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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/><br/>Contributors:<br/>Ihsan Bagby University of Kentucky<br/>Courtney Bender Columbia University<br/>Stephen Dawson Forest Virginia<br/>David Franz University of Virginia<br/>Hien Duc Do San Jose State University<br/>James Davison Hunter University of Virginia<br/>Prema A. Kurien Syracuse University<br/>Gurinder Singh Mann University of California Santa Barbara<br/>Vasudha Narayanan University of Florida<br/>Stephen Prothero Boston University<br/>Omid Safi Colgate University<br/>Jennifer Snow Pasadena California<br/>Robert A. F. Thurman Columbia University<br/>R. Stephen Warner University of Illinois at Chicago<br/>Duncan Ryûken Williams University of California Berkeley