New CD-ROM highlights religious diversity in America

By Alvin Powell

Special to the Gazette

"All over America there are new neighbors today," the voice intones as images appear and then fade on the computer screen: a Cambodian Buddhist temple, a Muslim community center, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church -- next-door neighbors in Silver Spring, Md. People from a Methodist church and a Muslim community stand side-by-side in hardhats in Fremont, Calif., celebrating the construction of a new church and a new mosque on a common plot.

Some of these new neighbors haven't always been welcomed into the Land of the Free. They have sometimes met with prejudice, vandalism, and zoning disputes designed to exclude their houses of worship.

But come they have, and in increasing numbers since the 1960s. And they are challenging America to live up to its billing as a place where people can worship freely. Some communities have met that challenge by standing beside their new neighbors as Hindu temple towers and the minarets of mosques rise toward the sky.

The story of America's increasing religious diversity is told in a new CD-ROM, developed by the University's Pluralism Project as an educational tool for individuals, schools, and organizations. The CD-ROM, On Common Ground: World Religions in America, is the result of years of work by project staffers and dozens of Harvard undergraduate and graduate students.

Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies and chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, leads the Pluralism Project and is using the CD-ROM in her fall-term course, Religion in Multicultural America.

"Over the past 30 years, America's religious landscape has changed radically," Eck explained. "Today, there are Islamic centers and mosques, Hindu and Buddhist temples and meditation centers, and Sikh gurdwaras in every state and in American cities large and small. Many churches are now multi-congregational, shared by Korean, Cambodian, and Hispanic communities; others are mega-churches with 10,000 or more members, or new-style Pentecostal churches.

"There is an awareness in 'the public square' that things are much more complex than they used to be," said Eck, also a member of the Divinity School faculty. "Schools, hospitals, courts, and zoning boards are all encountering this new multi-religious reality."

Mapping the New Religious Landscape

The Pluralism Project grew out of Eck's 1990 seminar, a class that mapped Boston's religious landscape. It was a timely seminar. The Immigration Act of 1965 had opened the door to a wave of new immigrants from the Middle East and Asia. By the beginning of the 1990s, the children of these new immigrants were in public schools and colleges, putting America's new ethnic diversity on display.

But religion was largely left out of the ensuing discussion of cultural and ethnic diversity, according to Eck. The Pluralism Project and On Common Ground seek to remedy that omission.

With funding from the Lilly Endowment, the Project set out to explore America's new religious landscape. Researchers fanned out from Boston to Seattle, from Phoenix to South Florida, concentrating on 18 major metropolitan areas. Additional funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the North Star Fund, the Templeton Foundation, and Harvard's Milton Fund enabled the project to produce the CD-ROM.

On Common Ground looks at 15 religious traditions in the U.S., including their history in the American context and their experience and practice today. Interviews with a range of practitioners bring their voices to bear on issues of concern to their communities of faith.

The result is a rich, flavorful, and informative disk that blends text, timelines, and graphics with video and audio clips to provide a dynamic portrait of America's religious communities and their encounters with one another.

For example, it contains a directory of all the mosques, temples, and gurdwaras in every locale featured; audiofiles of Buddhist chanting, songs of Shabbat, and Hindu bhajans; and selected profiles of religious leaders and organizations such as the Federation of Jain Associations in North America.

Published by Columbia University Press, the CD is being marketed to schools and colleges across the country. Eck said it can be a great resource not just for students, but for teachers -- particularly in states like California, where social studies courses are required to teach about the world's religions.

On Common Ground could also be used as a reference tool by researchers, religious or civic organizations, and individuals curious about their neighbors in an increasingly culturally complex country.

Tearing Down Walls of Ignorance

The Pluralism Project researchers who helped put together On Common Ground emphasize that the CD-ROM has been long in the making, incorporating experiences and research that took place long before work on the disk per se began.

Ellie Pierce, the group's project manager, joined the organization as a field researcher in 1993. Then a graduate student at the Divinity School, Pierce's three months working in the San Francisco Bay area gave new breadth and depth to her study of comparative religion.

"To have the opportunity to study the ancient faith of Zoroastrianism as a lived and vibrant religion really changed my focus," she recalled.

Those whose organizations are included in the CD-ROM also praise the project's efforts. Swami Sarvagatananda, head of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society of Boston and a member of the United Ministry at Harvard and Radcliffe, said much of the world's religious strife is due to ignorance of others' beliefs and customs. America, where so many different religious traditions exist side-by-side, provides a unique opportunity for people to get to know each other. And organizations like the Pluralism Project, he said, help break down those walls of ignorance.

"The world is in one place -- it is in America," Sarvagatananda said. "There is a beautiful opportunity in this country."

For its part, the Pluralism Project plans to continue working to foster the study of America's religious diversity and its impact on American civil society. In September, it received a $454,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to continue its research, and it plans to award mini-grants to affiliate religion departments across the country seeking to study the changing religious landscape of their own areas.

"On Common Ground is not so much a finished product as an invitation to investigate the dynamic changes in America's religious life," Eck said. "We hope the CD-ROM will generate work that will, in a few years' time, require a new edition. The history of religion is happening right now before our eyes."