A Nation of Religions

by Stephen Prothero (Editor)

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.



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

Genres: Religion, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Spirituality

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Stephen Prothero is a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University and the author of numerous books, most recently Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn't and American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Idol. He has commented on religion on dozens of National Public Radio programs and on television on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS, MSNBC and Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. A regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, he has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Salon.com, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe.

Prothero has argued for mandatory public school Bible literacy courses (along the lines of the Bible Literacy Project's The Bible and Its Influence), along with mandatory courses on world religions. Prothero defines himself as a "confused Christian".

Reviews

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Textbook.

[Riah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the chapters in this book were quite strong (in particular the ones Japanese Buddhists and internment, Hinduism and American geography and the de-whitening of Christianity). I also thought the final chapter did a nice job tying everything together. But the first section, on Muslims, didn't do much for me. Both chapters focused pretty narrowly on post-9/11 America, but were broadly inclusive in terms of racial/ethnic groups. The chapters in the other religions' sections did the opposite, looking at a more specific ethnic group but over a longer time frame, which I liked a lot more. And I'm absolutely baffled as to how you can have a book about these religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism) and their political position/influence in America and not include any sort of detail on the Nation of Islam. It seems like a huge oversight to me. But overall, I enjoyed it.