FAITH AND DIVERCITY IN AMERICAN RELIGION
by Alan Wolfe
"Faith and Diversity in American Religion," by Alan Wolfe, points out the religious origins of much of the
private higher education system in the United States and the increasing role of spirituality in colleges and
universities. However, the article details a surprising gap between heightened spirituality and a lagging sense
of attachment to religion in American society today.
One would be hard pressed to find a private college
or university in the United States that cannot trace s
founding to a religious denomination. One would be
equally hard pressed, at least as far as America's elite
universities are concerned, to find one that would identify
faith as central to its current approaches to teaching, research,
and student life. That is to say: No aspect of life is
considered so important to Americans outside higher
education, yet deemed so unimportant by the majority
of those inside, as religion.
The relative indifference to religion in higher education
may be changing, however, as a wide variety of social and
intellectual trends converge. Parents concerned about
excessive drinking and promiscuous sex look more favorably upon religious colleges that they once might have
dismissed as academically inferior. A widespread fascination with spirituality in the general culture has increased
awareness of, and interest in, religious-studies courses on
campuses. Social scientists have begun to realize that it is
impossible to understand American politics, race relations, volunteerism, and law without a fuller appreciation of
religion's role in shaping social institutions. Already
under way before September 11, such impulses will only be
strengthened in the wake of events that thrust to the fore of
just about everyone's mind questions of religious
freedom and religious diversity.
Not surprisingly, therefore, scholarly attention to the
role religion plays—in our colleges and universities, our
local communities, and our society at large—is growing. In
itself, that represents a shift of academic interest,
especially in the social sciences, since religion—which
received considerable attention in the writings of the
19th-and early-20th-century founders of the
social-science disciplines—went out of fashion in the
years after World War II. Perhaps concerned that the
study of a human activity pregnant with values would
corrupt the objective of value-free inquiry, postwar social
scientists were more likely to examine the economy or the
political system of Western societies than they were its
faith commitments. Whatever studies were produced
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, moreover, tended, in the
name of objectivity, to rely on quantitative methods, which
included analysis of survey data and demographic
transformations.
As academics have come to appreciate the role reli-
gion plays in the lives of real people—including their own
students—more of the scholarship they produce takes on a
qualitative character. Many recent books want to know
what faith means to the faithfuK Are religious people
different from secular people? Do their beliefs influence
the choices they make, not only with respect to such public
activities as voting, but in how they lead their lives? Are we
experiencing a new religious awakening? How has the
arrival of so many non-Judeo-Christian immigrants, who
themselves tend to be very religious, affected American
religion?
Religion on Campus, written by Conrad Cherry,
Betty A. DeBerg, and Amanda Porterfield (Cherry is a
distinguished professor emeritus of religious studies at
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis,
DeBerg heads the department of philosophy and religion at
the University of Northern Iowa, and Porterfield is a
professor of religious studies at the University of Wyoming), deals with the way America's young people approach religion, as well as with the ways that America's
colleges and universities respond to them. Because its
subject matter involves the young, who will determine
America's approach to religion in the future, and because it
also involves institutions of higher education, which have
had such a long and ambiguous relationship with religion,
it offers a good introduction to American understanding of
faith.
Religion on Campus is primarily an ethnographic
report, describing the religious situation at four institutions
whose identity the authors choose to keep secret: a public
research university, a historically black university, a Roman
Catholic university, and a Protestant-affiliated four-year
college. The president of South University, the name the
authors give to the historically black institution, informed
Conrad Cherry that she would not think of attending
worship services on the campus. That is not because she
is an atheist; on the contrary, she is a practicing
Episcopalian. It is the enthusiasm in the born-again
religion that predominates on her campus that disturbs
her. "Imagine, services that last one-and-a-half hours,"
she exclaimed. "And I don't want to stand up when my
name is called. I will not file down to the front to drop in
my offering. I don't like the swaying and shouting and
amening." Perhaps the university chaplain had her in
mind when he told the authors of Religion on Campus that
the problem with some religious believers is that "they
fear emotion." "I don't yell and rant and rave," he continued,
"but I'm not afraid to let my emotions show."
