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Diana Eck, A New ReligiousAmerica: How a ChristianCountry Has Become theWorld's Most ReligiouslyDiverse NationMary Carmen CupitoPublished online: 13 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Mary Carmen Cupito (2002) Diana Eck, A New Religious America:How a Christian Country Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation,Journal of Media and Religion, 1:1, 75-77, DOI: 10.1207/S15328415JMR0101_8

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BOOK REVIEWS

Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Has Become theWorld’s Most Religously Diverse Nation. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.416 pages. $27.00 hardback.

Reviewed by Mary Carmen CupitoDepartment of CommunicationNorthern Kentucky University

More Muslims live in the world than Episcopalians. Los Angeles is the most diverseBuddhist city in the world. Such statistics are surprising, notes Diana L. Eck, theauthor of A New Religious America, even though the percentage of foreign-bornAmericans today is greater than it ever was; and these immigrants, of course, havebrought their faiths with them. Although the tenor of public discourse about reli-gion in the United States has largely been set by Christian voices, no other countryis home to a wider range of faiths than America.

A New Religious America describes how Americans who practice “mainstream”religions sometimes clash with, sometimes convert to, and sometimes learn to ap-preciate less familiar faiths. It is a call for religious tolerance and plurality. It is a ser-mon that reflects on the often-quoted verse of the Qur’an in which Allah says, “Omankind, I created you from a single pair and made you into nations and tribes thatye may know each other, not that ye may despise each other.”

Although religious diversity has always been a part of the American landscape,non-Catholic, non-Christian, and non-Jewish faiths are responsible for a growingphysical presence: A mosque’s minarets sprout in a cornfield outside Toledo, aHindu temple’s elephants stand guard on a hillside near Nashville, a Sikhgurdwara’s gilded domes grace a California suburb. Although religious minoritiesstill comprise probably fewer than 10% of the population, Eck argues that they noware here in significant enough numbers to make a mark on their neighborhoods,they are joining in American community and political life, and the rest of the coun-try needs to understand them.

As director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard, Eck sent students to theirhometowns in the summer to explore the places of worship of minority religions,and the people who built them. Much of their work is reflected in this book,which occasionally reads like a travelogue of visits to mosques, temples, andshrines across America.

JOURNAL OF MEDIA AND RELIGION, 1(1), 75–77Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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A New Religious America begins with a strong introduction and first chaptertracing the historical role of religions in this country. The book offers a chaptereach on American Hindus, American Buddhists, and American Muslims, includ-ing a brief overview of each faith’s history in this country. These constitute a goodintroduction to each religion as it is practiced here, but so many foreign terms areused that a glossary would have been a blessing.

Occasionally, the religious significance of customs are not explained well. Al-though Eck notes that Sikh boys face religious discrimination because school dis-tricts forbid their wearing the kirpan, a knife, as a part of their religious garb, it is notuntil two chapters later that the reason for wearing the knife is explained. (It is asymbol of Sikhs’ willingness to fight for justice.) Eck describes a funny scene inwhich she takes part in a Hindu ceremony in which brilliantly colored powder isspread all over people’s heads and faces, but the religious significance of the ritual isnever explained.

A well-reported chapter catalogs acts of religious intolerance and terrorism di-rected at people of minority faiths in this country. However, the book ends with acall for progress toward accepting the pluralistic nature of religious America, sothat the country can become not so much a melting pot as what she calls a jazzmedley of faiths.

A New Religious America only glances at the media’s role in reporting aboutnon-Christian and non-Jewish faiths, but the book’s attitude toward the media of-ten appears naïve, hostile, or both. Eck quotes at length a boilerplate proclamationby Kansas Governor Bill Graves announcing the month of Ramadan in Kansas in1997, then wonders whether it was printed in every newspaper. Following an arsonattack on a newly built mosque in California in 1994, Eck points out with disdainthat although local media responded “supportively,” state and national media ig-nored it. She appears not to know that a single burning building rarely ranks as na-tionally significant news, or that the political proclamations churned out by publicrelations machines rarely make the news at all (although she mentions that peoplerarely pay attention to such proclamations anyway).

It is not surprising that the strongest criticism is leveled at the media coverage ofMuslims. Eck asserts that newspapers’ reportage paints Islam as subversive, politi-cally motivated, and anti-American. When an Islamic terrorist group creates a dis-turbance anywhere in the world, she writes, American Muslims may be among thefirst to condemn the act—but they are rarely quoted. She notes that AmericanMuslims want their neighbors to understand the real Islam, not the false image cre-ated by the media.

To be sure, some news reports about religious issues have been biased or igno-rant. To be equally sure, not all have been. A newspaper in southern Ohio, for ex-ample, recently ran a column noting that the violent conduct of Afghanistan’sTaliban—destroying Buddhist statues and threatening Christian aid workers withdeath—“is not representative of Muslims, and that the Qur’an teaches religioustolerance, brotherhood, and the equality of all people.”

76 CUPITO

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However, because this book echoes widespread assumptions about media biases,it could be a good starting point for classroom discussions about how best to coverAmerica’s growing minority religions. A firebombing in a church may be in fact thefirst time a media outlet discovers new religious neighbors. People of minority faithsmay well be stereotyped by others in the community, and reporters might easily re-peat those stereotypes, unless they learn to do otherwise.

There is enough in this book to start to educate journalism students about thepanoply of America’s religious diversity and about the political ramifications ofthose who view the country, the world, and God differently than most of the rest ofus. The book could help journalists fulfill their own obligation to help us all “knoweach other.”

BOOK REVIEWS 77

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