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ON COMMON GROUND Guide for Teachers and Students
synagogues and mosques. This section of ON COMMON GROUND explores the debates of the American public square over the issue of religious difference.
In Historical Perspectives we take an historical look at the expanding religious diversity of America. The peoples of America have long encountered religious difference—from the variety of Native American tribal traditions which existed before Europeans arrived on American shores to the presence today of every major religious tradition of the world in the United States. We look at key moments in American history when the question of religious difference was discussed or debated.
Of course, the history of America's encounter with religious difference is closely related to the history of what came to be its dominant religious tradition, Christianity. But it is a distinct history, a history with at least two sides, usually many sides, and many perspectives. In the New World, Christians and Native Americans encountered each other, not only in the first decades of settlement, but in every decade since. Here in America Christians have also encountered other Christians-Puritans, Anglicans, and Catholics in colonial America, and Russian Orthodox, Samoan Methodists, Filipino Catholics, Korean Presbyterians, and Ghanaian Anglicans today.
Christians and Jews took measure of each other in eighteenth century New Amsterdam, Boston, and Savannah and have continued to discover new dimensions of Jewish-Christian relations for two centuries now. America's Muslim tradition goes back to at least the eighteenth century and the captives brought from Africa as slaves, at least ten percent of whom were Muslims. In the late nineteenth century Muslims came to the U.S. as immigrants from Lebanon and Syria, and in the late twentieth century from India and Pakistan. Chinese and Japanese workers first brought Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian traditions to American shores in the nineteenth century. The last thirty years have seen the growth of new Asian immigration, both Buddhist and Christian--from Taiwan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
For the past two hundred years, immigration has brought both dynamic growth and controversy to the American public square. The free exercise of religion enshrined in the Constitution's Bill of Rights has proven a sturdy foundation, making space for people of differing religious convictions. As America's ethnic and cultural diversity grew, the "melting pot" and the "symphony" became images for shaping the "pluribus" of diversity into the "unum" of American society.
Today's Challenges enables you to consider the American public square today. Here we define the term "pluralism” as meaning more than mere diversity, but the engagement with diversity that comes only from real encounter and dialogue. Where and in what ways is this engagement, this encounter taking place? There have been initiatives toward interreligious dialogue from Catholic and Protestant churches; there have been a multitude of new interreligious councils in cities and towns throughout the nation; and the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions held in Chicago brought together in one place a new multireligious America that has never been witnessed before. Stereotyping, prejudice, and hate crimes are not a thing of the past, as some of our case-studies here demonstrate, but initiatives for local cooperation between Muslims and Methodists, Jews, Buddhists, and Catholics are providing new models for community life together.
What are some of the contexts in which Americans are challenged to think in new ways about our religious diversity and enter into dialogue with one another, different as we are? What are the issues? We look here at the interreligious encounter in zoning boards as new temples and mosques become part of American neighborhoods. We look at encounters in the courts as Native peoples, Afro-Caribbeans, or Sikhs raise important new questions in a nation committed to religious freedom. We look at the public schools as school boards, principals, and teachers deal with the contested issues of religious holidays, classroom prayer, and the
