- America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity
In recent years, immigration has transformed the face of religious diversity in the United States. No longer do religious fault lines cut primarily between variants of Christianity and Judaism and the lines that Christians historically drew between themselves and the indigenous peoples they found already settled in the Americas. Instead, the new immigration tosses a set of theologically disparate world religions—Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and others—into the American melting pot. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow's newest offering—America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity—explores how and to what effect a "Christian nation" can incorporate religious people whose beliefs are not fully commensurate with Christianity. After briefly tracing a history of religious diversity in the United States, from the European explorers' construction of natives as "other" to the incorporation of varieties of Christianity through subsequent waves of immigration, Wuthnow confronts the reality of religious diversity in the United States today where conservative estimates suggest that at least 2 million Muslims, 2.4 million Buddhists, and 1.3 million Hindus now live.
Wuthnow's monograph is informed by survey and interview data. He uses findings from the nationally representative Religion and Diversity Survey to sketch a broad outline of Americans' framework for, experiences with, perceptions of and responses to religious diversity. The survey data from 2910 adult respondents get its fullest airing in Chapter 7 on "The Public's Beliefs and Practices," but it informs the whole book. The real heart of the text, however, is qualitative data collected using strategically targeted in-depth interviews. Wuthnow identified social spaces where Americans are most likely to personally encounter and engage the new religious diversity—interreligious marriages, neighborhoods where Christian churches exist side by side with Muslim mosques or Hindu or Buddhist temples, the worlds of spiritual shoppers—and analyzed interviews with persons in those contexts. In so doing, he completes the outline provided by survey data with insights and experiences of those on the frontlines of religious diversity in the United States. The result is a skillful and intriguing [End Page 1020] interweaving of quantitative and qualitative data that speaks to the very real challenges faced by a nation whose citizens largely embrace a single religious tradition—a "Christian nation"—even as they maintain a civic ideology that values individual and religious freedom.
At the book's core is a three-part typology for how Americans respond to growing religious diversity. Spiritual shoppers "[do] not privilege Christianity and . . . regard all religions as equally true" (190) and are more prevalent than I would have expected in a nation that so many loudly proclaim to be "Christian," comprising 31% of all respondents in the nationally representative Religion and Diversity Survey. Spiritual shoppers embrace religious diversity and draw from it to inform their religious beliefs. Christian inclusivists "privilege Christianity but also [believe] there is truth in other religions" (190); they comprise 23% of Americans. Christian inclusivists accept religious diversity, although they typically do little to engage it. Christian exclusivists "[believe] that only Christianity is ultimately true" (190) and comprise 34% of Americans. Christian exclusivists resist religious diversity. Wuthnow explicates each type, drawing extensively on interview data. Spiritual shoppers are a familiar type previously described by Wuthnow (1998) and Roof (1999). The distinction between Christian inclusivists and exclusivists is powerfully crystallized in a chapter on "How congregations manage diversity" where clergy talk about their understandings of Christian theology as it relates to religious diversity. Wuthnow's discussion of the three types is thoughtful and evenhanded, and he points out the inherent contradictions and shortcomings of each approach.
Eleven percent of respondents neither privileged Christianity nor believed that the world's major religions—Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam—were "equally good ways of knowing about God" (190). Although Wuthnow does not speculate on who these 11% are, I would guess that at least some are Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim "exclusivists," exactly those whom it may be most challenging to welcome. But because of his interest in how these religions are received by the broader culture...