“The role religion is going to play in the 21st century is going to be one of the key issues. Faith can either be a barrier of division, a bomb of destruction, or a bridge of cooperation. Our job is to make it a bridge of cooperation.”
In What it Means to be an American , Michael Walzer points out that political theorists since the Greeks believed that participatory politics – democracy – could only exist in ethnically or religiously homogenous nations. “One religious communion, it was argued, made one political community … One people made one state.” The section ends with this line: “Pluralism in the strong sense – One state, many peoples – is possible only under tyrannical regimes.”
The next section begins with this: “Except in the United States.”
America ushered in a very new idea - a place where people from the four corners of the earth gather together to build a nation. President Obama spoke of it in his inaugural: “Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”
We are a nation that allows its citizens to participate in its progress, to play a part in its possibility, to carve a place in its promise.
It was an ethic that our first president, George Washington, embraced as well: “The bosom of America is open to receive … the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...sue-of-our-time/2011/04/25/AFXzCUiE_blog.html
In What it Means to be an American , Michael Walzer points out that political theorists since the Greeks believed that participatory politics – democracy – could only exist in ethnically or religiously homogenous nations. “One religious communion, it was argued, made one political community … One people made one state.” The section ends with this line: “Pluralism in the strong sense – One state, many peoples – is possible only under tyrannical regimes.”
The next section begins with this: “Except in the United States.”
America ushered in a very new idea - a place where people from the four corners of the earth gather together to build a nation. President Obama spoke of it in his inaugural: “Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”
We are a nation that allows its citizens to participate in its progress, to play a part in its possibility, to carve a place in its promise.
It was an ethic that our first president, George Washington, embraced as well: “The bosom of America is open to receive … the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...sue-of-our-time/2011/04/25/AFXzCUiE_blog.html