One nation, many faiths

This is a true American story - an intriguing tale in several parts that offers historical drama, geographical sweep, engaging characters caught in the throes of unsettling change, and an invitation to help shape the story's conclusion.

Yet it's not a tale with which many Americans are familiar. The majority probably know and are proud of the fact that the country was built early on by immigrants who were seeking religious freedom. Today, we eagerly press countries around the globe to accept religious liberty as a universal value.

But at home, we are still very much sorting out the full implications of this freedom, which has contributed to a proliferation of faiths and sects and, over the past 35 years, an amazing redrawing of the religious landscape.

"A New Religious America: How a 'Christian Country' Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation" will surprise and perhaps even startle many who have failed to notice in their midst the quiet sprouting of Hindu temples, Islamic mosques, Sikh gurdwaras, and Buddhist meditation centers. These are the fruits of a wave of immigration - now about a million people a year - that followed the revision of US laws in the 1960s.

With this tour de force, Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard University, serves as a sympathetic and knowledgeable guide who not only illumines the hidden corners of our own faith history, but nudges us to venture into these unfamiliar worlds to meet our new neighbors.

Raised in a Methodist home in Montana, Eck first experienced the shock of religious difference in India, amid a confounding multiplicity of Hindu deities. She understands how human nature reacts to "difference" and what it takes to come to terms with and embrace it. This she recognizes as a task now facing us all.

Despite America's founding principles, ambivalence and even open antipathy have often greeted those newcomers whose beliefs differ from the prevailing Protestant culture. Eck takes us through our checkered history and demonstrates why pluralism is not a "dirty word," whatever some, bewildered by the growing diversity, may feel.

While racial divisions have persisted as our preeminent social problem, she believes that the new American dilemma for the 21st century is whether we will pursue a genuine religious pluralism, essential to ensuring a peaceful future. Pluralism is not just tolerance, Eck says, but active engagement with the intent to understand one another.

This book is a remarkable first step in that direction, encouraging us to live up to our ideals and offering examples of how we might do so. A highly readable saga, it also demands something of the reader: engaging with the details of the past and the legal and social challenges of the present.

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