c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Diane Winston is a visiting fellow at the Princeton Center for the Study of American Religion).

UNDATED _ Two weeks after the fall semester began, a group of religiously observant Yale undergraduates, likening their dorms to a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, asked to live off-campus. University officials refused, saying the on-campus residency required of freshman is a”defining”experience of Yale life.

The case of the”Yale Five,”as they have come to call themselves, shows a private institution confronting issues of religious diversity that have long roiled the public sector.

But university officials seem to have learned little from past debates over prayer in public school or creches on the community green. In these examples, what passed for pluralism reflected the nation’s Christian heritage; others were expected to adapt, fit in, and adjust their own practice so as not to disturb the majority.

But that was then and this is now.

The plain demographic reality is that America is no longer a Christian nation or even a Judeo-Christian one. We live in a country increasingly populated by Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Baha’is. While still present in impressive numbers, our mainline religions constitute a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole.

For many Americans this lived experience has outpaced their conceptual framework. Protestant, Catholic, Jew _ the American trinity posited by scholar Will Herberg in the 1950s _ still defines the way many of us picture the religious landscape. The issues raised by the Yale Five make clear our need to change the lens.

The five students are Orthodox Jews who argue that the university’s coed dormitories _ where the sexes mingle freely _ subvert their religious beliefs. Since the university refused their petition, their families are exploring whether there are legal grounds for a religious discrimination suit.

Ironically, the circumstances of this case _ the presence of Jews in coed dormitories _ would have been unimaginable in an earlier generation. Before the 1960s, women were not admitted to Yale and a strict quota limited the number of Jews before the 1950s.

It turns out that opening institutions to new constituencies has unexpected consequences. In the 1950s, few educators would have predicted the rise of ethnic studies, race-based housing and multiculturalism. Today, few are prepared for the challenge of accommodating differing faith commitments.

Fewer still are able to talk about it.

Many Americans would rather have a root canal than explain their faith in public. It’s fine to talk experientially, but serious religion _ the whys and whats undergirding belief _ is rarely discussed.

On the one hand, religion is honored as the backbone of our public life. On the other, it’s the most private matter.

The contradiction reflects an attenuated notion of religious tolerance. The positive impulse that guided the Founding Fathers to advocate religious freedom and the separation of church and state made belief and behavior at once an individual concern and a common good. In the political realm, religion made us”one nation under God.”In the cultural realm, religion fostered honest workers and strong families.

The bland Christianity passing for public religion is able to accommodate people of different beliefs and it works as long as nothing else intrudes.

But in a complex, inter-connected world, what constitutes intrusion? Are evangelicals intruding when they proselytize in the student union? Are Muslims intruding when they ask the cafeteria to accommodate their dietary requirements? Are Orthodox Jews intruding when they decline to live in a coed dorm?

The animating pulse of pluralism _ that everyone will get along if they avoid controversial topics _ won’t work in a community where people have strong beliefs. Rather than press for winners or losers, as the Yale administration seems to be doing, we need new ways to accommodate deeply held faith commitments.

One solution might be to designate separate-sex dorms; there, Orthodox Jewish students could interact with others from different backgrounds yet parallel beliefs.

Grappling with religious difference _ whether the absolutism of Orthodoxy, the otherness of non-Western religions or the eclecticism of young seekers _ is difficult. How do we live with and learn from people who look, think, believe and behave differently than we do? How do we find common ground when deeply held differences threaten to rend the fabric of our communal life?

As Yale and other institutions of higher learning are discovering, these questions can no longer be avoided. The absolute provocation of religious absolutes is the Gordian knot of the next century.

Lucky for us, it’s academic _ for the moment. Whether it remains so depends on how ready we are to come to the table anew, with a willingness to risk honest conversation in pursuit of a new understanding.

MJP END WINSTON