Scholars study Utah-style pluralism

Utah's sometimes messy, sometimes successful "religious pluralism" (the fancy term for the fact that the state isn't all LDS) was put under the microscope earlier this week when religious scholars from around the world visited Salt Lake City.

The scholars — from Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo and 15 other countries — visited Salt Lake City and Provo as part of a U.S. State Department-funded program called "Religion in the United States: Pluralism and Public Presence."

Utah was chosen for study because of the unique presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as a new religious movement, Summum. The group also explored what it's like for Southern Baptists to live as a religious minority in Utah.

Religious pluralism sometimes makes for contentiousness in the United States — but at least we tend not to kill each other, notes Shawn Landres, co-director of the Fulbright American Studies Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara, which organized the monthlong tour.

In addition, the United States, he says, is seen as a testing ground for how church-state relations work. The visit to Salt Lake City "is a great opportunity to walk to Temple Square and see a court decision come to life," says Landres, referring to the city's Main Street Plaza controversy pitting church ownership vs. free speech issues.

The visiting scholars program is itself an example of religious pluralism. So it's not surprising that the scholars had a variety of interpretations of what they saw here. Musa Gaiya, a professor in the department of religious studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria — where differences between Muslims and Christians have recently provoked deadly riots — sees Utah as a model for other places to follow because different religions co-exist with non-violence and because the government does not interfere in religion.

Modassir Ali of Pakistan also sees Utah as a model of tolerance of various religions but disagrees that the separation of church and state is the ideal that other countries should follow. "It would be unfair to take your experience of religion, your experience of democracy, and try to export it to a place and society and religion that's doing fine on its own," he says.

The 17 visiting scholars come from countries where, often, religion is a source of conflict. Patrick Adeso, a Catholic priest and lecturer at the Catholic University of Central Africa, for example, says he hopes that African countries can use the U.S. model of peaceful religious co-existence to resolve conflicts in countries such as his native Cameroon.