America’s three biggest hamburger chains have 27,000 local outlets.
The three biggest of America’s 2,800 or so religious denominations alone have 97,000 local congregations.
Which is to simply remind readers that faiths retain powerful impact in society despite the increase of people with no religious affiliation and other secular inroads.
Relations among major faiths feel especially pertinent in 2023, since Islam’s holy month of Ramadan with concluding Eid festival overlaps Jewish Passover and the two Easter dates observed by Christians.
Zeenat Rahman, executive director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, thinks American religion is “increasingly polarizing” and yet at the same time is “essential to rebuilding a strong civil society,” which means Americans “need a basic understanding of the faith of others.”
So, in practice what do people know about other major world religions? What should they know?
Those are important questions for regional or national journalists to explore via interviewing, plus polling if your medium has the money. Or consider commissioning brief articles where religious leaders sum up the basics they think others should know about their faiths and — especially helpful — what’s often misunderstood.
How about books? Stephen Wylen accepted this sort of challenge with his self-published “You Should Know This: A Rabbi Explains Christianity to Jews.” For years now, Terry Mattingly has also been recommending this classic by religion-beat veteran Mark Pinsky: “A Jew among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.”
Some standard book publisher should put together a non-sectarian and up-to-date anthology in which experts would depict their own religions for outsiders, including the main internal branches and variants.
Political scientist (and GetReligion contributor) Ryan Burge recently took up these matters, in a Religion News Service analysis, by re-examining 2019 interfaith data from the ubiquitous Pew Research Center.
