FALL 2001 19

IN AN AREA OF THE

COUNTRY COMMONLY

KNOWN AS THE “BUCKLE OF

THE BIBLE BELT,” ONE

MIGHT NOT SUSPECT MUCH

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

ALONG THE I-65 CORRIDOR

BETWEEN LOUISVILLE, KEN-

TUCKY, AND NASHVILLE,

TENNESSEE.

“I moved here in 1990,” saidLarry Snyder, a Western KentuckyUniversity associate professor ofReligious Studies. “I like to tellpeople that this was the most ho-mogeneous region of the countrythat I had ever lived. I had stu-dents tell me that they had nevermet a Catholic before coming tocampus. Of course, that haschanged significantly over the pastfive years here in Bowling Greenand Warren County.”

Snyder and Tom Russell, vis-iting assistant professor of Reli-gious Studies, have received anaffiliate grant from the PluralismProject sponsored by HarvardUniversity. The Pluralism Projectbegan in 1991 at Harvard as anattempt to study and documentthe growing religious diversity inthe United States over the last 30years.

In 1997, the Pluralism Projectpublished a CD-ROM, titled OnCommon Ground: World Religionsin America, which released theproject’s findings to that point.Also that year, the PluralismProject received a grant from theFord Foundation, enabling theresearch to be extended to affili-ate groups throughout the country.

Western initially obtained the grantthrough the efforts of Russell, who in1999 represented Western at theAmerican Academy of Religion’s an-nual meeting in Boston. The PluralismProject was holding a conference at thesame time in Boston, and Russell ap-proached them about the possibility ofWestern obtaining an affiliate grant.

“They were more than excitedthat we appeared,” Russell said.“They needed someone to workon this area of the country. DianaEck, the head of the project, hadwritten an article on the Hindutemple in Nashville, so she wasexcited about the whole concept.”

The project will focus on fivemajor cities along the I-65 corri-dor: Nashville and Clarksville,Tennseess, as well as BowlingGreen, Elizabethtown, and Louis-ville, Kentucky. The region will bestudied over the course of threeproposed stages, to be completedover the span of three years.

There has been significant im-migration to the region, making itnecessary to spend the first phase

finding what groups are locatedalong the corridor. The second stagewill attempt to study the relationships

between the new religious groups andthe groups that are alreadythere. Finally, the project willstep back and organize the in-formation gathered in the firsttwo stages in order to come tosome conclusions.

“As we have had Bosnians,Laotians, Cambodians, andHispanics moving into the re-gion, there has been a greaterawareness of cultural and reli-gious diversity here,” Snydersaid. “People want to knowwho these people are, whythey’re here, what they believe,and why they look different.They want to know why it isthat these people don’t want tojoin their church when they gethere.”

Russell has been overseeing the firstyear of the project, which is examiningNashville, Clarksville, and BowlingGreen. Snyder will head the secondyear of the project beginning this fallfocusing on Elizabethtown and Louis-ville.

Russell asserted that the findingsmight be interesting to some. Hepointed to an article that appeared in

B Y L U K E E. H A R L O W

IN THEBIBLE BELT

Saman Shrutpragya Sthitpragya, aJain monk from India, spoke inTom Russell’s class about theJainist monastic tradition. He saidthat he travels to “spread the mes-sage of peace and non-violence” touniversities all over the world.Sthitpragya demonstrated chantingand meditation, and spoke abouthow to stay unstressed and in apositive state of mind.

PHOT

O BY

SHE

RYL

HAGA

N-BO

OTH

FALL 2001 19

FALL 2001 2120 THE WESTERN SCHOLAR

November 2000 in USA Today, whichsaid that the Southeastern UnitedStates was the second highest area ofimmigrant settling, behind the WestCoast. Russell argued that the researchdone in the project ought to contributeto a redefining of the term “Bible Belt.”

“The South is changing,” Russellsaid. “The results from the census arejust coming out and there are rapidlygrowing statistical changes. BowlingGreen, for example, has 50,000 resi-dents, 4,000 of which claim to be Mus-lim. I have Jains and Sikhs in myclasses at Western.

“Right now, Bible Belt culture ispredominant, but you have to

wonder what it will be like in20 years. Even now Chris-tianity in Nashville is morethan Protestant, Catholicand Eastern Orthodox.There are Armenians andCoptics as well.”

