The Pluralism Project at Harvard UniversityThe Religious Melting Pot in Boston
Diana L. Eck
Boston Globe, April 10, 1993
Relations between the religions have not been the subject for good news recently - in India, in the former Yugoslavia, even in the United States.
Ironically, 1993 has been named the "Year of Interreligious Understanding" by several worldwide interfaith organizations in honor of the centennial of the World's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893. That event gathered, for the first time on this continent, representatives of the world's religious traditions. Its centennial will be observed next summer in Chicago, but so far 1993 has brought precious little evidence of the interreligious understanding the world so badly needs.
Last Saturday in Sharon, however, something genuinely new happened. Three brand-new shovels, painted gold, were stuck in the wet ground on an old farm site as ground was broken for a new Islamic Center of New England.
The first to turn a shovel of dirt was Bishop Methodius of the Greek Orthodox Church, then Rabbi Barry Starr from Sharon, then Bishop John P. Boles, representing Cardinal Law. There was the consul general of Pakistan from New York, the head of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, a representative of the religious leaders for peace in the Middle East and members of the seven Arab-American families who had gathered the first Islamic community in New England in 1937 and eventually built the mosque in Quincy in 1963.
Bright blue hard hats were passed out to those who turned a spadeful of earth for the new Islamic center - Muslims, Christians and Jews, men and women, young and old.
As Rabbi Starr puts it, "Sharon is the place where Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together in harmony - and that's what we in America have to export to other countries."
When New England's first mosque was built in Quincy in the shadow of the great cranes of the shipyard, it was the only gathering place for the Islamic community.
Now there are nearly 20 mosques in the Islamic Council of New England. One of the newest is in a storefront next to a Chinese restaurant in Pawtucket, R.I. There are Muslim communities in Dorchester and Wayland, Worcester and Seekonk, even in the always overcrowded rooms in the basement of Memorial Hall at Harvard that serve as an Islamic center and prayer room for Harvard's growing Muslim population.
It is not only Boston's Muslim community that is growing. Not far from Sharon is the Jain Center of Greater Boston, established more than 10 years ago in a former Swedish Lutheran Church on Cedar Street in Norwood.
The Jains, who trace their religious tradition back to teachers in India more than 2,500 years ago, are part of a growing number of Indian-Americans who have immigrated in the past 25 years.
In Ashland one can visit the Sri Lakshmi Temple on Route 135, not far from the starting point of the Boston Marathon. It is a beautiful Hindu temple designed by ritual temple architects according to traditional measurements and built by a Wellesley engineering firm. Its consecration in May 1990 attracted thousands of Hindus from the Indian-American community in the Boston area. Waters of the Ganges were poured over the temple towers at its consecration - along with waters from the Merrimac, the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Colorado.
While the Sri Lakshmi temple is surely New England's largest, there are Hindu temples in Lowell and Stow, and there are a dozen other Indian-American regional groups that gather for Hindu religious holidays.
There are more than 25 Buddhist communities in the Boston area. Some of them are largely Euro-American Buddhists, whose lineages in Boston date to the 1890s with the early "Boston Buddhists" - William Sturgis Bigelow and Ernest Fenollosa - who were initiated into Shingon Tendai practice in Japan and who established the core of the Museum of Fine Arts Oriental collection.
Today there are Zen centers in Cambridge and Providence, Vipassana meditation centers in Cambridge and Barre; Tibetan centers from Newbury Street to Newton. And there are new immigrant Buddhist communities, including three Cambodian Buddhist temples in Lowell and Lynn, Vietnamese temple communities in Roslindale and Revere and the Three Wisdoms Temple in Chinatown.
The list goes on. There are Sikh gurdwaras in Milford and Millis; there is the Zoroastrian Association of Greater Boston; there are Baha'i Centers and Vedanta Centers.
Boston is as religiously diverse as the peoples of the world. Its diversity embraces much more than Muslims, Christians and Jews, the "people of the book" who gathered last week in Sharon. One could surely imagine the development of an active metropolitan interreligious council that could work to nurture the kind of interreligious communication and understanding that cannot be taken for granted in today's world.
For the Muslims, Christians and Jews gathered under the huge tent in the cold, soft rain last week, it was a remarkable beginning, the first such event anyone had attended. One by one, representatives of the various faith communities stood on a metal folding chair inside the tent and spoke of their hopes for the "new ground" being broken - for the mosque and for the community. Dr. Mian Ashraf, president of the Islamic Center of New England, said, "I never thought I'd see in my lifetime people of all faiths, crowded together and welcoming each other as we start a new Islamic Center. This gives us a real responsibility to live up to. We have an opportunity here in Sharon to set an example - that we can live together as good friends and neighbors."
More than one speaker reminded the Muslims, Christians and Jews gathered for the occasion of the words of the Qur'an, "O people, surely God made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other."
What a remarkable challenge - that religious difference should not divide us but rather be the occasion for us to know one another. This surely sets a new tone for interreligious relations.
As published in the Boston Globe, April 10, 1993.