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ON COMMON GROUND Guide for Teachers and Students
10
III A NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE
About This Screen: The Landscape Page
The Landscape page presents a map of the contiguous states of the United States, with buttons for eighteen cities and regions. The movie A Visible Difference gives us a glimpse of the various places of worship in the United States: churches; synagogues; Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu temples; Sikh gurdwaras; Muslim mosques; Pagan sites; and so forth. The introductory essay, "New Neighbors," printed in this guide, describes some of the new religious neighbors in the cities and towns of the United States.
Start anywhere with the button nearest your own town or with the places you or your students are most curious about. This section contains the "grassroots" documentation and research of the Pluralism Project: about four hundred portraits of religious communities and institutions. No one will want to read all of these! Rather, they are a resource, the brick-by-brick foundation on which much of our work rests.
You or your students might want to ask us some of the following questions about the Landscape section:
Is it comprehensive? No, this mapping of the United States begins where we began with six religious traditions: Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Jain, Sikh, and Zoroastrian. It has expanded to include other traditions of faith. Especially for the Christian, Jewish, and Native American traditions, it was impossible in this project's frame to provide the full range of churches, synagogues, and tribal centers throughout the United States. But this is work that has been exhaustively done by others and does not need duplication here. In addition, there are hundreds of Baha'i "firesides," Afro-Caribbean "houses," and Pagan "circles," "nests," and "covens." Rather than attempt to be comprehensive, we have tried to provide a sample of what is new, setting it alongside a sample of what, to many, is the more familiar and dominant pattern of America's religious life.
What about Christianity? Every city contains virtually the whole spectrum of Christian churches. A look at your city's Yellow Pages will give you a sense of the range. We have described two churches in each city and invite you to use the Christian Centers button on the Christianity router page to see the whole range of Christian churches profiled. We believe that this group of churches, taken together, portrays American Christianity today. Now, imagine this whole group of churches profiled in each of our eighteen sections, and you will have an idea of the scope and diversity of Christianity in each place.
Is it complete? Even with the six traditions we researched, what we have presented for each city is only a fraction of what we found. For example, we
