Book Review
By Larry L. McSwain, Interim Pastor
Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Florida
A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Now Become the World`s Most Religiously Diverse Nation
Diana L. Eck,
San Francisco: Harper, 2001. 386 pp. $27.
The publication of the most definitive book on religious pluralism in America just before the violence of September 11, 2001, could hardly be more timely. In this exceptional work by Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University and Director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard, the demographic and religious changes brought about by the increased immigration since changes in Federal laws in 1965 are traced with clarity and impact.
The first chapter is an overview of the religious impact of explosive immigration from previously limited ethnic and cultural groups in the American context. The result is an Asian population growth of 43 percent and Hispanic growth of 38.8 percent in the decade of the nineties bringing a multi-ethnic diversity unknown in any previous history of the country. The emergence of new religious practices have sprung up both within the traditional Christian denominational milieu and externally in the forms of new communities of Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh and Indian practitioners. The conclusion is that "The United States has become the most religiously diverse nation on earth" (p. 4). Thus, one no longer can speak of Herberg`s Protestant, Catholic and Jew of the 1950`s, but rather of "Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh" as well as vibrant Native American religiosity.
What Eck is able to do is document the extent of this change with multiple descriptions of the variety of new centers of worship across the whole of the American landscape. From Cleveland`s new massive Islamic Center at the central exchange of expressways of its southern suburbs to Buddhist temples in neighborhoods of Los Angeles as well as growing non-Christian communities in Nashville and Oklahoma City, the change is pervasive and inclusive of all regions of the country.
The book is a helpful historical analysis as the development of each of the major faith traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are documented. More lively, however, are the extensive description of personal participation in the worship, educational and community development activities of many individual communities of new faiths in multiple communities of the nation. Researchers in the Pluralism Project have put faces, names and places to the descriptions of religious pluralism and one can learn much about the practices of many faith groups in these pages.
Of more concern to the Christian ethicist are the multiple issues arising from this new reality for traditional, majority church leaders. How does this new pluralism impact the historic practice of separation of church and state when the issues are no longer whether Christianity will find public expression in governmental entities, but whether Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Wiccan, Native American, and other representative will have equal place in the public square-military chaplains, prison worship expression, prayers in the Congress, and public recognition of religious symbols? The cries for religious expression in the public schools make the question of which religion a monumental one in many communities.
Of equal significance is how the E Pluribus Unum of American civil religion can be lived out. In contrast to historic patterns of exclusion or assimilation, Eck argues strongly for pluralism as the "oneness shaped by the encounter of the many, the engagement of the many."
Her pluralism applies as well to her approach to interaction among the religious. A devout Methodist from Montana, she is clear in her own Christian heritage and convictions. However, they stand in dialogue with and not against religious pluralism. Her scathing analysis of official Southern Baptist efforts at evangelism of non-Christians as misguided and misinformed will not be appreciated by many evangelicals. However, her approach is a challenge for evangelicals to think carefully about their strategies of witness and conversation. Surely such efforts must be informed by knowledge from the "inside" of such groups. This is a challenge for all Christians to seek to understand their non-Christian neighbors.
Less apparent in the book is the importance for Christian leaders to understand the impact of ethnicity in their own communities of faith. With growing Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern Christian congregations, an understanding of the impact of culture in reshaping religious practice is insight needed by all concerned about a church of all peoples.