As Cherry correctly points out, there is a serious
conflict within African-American religion between many
older denominations, which emphasize the importance of
specific doctrinal traditions and their texts, and
Pentecostally inspired charismatic practices, which lean
toward spirited forms of worship and postdenominational
identities. But that is true not just of the black church.
At West University, the public research institution
the authors describe, a freshman attended meetings of the
mainline Protestant Campus Ministry Center and two
evangelical groups, Campus Crusade and InterVarsity.
Asked about his reactions, he described the former as too
conservative for his taste. When religion is usually discussed in America, it is the evangelical churches that are
identified with conservative Christians and the mainline
churches with liberals. But this student can be forgiven for
getting the distinction backwards. As far as he is concerned, the hymns and liturgical predictability of the
mainline Protestants seem downright reactionary when
compared with the contemporary Christian rock of the
evangelicals. "I know CMC believes in Jesus," he told
Betty DeBerg, "but I can't understand their relationship
with him." For this student, as for many American religious believers, faith involves a personal relationship
with the Lord; it does not involve sitting passively as
others preach.
North College, an institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, requires that all
freshmen take a class called "Bible in Culture and Community," as well as one other course in Christian theology,
sometime during their college careers. That commitment to
make religion an essential part of the curriculum harks back
to an era when colleges, concerned about the formation of
student character, mandated courses in religion and moral
philosophy. Yet the actual courses at North College are as
contemporary in their subject matter as they are in their
assignments. Once section of the Bible course features
novels by James Baldwin and Chaim Potok. Written
projects include three personal essays in which the students talk about their own religious experiences in relationship to the texts. No didactic lectures from the podium
characterize these classes; students are divided into small
groups to discuss the reading assignments among themselves, as the professors walk around to each group to
answer questions or join the discussion. Indeed, the informality and intimacy of the class resembles very much the
ways in which American religious practices, in general,
have moved toward forms of small-group worship and
personal witnessing—even, if not especially, in huge
megachurches whose popularity has a much to do with the
small groups they sponsor as with their overall size.
The Roman Catholic university described in Religion
on Campus also imposes requirements—in its case, courses in
theology and philosophy. (Those can be filled through a
yearlong course that explores the connections between
classic texts and a Jesuit-inspired commitment to social
service.) Porterfield, who wrote the chapter on this institution, frequently heard complaints from devout Catholics
that East University had lost its religious identity.
Nonetheless, she found herself impressed with the persistence of Catholic ritual and Catholic social teachings in the
lives of most students. Expecting Jesuit culture to be
"militaristic and sternly patriarchal," she discovered, instead,
that it was inclusive and caring. And because it was, Catholic
identity, however important it was to the leadership of the
institution, was not pursued in a way that would make
non-Catholics feel unwelcome. East University could
hardly be identical to the other institutions discussed in
this book, given its different history and religious nature.
But, like them, it has become inclusive and tolerant.
None of the institutions examined in Religion on
Campus assert one official religious truth to the exclusion of
all other faiths. Religion, instead, tends to be understood
as a broad and capacious phenomenon. When the
student-body president at South University was asked if
students there were very religious, he replied, "No, but
most of them are very spiritual." Insofar as the distinction
between religion and spirituality at least partly revolves
around an openness to eclectic religious experience, a
playing down of denominations, and an inclination toward
passionate, personal religious experience, the students on
all the four campuses studied in Religion on Campus can
be said to be leaning toward spirituality.
Indeed, according to Robert C. Fuller, a professor of
religious studies at Bradley University, Americans have
long made that distinction between religion, which they
usually view as bureaucratic and formal, and spirituality,
which is transcendent and individual—a quest for a personal understanding of faith that Fuller says dates as far
back as colonial times. Fuller says in Spiritual, but Not
Religious that many of America's "unchurched" have
avoided denominational membership and Sunday worship
not because they are atheists, but because their religious
beliefs do not take traditionally organized forms. In the book,
in part a historical account of the unchurched in America and
in part a meditation on their significance, Fuller estimates
that roughly 20 percent of Americans today hold such
views. If true, that would make the "spiritually inclined"
one of America's largest religious faiths.
Fuller argues that unchurched religion has been so
common that it has "gradually established its own tradition." Whether those who call themselves spiritual but not
religious know it or not, they are part of a movement.
