NEWS FEATURE: Scholar: Ignorance, Not Religious Zeal, Is Danger for America

c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Since its first settlers sought to found a godly “city upon a hill,” America has been a nation shaped by religious zeal and by religious ignorance. But as growing diversity reconfigures the nation’s faith landscape, it is the ignorance, not the fervor, that poses the greater danger. For with […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Since its first settlers sought to found a godly “city upon a hill,” America has been a nation shaped by religious zeal and by religious ignorance.

But as growing diversity reconfigures the nation’s faith landscape, it is the ignorance, not the fervor, that poses the greater danger. For with ignorance comes suffering, especially when it polarizes citizens into prejudiced factions, a well-known scholar argues in two new books.


Martin E. Marty, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and well-known church historian, currently is serving at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. Before that, he directed the Public Religion Project for the Pew Charitable Trusts. In two new books, Marty explores the results of that project, commenting on the historic and present-day impact of America’s growing religious pluralism. Both books were co-authored with Jonathan Moore.

“Public religion can mean two things,” Marty said in an interview. “One is simple: religion gone public _ beyond the sanctuary. Into the mall, the market, the concert hall and art gallery, the university and politics, or wherever citizens have learned to be content to say more than `religion is a private affair.”’

Or public religion may be that supporting set of meanings people acquire or inherit to better define their public life as having a sacred dimension. As the latter emerges, interpretation and criticism are essential, Marty said.

In the first book, “Politics, Religion and the Common Good” (Jossey-Bass), Marty notes belief’s special power for creating violence, citing such examples as the mass suicide by Jim Jones’ followers in Guyana, and the deaths in Waco, Texas, violence towards homosexuals and murders of abortion providers.

But he argues religion should and can play a contrasting role in molding American culture. From the abolitionists of the 19th century to the civil rights workers of the 20th, religion has offered the motivation, values and sustaining conviction required to bring serious social and political change.

At the opening of the new millennium, Marty calls for a nation in which individuals are willing to speak out, articulating morally based positions and contributing to productive dialogue.

In the second book, “Education, Religion and the Common Good,” (Jossey-Bass), Marty identifies a crying need for Americans to find acceptable ways to teach and talk about religion. That conversation should begin within educational institutions without resorting to school prayer and or posting the Ten Commandments.


“When we speak of an increased role for religion in the curriculum, we are not speaking of the practice of any of the faiths,” Marty said. “The common good suffers when we citizens are unable to summon all the available resources of citizenship in a nation where religion is a major motivator in lives.

“This does not mean that we picture `religion majors’ or departments in elementary or high school, and (we) don’t picture that everyone in college or university has to become expert,” he said. “But there are good reasons to find ways to bring religious knowledge and insight to bear in all kinds of courses and areas.”

Among those reasons are:

_ Increased pluralism, resulting from changes in 1965 in immigration laws. Since then, America has become so diverse that we have “no place to hide from our neighbors who are different.”

“Lubavitcher Jews are in Postville, Iowa,” Marty said. “The longest-serving mosque in America is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Transcendental Meditation University is in Fairfield, Iowa, part of a culture which includes many Hispanic newcomers from Mexico, all atop a rich layering of ethnic and religious groups

_ Amazing diversity within the nation’s largest metro areas.

“If that (diversity) is true in smaller towns of America, it is certainly true in the cities,” Marty said. “Principals send notes home to school parents in Virginia suburbs in dozens of languages, so they can be read. What does this mean? It does not mean that the old majority will disappear. I have read that, even at the stepped up rate of growth, the percentage of people who identify (very) broadly with Judeo-and Christian impulses will slip from 85 percent _ in 20 years _ to 83.8 percent. But the growing minority is more visible, more vibrant, more expressive, more in need of interpretation.”

To some, Americans are losing their “common story,” what many often call “the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage.”


But to Marty, a longtime Lutheran whose integrity, tolerance and wit have made him a respected thinker for half a century, the nation is enlarging its story “with more characters, most of whom bring their faiths with them.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

The remaining questions are large and complicated. Sunday morning in large and small communities remains one of the most segregated hours of the week. Rabbis and Protestant clergy do trade pulpits, but rarely more than a couple of times a year.

Hindus often know Muslims, and Buddhists may live next door to Christians. But as the historic struggle between Israelis and Palestinians in the Mideast shows, proximity often does not produce good neighbors.

“I hope,” Marty said, “that readers of the two books will not just read them but find or enter groups and circles where they can enjoy or stimulate a `conversation,’ a bidding and beckoning to public life.”

(Cecile S. Holmes, a long-time religion writer, teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina. Her email address is cecile.holmes(at) usc.jour.sc.edu

DEA END HOLMES

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