BOB ABERNETHY: Now, a new look at America's religious diversity. In 1965, a change in the law opened up this country to millions of new immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. They brought their religions with them and -- although they are still only a small percentage of the overall population -- in the words of Diana Eck of Harvard University, "We are now religious in so many different ways than we ever imagined before that it takes our breath away."

Professor Eck has a new book out called A NEW RELIGIOUS AMERICA, and when she was in Washington recently, I talked with her about diversity and its implications.

DR. DIANA ECK (Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Harvard University): Well, in simple terms, we have become the most religiously diverse nation on earth.

We have extensive Buddhist traditions, places like Los Angeles [are] now really the most complex Buddhist city in the entire world. We have Hindus who have come not just from India, but from Trinidad and the Caribbean. We have Muslims who have come from the Middle East and from India and Pakistan and Africa and Indonesia.

We have this challenge in the United States to do something that has really never been done before, which is to create a multireligious and democratic state.

ABERNETHY: Professor Eck thinks America's commitment to religious freedom will help accomplish this. But I wondered, what does diversity imply for Christians who feel an obligation to try to convert others?

DR. ECK: I think that the thing many people who are not Christians feel about Christian evangelism and missions is that it's so one way. It's so one-sided. And it has -- it has all mouth, you might say, and no ears. And as a Christian, I would say that is a wrong understanding of what kind of relationship we should have with people of other faiths.

ABERNETHY: So, how should a Christian relate to, for instance, Buddhists, who may not believe in a transcendent God?

DR. ECK: Part of the problem is that Christians in the United States are pretty abysmally ignorant about the religious traditions of the rest of the world. And so the first thing that Christians need to do is to get out there and understand what it means for a vibrant, religious tradition that has transformed the whole of Asia and now is beginning to transform America -- what it means for a vibrant religious tradition not to use the symbol "God" in the way we do.

ABERNETHY: What about Hindus, with, what do they say, 330 million deities? That rubs a lot of people the wrong way, people who believe in one God. How do they interpret that?

DR. ECK: Well, they need to ask Hindus how they interpret it, because there is a way in which the Hindu tradition was sort of made for the American project. "E Pluribus Unum" is our national motto. And in a way, out of many, one is also the theological motto, you might say, of the Hindu tradition.

Almost any Hindu will say, in name and form there are many, but we also believe in one God. We have many names, many attributes, many ways of seeing the divine. In fact, the ways of seeing the divine are limited not by God's capacity to be present, but by our human capacity to see.

So open your eyes. Let's try to understand what it means to speak of the many-ness of God. And Hindus can really help us with that.