Fuller argues that, instead of criticizing them for an
eclectic and seemingly superficial approach to faith, as
those who believe that religion and church membership
are the same thing often do, we should recognize them as
serious people trying to find their own spiritual ways.
Refreshingly, Fuller comes to the defense of Sheila Larson,
the woman interviewed with not-very-hidden disapproval
by Robert N. Bellah and his colleagues in the 1985 book
Habits of the Heart, who proclaimed a belief in
"Sheilaism"—a faith that puts the individual and her
needs ahead of obligations to God or to other people. The
fact that Larson did not join an established church, in
Fuller's view, "is hardly a sign of religious immaturity."
Perhaps her determination to find a faith that worked for
her had more to teach scholars of religion than Bellah and
his colleagues recognized: that regular churchgoers may
attend more out of habit than out of conviction, and that
many who do not attend church are still searching for
conviction.
Looking at Fuller's Spiritual, but Not Religious and
Religion on Campus together suggests that one reason
Americans so often describe themselves as spiritual rather
than religious is that they have increasingly been introduced to religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition,
many of which emphasize the more spiritual aspects of
faith. And American institutions of higher education, for
their part, have responded to that expanded ecumenical
sensibility. The theology department at the Roman Catholic
university described in Religion on Campus, for example,
would never think of confining its mission to Catholic
apologetics. East University includes courses on Buddhism
though by a practicing Buddhist, who made clear to
Porterfield that he does not approach his subject from the
point of view of scholarly detachment, but instead from
active engagement. In fact, students at all the institutions
studied by the authors of Religion on Campus are
introduced to religions other than the ones they had grown
up with. At the historically black university, which was
founded after the Civil War by Presbyterians, for
example, the chapel on campus sponsored a talk by an
African-American who grew up in the Muslim faith and
who told students that it is an ecumenical and practical
religion strongly linked to Christianity and Judaism.
Diana L. Eck delves deeper still into the influence of
traditions from around the world on how Americans
understand their faith. A New Religious America deals
with the changes in American religious life brought about
by the arrival in this country of religious believers from all
over the world since the reform of America's immigration
laws in 1965. Originally a specialist in religious life of the
Indian subcontinent, Eck, who teaches at the Harvard
Divinity School, first broadened her focus to include
Indians who came to America in search of new opportunities, then to include all of America's recent immigrants
and their religions. Her enthusiasm for her subject has led
her to write in this book about Chinese and Japanese
Buddhists (and their American co-religionists), Muslims,
and the often-lesser-known religions from the India subcontinent, including the beliefs of Hindus and Sikhs.
Eck occasionally lapses into cheerleading; her chapter
on Muslims, in particular, stresses the degree to which they
"are increasingly engaged participants American
pluralist experiment," giving scant attention along the
way to those adherents to Islam who continue to believe
that America is the Great Satan who, even while living
here, reject this country and its values. Still, Eck's book,
rich in description and its appreciation of diversity, will
stand as the definitive account of American religious
pluralism for some time to come.
Tending to see no wrong among immigrants and their
beliefs, Eck nonetheless does see something wrong in the
way Americans respond to them. Indeed, one of her
contentions is that not all Americans welcome and appreciate this new diversity. She cites, for example, harassment of Muslims in Michigan and Indians in New Jersey, as
well as the persistent stereotypes that Americans hold
about recent arrivals to their shores.
But are we really, as she believes we are, "afraid of
ourselves"? Do we really not want to acknowledge the
diversity that Eck chronicles? To be sure, some
foreign-looking Americans were harassed and attacked
in the aftermath of September 11. Yet, compared with any
other episode in America's religious history, this one,
seemingly pitting Muslims against non-Muslims, was met
by both the president of the United States and by ordinary
citizens with serious commitments to diversity and pluralism.
If we consider those responses in the light of Religion on
Campus, we ought to come away impressed by how much
America has changed since the days when anyone of a faith
other than the majority's was considered a pagan.
The young are likely to set the future course of
religion in America. If the institutions studied in Religion on
Campus are any guide, students reveal the general sense
of religious tolerance that Eck finds missing in
American life: None of the campuses can be described as
"triumphalist" in their assertions of Christian supremacy.
