhaps not a lesson that the Nabataeans were able to learn. The consequence is empty niches among the empty tombs of an abandoned civilisation. But there is another place not far away that offers a better paradigm. At the top of a long dusty climb across the grey desert wasteland outside Madaba is the tiny monastery of Mount Nebo. It marks the spot at which Moses - a figure sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike - ended his journey through the wilderness Today, little seems to have changed on the mountaintop.