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ON COMMON GROUND Guide for Teachers and Students
V
ENCOUNTERING RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY
About This Screen: The Diversity Page
Encountering Religious Diversity opens the third section of the CD-ROM, with the invitation to explore the question of religious diversity as Americans have wrestled with it in the past and as we are challenged by it today. How have people dealt with religious difference, from the first encounters between Native Americans and Christian settlers and missionaries to the many encounters today in multireligious America?
In the movie Building Bridges, we hear Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Jews talking about their own experience of interreligious encounter. The introductory essay, "The Public Square," printed in this guide, gives an overview of the entire section and asks about the public space in which we all meet as citizens.
Historical Perspectives makes thirteen stops along the path of encountering religious diversity, from the 1500s to the 1990s. At each stop are historical documents and excerpts from documents to enable you to read and study what people have said along the way. These documents reveal the debates, prejudices, struggles, and visions that have accompanied America's encounter with diversity. The on-screen Document button gives you access to the documents of each section. (A complete list of the documents in this section can be found in the Encountering Religious Diversity section of the Bibliography, under the menu item Resources.)
Today's Challenges looks at the situation in the United States in the 1990s. What are the new ways in which we encounter religious diversity, especially in our public life? What are some of the ways in which people of various religious traditions and communities view today's challenges? This section is also accompanied by a group of documents, case studies, and newspaper articles, including the Presbyterian "Guidelines on Interfaith Dialogue,” the PTA "Parents' Guide to Religion in the Public Schools," a Buddhist statement on school prayer, the text of the first Muslim prayers in the U.S. Congress, and an Islamic pamphlet entitled "Needs of a Muslim Patient." These documents, case studies, and news clippings provide important information as well as material to print out for study and discussion. The on-screen Document button gives you access to the documents of each section. (A complete list of the materials in this section can be found in the Encountering Religious Diversity section of the Bibliography, under the menu item Resources.)
Introductory Essay: "The Public Square"
The public square is a place of meeting. America has long had many kinds of meeting places—the town greens, meeting houses, and commons of New England, the gracious plazas at the heart of the Spanish towns like Santa Fe, the great green malls of Washington D.C. that have seen so many demonstrations and celebrations. Legislative halls and courthouses, zoning boards and city council meetings, schools and sports facilities may also be considered part of the public square. Whatever the public square may mean as a physical space, it is space that symbolizes the free encounter of peoples and ideas that is at the heart of civil society. It is the space-wherever that may be-in which people gather together for the work, the ceremony, the celebration of the whole, leaving for a moment the privacy of their homes and churches,
