[Buddha-l] Unpopular Buddhist

[Dan Lusthaus]

In line with the occasional attention this list pays to the demography of 
religions in the US and the West, and Buddhism's place within that, a new 
forthcoming book by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and David 
Campbell, _American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us_, is discussed 
in the current issue of Newsweek.

Some highlights:

"Putnam & Co. asked about Buddhists because, they had discovered, Buddhists 
are one of the least popular religious groups in the country. People like 
Buddhists less than they do atheists and Mormons-and only slightly more than 
they do Muslims. Like Muslims, Buddhists "do not have a place in what has 
come to be called America's Judeo-Christian framework..."

[...]
"The story of American religion has always been marked by this fragile 
tension. On the one hand, we value tolerance and pluralism above all, and we 
will fight for our neighbors' right to practice as they please. "It does me 
no injury," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "for my neighbor to say there are twenty 
gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
But the American religious landscape has also forever been peopled by 
zealots and prophets-people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that theirs is 
God's way, all others be damned. The peace we hold and say we value has been 
broken, time after time, by religious leaders who reject-often violently-the 
beliefs of a new, immigrant, or breakaway group. Thus the Puritans regarded 
Quakers as infidels and treated them accordingly: whipping and imprisoning 
some, executing others. In 1834, fearing the encroachment of an "evil" 
religion, a mob of Protestants burned an Ursuline Catholic convent near 
Boston. Four years later the governor of Missouri announced that all Mormons 
had to leave his state or risk execution."

[...]

"80 percent of Americans say they believe that people of other religions can 
go to heaven. Despite the persecutions of the past, we have had a Quaker 
president, a Catholic president, and Mormon presidential candidates."

The rest at

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/17/religious-zealotry-and-american-grace.html



Feeling unpopular all of a sudden?



Dan