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ON COMMON GROUND Guide for Teachers and Students
temples; that Chicago mirrors the diversity of the world, with a multitude of churches and synagogues, about seventy mosques, fourteen Hindu temples, dozens of Buddhist communities, a brand new Jain temple, a Zoroastrian temple, and a Baha'i temple.
Of course our church and synagogue portraits cannot begin to do justice to the magnitude and diversity of the Christian and Jewish traditions in each city or region. There are many other more extensive resources for learning about Christianity and Judaism in America: a glance at the appropriate section of the yellow pages will get you started. But taken as a whole, we believe that the group of church and synagogue portraits presented here from across the United States will give you a sense of the range and variety of America's Christian and Jewish communities. American Christianity is also more diverse today as a result of the new immigration. St. James the Greater, a Catholic church in Boston, is largely Chinese, while Primera Iglesia Bautista in Miami serves a growing Hispanic Baptist congregation. There are other dynamic currents too: Second Baptist Church in Houston witnesses to a growing mega-church movement, while Calvary Chapel in Los Angeles is part of a spirited Pentecostal revival. American Judaism is also changing with new Jewish immigrants from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe, with the ultra-orthodoxy of the Hasidim and the new spirituality of Jewish Renewal communities.
For the past few decades, many of the changes in America's religious landscape have been relatively invisible. There was no new architecture to catch the eye of a passerby. The first generation of new mosques and Islamic centers have been housed in a former U-Haul dealership in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in a former mattress showroom in Northridge, California, or in a huge urban movie theater in Chicago. In Denver, ranch-style suburban homes have become Vietnamese Buddhist temples, with a few monks residing in each. In central Los Angeles, the Kwan Um Sah Korean Buddhist temple is located in what was formerly a Masonic lodge, complete with its straight-backed plush red chairs and, now, a large golden image of the Buddha. Across America, Hindus have worshiped at tens of thousands of home-altars, or rented a Knights of Columbus Hall for weekend worship, or transformed a New Jersey YMCA into a permanent temple. Sikhs have converted a former church in the Queens section of New York into a gurdwara, while Jains have converted a suburban church in Norwood, Massachusetts into a temple.
By the 1990s, however, the visible architectural evidence of America's new religious diversity is unmistakable. The Hsi Lai Temple built on a hillside in Hacienda Heights, California is the largest Buddhist temple in the Western hemisphere, and but one of several spectacular Chinese Buddhist temples. There are new mosques that have changed the visible skyline of American cities, such as the mosque in Toledo, or the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City, or the Islamic Center of Seattle. There are spectacular new Hindu temples in Atlanta or Houston, with ornately carved temple-towers rising over the doorways. All over America, construction is underway: the ceremonial ground-breaking, the pouring of foundations, the skeleton of two-by-fours framing a new religious center, the dedication ceremonies, and the plans on the wall for the next phase of construction.
The dynamic changes in America's religious landscape mean that the information here is changing too and is necessarily incomplete. The story of a new multireligious America is being written and revised every year. Please use this section of ON COMMON GROUND as a starting point for your own explorations. Print out these community portraits or a section of our Directory, which you will find under Resources. And let us know what you have discovered in your own neighborhood.
