A Nation of Religions

The United States has long been described as a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of religions in which Muslims and Methodists, Buddhists and Baptists live and work side by side. This book explores that nation of religions, focusing on how four recently arrived religious communities--Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs--are shaping and, in turn, shaped by American values. For a generation, scholars have been documenting how the landmark...
More Description

The United States has long been described as a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of religions in which Muslims and Methodists, Buddhists and Baptists live and work side by side. This book explores that nation of religions, focusing on how four recently arrived religious communities--Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs--are shaping and, in turn, shaped by American values.



For a generation, scholars have been documenting how the landmark legislation that loosened immigration restrictions in 1965 catalyzed the development of the United States as "a nation of Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists, as well as Christians," as Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark put it. The contributors to this volume take U.S. religious diversity not as a proposition to be proved but as the truism it has become. Essays address not whether the United States is a Christian or a multireligious nation--clearly, it is both--but how religious diversity is changing the public values, rites, and institutions of the nation and how those values, rites, and institutions are affecting religions centuries old yet relatively new in America. This conversation makes an important contribution to the intensifying public debate about the appropriate role of religion in American politics and society.





Contributors:

Ihsan Bagby, University of Kentucky

Courtney Bender, Columbia University

Stephen Dawson, Forest, Virginia

David Franz, University of Virginia

Hien Duc Do, San Jose State University

James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia

Prema A. Kurien, Syracuse University

Gurinder Singh Mann, University of California, Santa Barbara

Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida

Stephen Prothero, Boston University

Omid Safi, Colgate University

Jennifer Snow, Pasadena, California

Robert A. F. Thurman, Columbia University

R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago

Duncan Ryuken Williams, University of California, Berkeley