North College offers one example. Although affiliated
with a specific denomination, North attracts students like
Mary Delillo (the students' names are fictitious, as well),
whose father is Roman Catholic and whose mother is
Chinese Buddhist, and Kevin Solomon, who believes that
students ought to consider activities like "going abroad
and discovering that not every one is a Lutheran, and
engaging in Buddhist meditation." It is inconceivable to
imagine these North students, or any of the other students at
the other institutions described in Religion on Campus,
engaging in hate crimes against people whose faith is not
Christian.
American religion, in short, has undergone some
remarkable changes since the arrival of the Puritans.
Those are the subject of Amanda Porterfield' s The Transformation of American Religion. Porterfield presents a
passionate defense of her own discipline. Against those
who find the field of religious studies in disarray, if for no
other reason than its tendency to treat all religions as
equally worthy of respect, Porterfield celebrates her discipline because it "as served as a vehicle for open and
informed discussion of the varieties of religious belief and
practice." Porterfield compares religious studies to "a
corridor in a hotel through which exemplars of different
religious persuasions pass through on their way to and
from their respective rooms."
It is clear from her treatment that the academic study of
religion in America mirrors the ways in which American
religion is actually practiced; in both arenas, we are no
longer a society in which Protestantism is assumed to be
the official faith, forcing people who believe in something
else to consider themselves members of a barely tolerated
minority.
Alas, Porterfield's book will never be the definitive
historical account of how America came to be the way it
currently is. Rambling and disjointed, it examines such
topics as Catholic spirituality (much of this discussion
borrowed from her chapter in Religion on Campus), the
decline of Protestant hegemony, the impact of the Vietnam War and gender consciousness on religion—without
tying them together.
Porterfield's most interesting idea is that the spiritualists and proponents of religious diversity found in
late-20th-century America are actually heirs to the
Puritan tradition because, like Jonathan Edwards, the great
18th-century Calvinist, they identify "spiritual life with
recognition of the beauty of being." Unfortunately, such
an emphasis on continuity does more than just undermine
the very title of her book—and the findings of all the
other books discussed here. It also misunderstands and
strips away from Puritanism just about every one of its
core beliefs, including the inherent sinfulness of man,
the superiority of Protestantism over all its rivals, and
the dedication to stern moral judgmentalism. Anyone
wanting an overall assessment of the changing nature
of American religion, therefore, will have to look beyond
Porterfield's book.
Other questions about the way Americans today understand religious faith go beyond these four books, as
well. While all detect an increasing interest in spiritual and
religious matters, in America and on its campuses, none of
them, save Fuller's, sufficiently address whether the loose
denominational character and weak theological underpinnings of contemporary religion should be condemned or
celebrated. (As a defender of the unchurched, Fuller holds an
unabashedly positive view of the decreasing salience of
organized religion.) But one of the priests interviewed by
Porterfield at East University told her that students there,
like the ones at the Catholic university in which I teach
(who knows? perhaps they are the one and the same), are
"dim, fourth-carbon copies of religious people. Certain things
remind them of religion—crosses and statues. But theology
is in desperate straits here. It would die without Buddhism
and other religions to discuss.
Are we better off when religion is as broad, but also as
thin, as the kinds of faith one finds on American college
campuses today? As if grateful to find any religion at all,
the authors of Religion on Campus tend to be, if not
celebratory, at least upbeat in their assessment of the
generally nondoctrinal forms of religious faith one finds on
campus. I share their appreciation of how religion on
campus has changed, for it does not take much excursion
into history to recall days of Christian dogmatism,
anti-Semitism, hostility toward science, and lack of respect
for nonbelievers. Certainly America's institutions of
higher learning—arid conceivably America's religious
denominations as well—are better off in that respect.
Still, the priest from East University has a point.
Religious students are very much like nonreligious students in their efforts to personalize knowledge, to avoid
difficult and controversial positions that might cause
anger in others, and to insist that, if we just try hard
enough, everyone can get along with everyone else. Each of
the books here, in its own way, documents the absence of a
sense of the tragic in the way Americans practice their faith.
Religion has returned to America, not as an alternative to the
value relativism and personal seeking associated with the
often quite secular 1960s, but as the logical extension of the
cultural revolution first glimpsed at that time.
Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and
American Public Life at Boston College.