In the broader sense,Snyder argued, the projecthas some bearing on everyAmerican. As the popula-tion continues to diversify,notions of a Judeo-Chris-tian American heritagemust be reexamined.

“We live in a demo-cratic state which cel-ebrates religious diver-sity as part of ourcreed,” Snyder said. “Atsome level—it maysound a bit hokey—there is somethingabout good citizenshipthat requires some ba-sic knowledge of whoyour neighbors are andhow to get along withthem.

“Religious diversityis not going to go away,

it is only going to increase over thenext few years as the populationchanges. I am very curious as to

what that means for American reli-gion. We still have ‘In God We

Trust’ on our coinage. Well,

whose God? Everyone assumes that itis the Judeo-Christian God, but whatdoes that mean for someone who isMuslim or Native American or Bud-dhist? What do we do with that real,hands-on issue of pluralism and di-versity, which is part of who we are?”

Student involvement has been animportant aspect of the project.Russell offered a 400-level seminarcourse in the Fall 2000 semesterwhere 10 students worked on one oftwo teams, centering their research ineither Nashville or Bowling Green. Inaddition to traditional seminar-stylecourse requirements, such as read-ings and papers, students were to lo-cate, identify, and classify various re-ligious communities, then interviewmembers of the groups and docu-ment their findings. Events andpeople were photographed, and atthe end of the semester, each teampresented a 25-page written report ofits findings.

“I took the course because I aminterested in pluralism and how Asianreligions adapt in a predominantlyChristian environment,” seniorTommy Holt said. “We studied Sikh,Bahai, Buddhist groups, and a num-ber of others.”

Holt said that their findings wereconsistent with scholarship on Bud-dhism in America, which has heldthat that immigrant and non-immi-grant practitioners of Buddhism tendnot to mix in practice. In Nashville,while they maintain positive andfriendly interaction, Holt said, the dif-ference in worldview is too great forimmigrants and non-immigrants torelate to one another.

Amanda Hayes, who graduated inDecember, and Holt led the Nashvilleteam. Senior Nathaniel Walkerheaded the group in Bowling Green.The three had the opportunity tospeak on their research at the Ameri-can Academy of Religion’s 2000 an-nual meeting, which was held inNashville in November.

“That was a remarkable thing,”Russell said. “Eight thousand to

10,000 people attend that meeting,only a handful of undergraduates go,and even fewer undergraduates speak.It provided an opportunity for under-graduates to speak in an academic fo-rum and they did what good studentsdo: they gave facts and figures andmade tentative conclusions. That isborderline scholarship.”

In the fall 2001, Snyder will be of-fering a course similar to Russell’slooking at Elizabethtown and Louis-ville.

“This project is unique in someways because it does provide the op-portunity for an intersection betweenfaculty research and student involve-ment,” Snyder said. “A lot of researchis done in the privacy of one’s study orthe library, then published in a profes-sional journal or a book. If you get totalk about it in class, then great. Butthis has a real opportunity for studentsto be involved in the fundamentalwork of the project.”

There is enormous potential forgrowth in the Religious Studies pro-gram, according to Snyder. The affili-ate grant from Harvard is the first everawarded to the program, and new op-portunities are just beginning to de-velop. Snyder hopes the project willbring more visibility, as well as providenew direction for the Religious Studiesfaculty.

“We are more than just ‘holdingour own on the third floor of Cherry,’”Snyder said. “We are trying to makeour presence felt in the communityand the region by talking about thestudy of religion and why it is impor-tant. We are talking quite publiclyabout the place that religion plays incontemporary society, how impor-tant it has been in our history, andhow it can affect issues of citizen-ship, neighborliness, and policy.”

The Religious Studies program isworking toward the eventual estab-lishment of a Kentucky Institute forthe Study of Religion, to be housedin Cherry Hall. Once under way,the institute would attempt to co-ordinate studies of religion inthis region, and promote publiceducation about the history androle of religion in the Common-wealth and American culturemore broadly.

FALL 2001 2120 THE WESTERN SCHOLAR

“Religious diversity is

not going to go away,

it is only going to in-

crease over the next

few years as the

population changes.”

—Larry Snyder, associateprofessor of Religious Studies