Religion Briefs : Threat to Religious Tolerance Not Seen

Christian fundamentalists have swept onto the American political scene this decade, but they do not represent much of a threat to the country’s 200-year tradition of religious tolerance bolstered by the Constitution, a noted religious historian said.

“It’s a godless Constitution, and that’s been very good for religion,” University of Chicago divinity professor Martin Marty told a news conference in Missoula, Mont. President of the American Academy of Religion, Marty recently received a $3-million grant from the MacArthur Foundation to study fundamentalist-style religions worldwide.

He said U.S. fundamentalists “would like to have formally and legally a Christian America. That certainly scares me. I just don’t think they’re going to get that.”

However, analysts of a poll recently conducted for the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, a project seeking consensus on the place of religion in public life, said the survey showed “a notable ambivalence in the general public between theory and practice on church-state issues.”

While 51% of those polled said they prefer “a high wall of separation between church and state,” nearly a third--32%--said they favor “special steps” by government “to protect the Judeo-Christian heritage.” Also, 69% said they wanted the biblical perspective on creation included in discussion of evolution in schools.