When diversity is mentioned in America, people think of race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, but rarely of religion, said Alan Wolfe, professor of political science at Boston College, yesterday during the third session in the President and Provost’s Diversity Lecture Series.
Wolfe spoke on faith and diversity in American religion to a large crowd in the Ohio Union Conference Theatre.
In terms of racial discrimination, America is hardly triumphant, he said.
“We don’t have much to be proud of,” he said.
On the other hand, the religious freedoms in the United States are exceptional, Wolfe said.
“There is no single politician in the United States of America in either major political party who has made hatred of non-Christians and hatred of non-Jews the basis of a serious campaign to be elected president of the United States,” he said.
Wolfe’s goal was to explain why the United States is successful in this area and what has resulted.
The country is rapidly filling with non-Christians and non-Jews, Wolfe said.
“Intensive diversity is becoming the major descriptor of cross-cultural diversity,” said Frank W. Hale, Jr., diversity lecture series coordinator.
Most European countries are thought of as more liberal than the United States, but this is not the case when it comes to religious tolerance, Wolfe said.
After the Sept. 11 attacks he was sent to Denmark to discuss the benefits of religious tolerance, but he said no one would listen.
From the beginning, the United States has been committed to religious freedom, Wolfe said. President George Washington was concerned that if freedom of religion was taken as freedom from religion, the nation would lose morality.
Freedom did not mean we would disregard religion, Wolfe said.
The dominant religious stance of the United States moved from Protestant to Judeo-Christian in the 1940s.
“Judeo-Christian no longer works for us,” Wolfe said.
For this reason, the country has moved into a new phase without a real name.
“Abrahamic” is the suggested title of the new movement, because Abraham is an important figure in these religions’ histories. Unfortunately, this title would leave out Buddhists and Sikhs.
Immigration is a large reason the nation is so diverse. Many people arrive in the country and immediately convert to Christianity, Wolfe said.
As a counteraction, many Christians and Jews have been converting to Buddhism since the end of the Vietnam War.
The fact that so many people convert to another religion during their lifetime has increased tolerance because one never knows what they will believe in the future, Wolfe said.
“Our bad reputation on religion is undeserved,” Wolfe said.
Professor Wolfe is one of the premier scholars of the American social conscience, said OSU President Karen A. Holbrook.
Wolfe is director of the Boisis Center for Religion and American Public Life and the author of many books including “One Nation, After All.”
