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Title: A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation by Diana L. Eck ISBN: 0-06-062159-1 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The New Face of American Religion
Comment: The United States of America is a nation founded on religious freedom for all. Government cannot, or should not, interfere with individual practice or show favoritism toward a particular religious faith. This doctrine of freedom has led to the United States becoming the most religiously diverse nation on Earth, and this diverification is openly praised and celebrated in this book, "A New Religious America".
Author Diana Eck is a Harvard professor who is herself affiliated with the Methodist Church. She respects all religious faiths, and she spends time in this book discussing the most significant among them: Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. Other religious groups get a little bit of mention, but most of the book focuses on these three groups. Eck combines together some historical perspectives along with her own personal experiences as she writes this book. She travels around the country, from mosque to temple, observing directly the traditions and religious practices of these different religions, meeting with leaders and joining in at ceremonies and prayer gatherings.
Diana Eck takes a more liberal approach in this book, and this fact might not be to the liking of some readers. It's obvious from the very beginning of this book that Eck fully supports the idea of religious diversity. She never makes a single negative comment about any religious group in her study. She also avoids discussing the merits of the various religious affiliations. Instead, she just states what she knows about each one of them, along with what she experiences first hand, and leaves it at that. She gives the impression that all religions are equally worthy of respect and equally valid.
The last part of the book deals with the future and what it has in store for religion in America. Whether people like it or not, religious diversity is a fact of life. The trend toward an even more religiously pluralistic society is already underway as more and more foreign immigrants arrive on America's shores. Mainstream religious groups, secularists, and spiritual folks with no formal affiliation will have to respond to this growing trend if they hope to survive and grow in the new century.
Rating: 5
Summary: A MasterPiece in its own Essence
Comment: This book is emphatic and compelling in its story telling. Dr. Diana Eck writes this great book with a goal to create a unified society out of all the diversity of religion and race in America. The aim is to eradicate all the stereotypical and prejudicial views that most Americans have about the newly emerging minority religions in America. The author tries to do this by first providing a general awareness of all the religions at stake, namely Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. She does so by discussing all of them in great detail, mainly concentrating on showing off their true color. She then encourages a sense of understanding and tolerance towards a religion, not once own, and focuses consistently on this to achieve coexistence not just among all Americans but all people living in America. To emphasize the significant importance of cohesiveness among multi-religious people of America, Eck writes: "America's religious diversity is here to stay, and most important phase of our nation's history lies ahead. The very principles on which America was founded will be tested for their strength and vision in the new religious America. And the opportunity to create a positive multi-religious society out of the fabric of a democracy, without the chauvinism and religious triumphalism that have marred human history, is now ours."(Pg 383). All in all, this book would be an attractive read for anyone and everyone, regardless of their background.
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazingly eye-opening
Comment: Diana Eck's book has to be one of the most eye-opening books I have ever read. Diana Eck does a brilliant job of comparing different ways of interaction with people of different religions, which include exclusion, assimilation, and pluralism. It is through her breakdowns of the motives for, and results of, these three ideas that Eck is able to show us that the ideal form of interaction of interaction between faiths is pluralism.
Eck superbly demonstrates the influence that Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam have had on the cultural and religious landscape of the America in which they were planted. Eck also does a wonderful job of demonstrating how mainstream America has played a role in the shaping of these individual religions, whether it be in the mixing of water from the Ganges with water from the Mississippi in the blessing of a Hindu temple in Boston, or in the prescence of pews inside of a Buddhist temple, Eck makes it clear that this cultural diffusion that is occuring is not one-sided.
This book is a brilliant work that I personally recommend to EVERYONE IN AMERICA.
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Title: Spiritual, but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America by Robert C. Fuller ISBN: 0195146808 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras by Diana L. Eck ISBN: 0807073016 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief by Huston Smith ISBN: 0060671025 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 24 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s by Robert Wuthnow ISBN: 0520222288 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: When Religion Becomes Evil by Charles Kimball ISBN: 0060506539 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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