The presence of a wide range of human qualities and attributes within a small group, organization, or society. The dimensions of diversity include, but are not limited to ancestry, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, language, physical and intellectual ability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and socio- economic status.
Multicultural or Tolerance Education
A broad term which may refer to a set of structured learning activities and curricula designed to create and enhance understanding of and respect for cultural diversity. It is increasingly recognized that multicultural education should include racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity, and also be inclusive of the culture, heritage, history, beliefs and values of the various people and groups within a pluralistic society.
The Rise of Religious Diversity in the US, Especially as Related to Immigration
Religious diversity has been a key element of American society from earliest times. Prior to the arrival of the first European settlers, a wide variety of Native American cultures and spiritual traditions were present throughout the continent. Although the English Puritan colonists in New England sought to establish a uniform religious society, most other settlements along the eastern seaboard – in the areas that became New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland – were comprised of immigrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds and a variety of Protestant Christian groups (an even Catholics in the case of Maryland). Official support for religious pluralism and the free exercise of diverse religions was set forth in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Yet, in practice, religious diversity originally referred primarily to acceptance of different types of Protestant Christians; going beyond that definition has not always been easy. Since the colonial period, religious diversity has been increased by successive waves of immigration from different parts of the world. Each new ethnic and religious group has forced an expansion of the nation’s understanding of such diversity – beginning with Irish, German and Italian Catholic, along with Jewish, immigrants in the late 18th and 19th centuries, through the influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and continuing through the 1965 Hart-Cellar immigration act, that opened the doors to increased immigration especially from South and Southeast Asia. As recently as the 1950s and 60s, scholars of religion described the U.S. as predominantly “Protestant, Catholic and Jewish.” But in the last 50 years, immigration has resulted in a vast expansion of America’s religious diversity, to include significant communities of Muslims, Buddhist, Sikhs, Hindus, Baha’i and numerous other traditions.
Interfaith Groups in the US
In 1893, the first World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago, Illinois, USA. About one hundred religious leaders from around the globe met to discuss the need to respect differences in religious expression and to find other ways to settle conflicts than through religious violence. After two world wars in the beginning of the twentieth century, many leaders worked to create the United Nations that published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 in the hope of helping all countries work to secure individual rights in their own societies and to help prevent further world war. The World Council of Churches was also formed in which people of differing Protestant faiths would agree to cooperate to do the same. By the 1960s the Catholic Church took up a major revision of its thinking toward faith traditions other than their own of Catholic Christianity; Vatican II reformations of doctrine opened that door to interfaith understanding and cooperation.
Today, interfaith groups are forming in every part of the country carrying a concern that we work as much as we can to increase interreligious dialogue as a form of religious diplomacy. Especially since 9/11, persons in the United States have awakened to a very pressing need to understand Islam in its many differing traditions around the globe, and by extension, to understand religious traditions different from their own but represented in US society.
Positive Valuing of Difference and Negotiation of Minority Rights
Diversity of any kind in society may be viewed in different ways. Some members of the majority (whether ethnic, religious, racial, linguistic or other) may perceive minorities as potentially threatening to their previously homogeneous identity. Although from its inception the US has been constituted by people from varied backgrounds, acceptance of “the newcomers” and of “the Other” was not always easy. For example, intra-Christian tensions in the early years (e.g. between pro- and anti-establishment Protestants; later between Protestants and Catholics) were followed by suspicion of Jewish immigrants, and later of newcomers of other religious traditions (e.g. Hinduism, Islam etc.)
Diversity can also be perceived as a source of strength and richness in a society. Positive valuing of difference (or, moving from acknowledging plurality to embracing pluralism) means that one sees the heterogeneity of the population as different reflections of the human experience which can all contribute to enriching the common good. In other words, we can all learn from those who are significantly different from us – and not regard them as potentially dangerous because of “taking away” our own identity.
Minority rights in the US today are negotiated within the context of great diversity, in light of the historical developments in the civil rights and women’s movements, and on the basis of the US Constitution.
