The World’s Religions in Multicultural America: Case Studies

in Religious Pluralism

United States & The World 32HDS 3842

Professor Diana L. Eck

• "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." (Bill of Rights, 1791)

President Lyndon Johnson, Immigration & Nationalities Act, 1965

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America• The religious atmosphere of the country was the

first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States. The longer I stayed in the country, the more conscious I became of the important political consequences resulting from this novel situation.

• • In France I had seen the spirits of religion and of

freedom almost always marching in opposite directions. In America I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land.

• • . . . . All thought that the main reason for the quiet

sway of religion over the country was the complete separation of church and state.

Schleiermacher1768-1834

• “The sense and taste for the infinite”

• “Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite”

WHAT IS RELIGION? “. . .the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual

men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend

themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”

(William James1842-1910)

“Religion is what one does with one’s solitariness” (Alfred North Whitehead 1861-1947)

Emile Durkheim1858-1917

• Religion is an eminently social thing. . .

• A system of ideas with which individuals represent to themselves the society of which they are members and the obscure but intimate relations they have with it. (Elementary Forms, 1912)

Paul Tillich(1886-1965)

“Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a

concern which qualifies all other concerns as

preliminary and which itself contains the

answer to the question of the meaning of life.”

What is Religion? • Religion would thus be the universal obsessional

neurosis of humanity. . . (Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939)

• “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” (Karl Marx, 1818-1883)

• “Religion poisons everything. . .” (Christopher Hitchens, 1949-)

“Diversity is Excellence?”Interpreting Religious Difference

• An Academic Question• A Religious or Theological Question• A Civic or Public Question

“Diversity is Excellence?”Responses to Difference

• Exclusivism• Inclusivism, Assimilation• Pluralism• Many other types of responses! Syncretism?

Tribalism? Mestizaje?

Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras. . .

• Exclusivist: My religion is true, exclusive of others• Inclusivist: My religion is true, inclusive of others. It’s

a big tent, and our understanding of God is universal• Pluralist: Religious Truth is greater than any or all

religions. Engagement with others may lead to deeper understanding of our own faith. . .

Arguing Diversity• Washington D.C. Rajan Zed first offers Hindu Prayers in the U.S. Senatehttp://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jul/12zed.htmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vENZwp1rk&feature=related

• Temecula, California. Hearing on the proposed mosque. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJsSkgRgRDs&feature=related

Arguing Diversity, American Style

• Exclusivist –Don’t come. You don’t belong here!

• Inclusivist –Come. But assimilate, be like “us”• Pluralist –Come and participate, be yourselves

Exclusion• Chinese Exclusion Act 1882

• Asiatic Exclusion League “The Asiatic race and the Caucasian race never could and never can exist in the same territory. Their morals, their philosophy, their religion, their education, their standard of living are reversed, and as far apart as the two poles. They can never blend, harmonize, commingle or live together in peace. The welfare of both races will be best served and their happiness effectively advanced if they confine their operations and efforts to that portion of the earth given them as a home by God.” [From Asiatic Exclusion League, Proceedings of the A.E.L. (San Francisco, 12 January 1907), 11.]

• “Leave” (Pittsburgh Temple graffiti, 1980s)

• “Go back to where you came from” (Charlotte, N.C. 2001)

Inclusion, Assimilation• “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where

all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won’t be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you’ve come to --these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians --into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American!” [Israel Zangwill, “The Melting Pot” 1905]

• “Too much pluribus, not enough unum!” [Arthur Schlesinger,

Jr. The Disuniting of America, 1998]

• Will Herberg on America of the 1950s, Protestant, Catholic, Jew.

“The three religious communities –Protestant, Catholic, and Jew– are America. Together they embrace almost the entire population of this country. . . They constitute the three faces of American religion, the three “pools” or “melting pots” in and through which the American people is emerging as a national entity after a century of mass immigration.”

Pluralism• Frederick Douglass: America is a “composite nation.” “We should

welcome men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general conformity.”

• “I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever.” [Frederick Douglass, 1869)

• “Democracy vs The Melting Pot” (Horace Kallen) More like a symphony, parts different and creating a whole.

• “What do we will to make of the United States --a unison, singing the old Anglo-Saxon theme “America,” the America of the New England school, or a harmony, in which that theme shall be dominant, perhaps, among others, but one among many, not the only one?” [Horace Kallen, “Democracy vs. The Melting Pot, 1917]

Fremont, CA

A Civic Issue

Keith Ellison

A Theological Issue

What is Pluralism?

• First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity.

• Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference.

• Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments.

• Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue.

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Cambridge, MA