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2001 BYU L. Rev. 619 (2001)
Religious Pluralism: Problems and Prospects

handle is hein.journals/byulr2001 and id is 629 raw text is: Religious Pluralism: Problems and Prospects Dr. J. Gordon Melton'. I. INTRODUCTION I have spent much of the last thirty years mapping the religious life of the United States. This unique occupation began in graduate school with a dissertation problem-to discern the important struc- tures in the American religious life. At the time (the 1960s) there was much talk of a post-denominational era, of ecumenism. The great ecumenical hope was fueled by mergers in the mission field. Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and even Anglican churches were joining together to create a new wave of united Prot- estant churches, gathering participation from churches in South Korea, Pakistan, Japan, and India. While most of these new united churches were Asian, one was close at hand-the United Church of Canada. Founded in 1925, this merger of Presbyterians, Congrega- tionalists, and Methodists seemed to be working well after fifty years. Two factors separated American churches from the possibility of such ecumenical unions. In almost every case where such a united church had been formed, the merging churches were a distinct mi- nority. First, in the United States, Protestantism was the majority re- ligious factor. Second, while the Canadians were experiencing a un- ion, the United States had gone through an intense religious controversy that split its major churches into warring theological camps. Such a split continues to this day and goes under various names-fundamentalist/modernist, conservative/liberal, evangeli- cal/ecumenical. The dynamic still fuels major religious controversies in the United States, as neither side has been able to claim a clear majority. Moreover, this major barrier to older groups coming to- gether also led to a regular set of new groups being formed. At the time I began mapping the religious landscape, the popular observation was that some 250 denominations existed in America. An initial survey of the scene in the 1960s produced a list of some 750 groups. By the mid 1970s, when we first published, around - Director, Institute for the Study of American Religion. 619