Abstract
Europe is newly concerned with religious pluralism and questions of immigrant inclusion. Seen from the U.S., several issues stand out. First, our experience with diversity suggests that race is as much an issue as religion. Race is not just an American problem; race and religion are everywhere sources of identity and solidarity, just as they are sources of division. The Ellis Island model of immigration, in which churches helped immigrants adjust to American life, may have worked for Whites, but it did not work nearly as well for others. Don’t expect integration on that score. Second, American religious diversity is overstated. Figures show that the apostles of America’s new religious pluralism are talking about at most 9 % of our foreign-born immigrants and 4 % of our native population. The U.S. is still dominantly Christian, though that Christianity is internally diverse. Recently, sectarian Christian diversity has infected our politics, contributing to our current polarization. Racial, religious, and political conflicts are thus alive and well. Is ‘civil religion’ a solution? Not if the civil religion in question is of the priestly or the sectarian kind. At times, however, American civil religion has been prophetic, speaking to the country’s highest ideals. Only then has religion (of any form) been a resource for broad inclusion.
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Notes
- 1.
As of October 2013, these lectures have not been published. They are, however, available for viewing on YouTube.
- 2.
This was the nineteenth century Chinese term for America.
- 3.
Personal communication, 1975. He probably did not invent the phrase but he is the first whom I heard speak it and he used it a lot. I have not found a better or earlier attribution.
- 4.
In American parlance, DWI stands for “driving while intoxicated”. DWB (“driving while Black”) and DWL (“driving while Latino”) are spin-offs that highlight the common police practice of pulling over minority group drivers as a means of intimidation.
- 5.
Catholics and Mainline Protestants were split, in part along racial and ethnic lines. Race mattered in this election more than it had in years when both candidates were White.
- 6.
The original is reportedly by Voitaire. It is a key line in the 2002 Spiderman movie from Columbia Pictures.
- 7.
He actually said: “I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy.” G.W. Bush, national address, Sept. 20, 2001.
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Spickard, J.V. (2014). Diversity Versus Pluralism? Notes from the American Experience. In: Giordan, G., Pace, E. (eds) Religious Pluralism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06623-3_9
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