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ON COMMON GROUND Guide for Teachers and Students
1
INTRODUCTION
About This Screen: Home
The Home screen gives you an orientation to the whole CD-ROM and asks some general questions about the growing religious diversity of America and what “America" means to the many people who have found a home here. Watch Voices of America and review the text of the essay "We the People ..." printed in this guide.
The three sections of the Home screen invite you to investigate America's new multireligious reality in three different but interrelated ways:
1. A New Religious Landscape helps you see what the new diversity looks like "on the
ground" in the cities and regions of the United States. In each case, only a sample of religious centers-churches, synagogues, mosques, temples-is presented. More are listed in the Directory. ON COMMON GROUND is clearly a work in progress and it comes to you as an invitation to become more fully aware of your own neighborhood.
Please let us know what you discover. 2. America's Many Religions enables you to learn about the various religious traditions
and their histories, including their histories in the United States. What is their experience as communities of faith: their songs and devotions, forms of meditation, education, and social action? What are the issues they care about, argue about? What are their forms of organization? You will meet some of the people who belong to these traditions and hear their voices as they talk about their faith and their concerns.
You can also find bibliographies and information about publications and web sites 3. Encountering Religious Diversity asks you to think about people of different religions
meeting on American soil. In the section called Historical Perspectives, you can explore the history of America's continuing argument over just how wide our "we" ought to be. Through text, images, and excerpts from documents, you can study the first encounters between Native Americans and Christian settlers; the prejudice permeating Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish relations; the first encounters on the American frontier between Euro-Americans and Chinese and Japanese immigrants. In the section called Today's Challenges, you can look at the questions this new religious diversity poses today for our public schools, courts, zoning boards, hospitals, and neighborhoods. You will learn about some of the tensions and divisions and also some of the bridges that have been built along with the creation of a new interfaith infrastructure.
Introductory Essay: "We the People ..."
The religious landscape of America is changing as immigrants from all over the world take the oath of citizenship and claim the United States as their home. From the beginning this has been a nation of religious diversity, but today it is probably the most religiously diverse nation on earth, despite its overwhelming Christian majority. The deepest reason for our
