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JOSEPH REISERT: Religion in America evolves as diversity, tolerance increases

Judging only by current events, one might conclude that religion is primarily a divisive force in American life, stoking hostility between Christians and Muslims, and souring relations between the secular and the observant.

Not so, argues Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, in his latest work, “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” written with co-author David E. Campell.

In a lecture at Colby last Sunday, Putnam presented some of the key findings from that new book, and overall, he was optimistic about the current role and future prospects for religion in America.

To begin with, Americans are very religious. Our people are, on average, far more religious than the citizens of the other constitutional and democratic states with which we typically compare ourselves. If opinion surveys are to be believed, the average American is even more religious than the average person in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

American religion is also extraordinarily diverse. Our land is the adopted home of virtually every religion to have any following anywhere in the world, and is the native home of many others, most prominently the Mormon faith, which continues to grow rapidly both in the United States and overseas.

Unlike other places that are both intensely religious and extraordinarily diverse — think Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Iraq — America is amazingly tolerant. Putnam’s survey data indicate that neither the very secular nor the most observant believe the others to be especially open to differences, though both groups judge themselves to be very open-minded. But through a series of further inquiries, Putnam discovers that all of us are more tolerant than we sometimes fear.

It is true that we are, on average, better disposed toward the larger and more familiar religions, such as the mainline Protestant churches, Roman Catholicism and Judaism, than we are toward newer, smaller religious groups, including Mormons, Buddhists and Muslims.

What makes us so generally tolerant, Putnam argues, is that we Americans take advantage of the religious freedom our Constitution establishes and choose our own religions. A lot. Roughly a third of Americans practice some religion other than the one into which they were born. A similar fraction of Americans are married to a spouse of a different faith.

As a consequence, we come to have as close friends and relatives people of other faiths. When we have personal relationships with others in different religions, many of us find that we have some “Aunt Susan,” who worships in a religion we find strange but who is also, by any measure, a saintly person. It is these personal experiences that make us more open and more tolerant of religious diversity.

Putnam conjectures that current hostility to Islam derives more from unfamiliarity than theological disagreement.

He notes that Americans are almost as suspicious of Buddhists as Muslims, though there is no Buddhist Osama bin Laden, and he reminds us that Roman Catholics were once the objects of intense suspicion and overt hostility, and not that long ago were still discriminated against.

Now, Catholics are as mainstream as Congregationalists. If Putnam is right, it won’t be long before Mormons, Buddhists and Muslims seem as unremarkable to us as Mennonites, Baptists and Methodists do today.

Remarkably, Putnam also finds our diverse and intense religiosity is basically good for America. On a whole host of measures, it turns out that religious people are more civically engaged and public-spirited than the secular. They give more to charity, even to secular charities. They are more likely to go to public meetings. They are more likely to hold leadership positions in clubs and associations. And so on and on.

Moreover, it turns out that the civic benefits of religious worship are independent of theology; attendance at worship seems to be what matters — regardless of doctrine and form of worship.

So the observation commonly attributed to President Dwight Eisenhower turns out to be deeply true, even as it sounds risibly superficial: “Everyone should have a religion, and I don’t care which one.”

Unfortunately, religion has recently been on the decline, as ever more people identify themselves as entirely secular. Putnam argues that the increase among the unchurched in America reflects the disenchantment of young people with the very public, conservative political stands taken by prominent religious leaders.

If that’s right, there is good reason to suppose that some new religious movement, with a more liberal political orientation, or none, will eventually appeal to today’s unchurched, and as these secularists become more religious they, too, will become better citizens.

That’s something we can all pray for.



Joseph R. Reisert is associate professor of American Constitutional Law and chairman of the Department of Government at Colby College in Waterville.

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