America has become a hothouse in which religious diversity has flourished beyond anyone's wildest expectations. William Hutchison, a distinguished historian of American Religion at Harvard Divinity School, suspects that the United States may now be the most religiously pluralistic nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth.

The multiplication and proliferation of contrasting, often com-peting, religious viewpoints makes it all but impossible to find commond ground. Amid the welter of spiritual alternatives, legions of believers remain bunkered in their insular enclaves. There are precious few venues to which people from divergent religious perspectives are invited to venture forth and fewer still where people engage one another in serious conversation. In most instances, interfaith encounters are so superficial that the climate changes dramatically when unhinged from the exchange of predictable platitudes. As temperatures rise, civility melts. People armed with noble intentions and trans-cendental ambitions discover that they do not march to the same rhythm. They occupy a common border in the public square, but they see things quite differently and have no shared method to adjudicate their conflicts.

Thirty-five years ago, Robert Bellah argued that the nation was loosely bound together by an unofficial "civil religion." As he surveyed the landscape of American history and charted the prevailing temper of its populace, he discerned shared republican ideals anchored in the Bible. He noted that the language and the grammar of our democracy are marked by the cadences of our sacred scriptures. This observation was substantiated by many other historians of American history who chronicled the rhetorical, political, and even theological purposes that biblical discourse has repeatedly served. From the Puritans to Lincoln to Martin Luther King, our leaders have invoked biblical imagery to articulate our national hopes, to bind our collective wounds, and to inspire us in the disciplined pursuit of justice.

Ten years ago, Bill and Judith Moyers responded to the frag-mentation and polarization of our country by producing a sustained study of Genesis. The accelerating breakdown in our civil discourse prompted them to undertake this monumental public television project, for they believed that Americans who tap the reservoir of biblical narrative, immerse themselves in its complexity, struggle with its meanings, and contend with its uncertainties will soon discover that they have much to discuss. They will realize that if they can debate the signif-icance of sacred stories and learn from one another in the heat of passionate disagreement, then they can also tackle the complexities of their own time and circumstance.

The Bible may no longer serve to articulate a shared destiny. The Scriptures may no longer carry the currency to exhort American citizenry to judge itself by more demanding ethical standards than its individual and civic contracts. Not only does the Bible risk confusion and misunderstanding among those who do not regard it as holy writ, but appeals to biblical mandates more often than not give offense when made to speak for the populace as a whole. The legal imbroglio over the placement of the Ten Commandments on government property has driven a deeper wedge between liberals and conservatives, secularists, and traditionalists. Public figures such as Roy Moore have discovered that they can mount the Rock and proclaim God as the source of our civil legitimacy, and in their combative confrontation with "secular authorities" amass enormous political clout, not only in Alabama but in much of the country.

The partisan deployment of the Bible is nothing new, but this political constriction has increasingly diminished the prophetic voice of the biblical traditions. In the face of any contested moral issue, the most effective way to disable opposing com-batants is to hurl biblical verses into the mix. Mark Noll, a professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, distilled the problem in a lecture at the Library of Congress (reprinted in the September/October issue of Books & Culture):

• the more religiously plural the nation becomes, the less it is natural for the citizenry as a whole to grasp the sig-nificance of the Bible;
• the less it is natural for the citizenry as a whole to grasp the significance of the Bible, the more it is likely that the Bible is used to appeal to only some of the citizens;
• the more it is likely that the Bible is used to appeal to only some of the citizens, the greater the likelihood of partisan and therefore superficial use of the Bible;
• the greater the likelihood of partisan and therefore superficial use of the Bible, the more the Bible loses
  its integrity as a public force;
• the more the Bible loses its integrity as a public force, the more irrelevant it looks in a religiously plural nation;
• but the more irrelevant or partisan or superficial the Bible becomes in a religiously plural nation, the less likely that leaders can use Scripture for the self-sacrificing, altruis-tic, or prophetic purposes for which Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. put the Bible so dramatically to use.

However deplorable the drift into biblical illiteracy, I do not think that the Bible can be made to speak to and for the American people in all its diversity. However, the gap that separates the Bible from the American populace may not be as lamentable as I once thought.

There is good reason to get nervous when any people think of the Bible as its possession. They are bound to privilege read-ings that endow the nation with divine mandates that elevate the specific political agendas above question. We have wrapped imperial missions in biblical garb and crowned our conquests as the nation's "manifest destiny." And we have seen the return of these impulses epitomized in the 2003 speech by Stephen Cambone, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, who proclaimed that the real enemy in the battle against al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was "Satan," and that military success signaled the triumph of a Christian nation.

While Christians and Jews disagree about many things, includ-ing the content and ordering of the Bible, we both affirm the sacred character of our scriptures and cherish these texts as God's holy word. We are both faced with a critical challenge. How can we guard against the misappropriation and abuse of our scriptural treasures?

Rather than superimpose the Bible on the national and global scenes (as though this text espouses a single set of "religious values" that can be translated into a universally acceptable political and economic code), Christians and Jews need to do their homework and discover how various readings of our sacred scriptures challenge the prevailing ethos of our com-munities, our cities, our nation, and our international affairs. Perhaps Christians and Jews will need to discern the distinctive messages bequeathed to each of our religious communities, and then examine what particular insights and questions these varied biblical interpretations present to people who are actively engaged in the democratic ordering of our society.

During the past nineteen years, the ICJS has brought together Jews and Christians, men and women, young and old, black and white, from varied educational and economic settings, and we have huddled around our sacred stories and listened to the strange and unsettling music of an ancient conversation. The theologian Karl Barth, of blessed memory, insisted that serious study begins when we hold a newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. Not only has the ICJS connected Jews and Christians with each other's religious traditions in the reading of sacred stories, we have consistently advanced learning that brings different academic disciplines into conversation with dif-ferent professions. The linkages of religion and the arts, religion and politics, and religion and international relations reflect long-standing commitments.

This past year connections between religion and medicine were forged through the conference Dying Well: Medicine and Mortality through Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Eyes. The ICJS will continue to provide educational experiences that en-able practitioners from both fields to learn from one another as they struggle to meet the needs of patients and their families. This inquiry will provide the basis for this year's Congregational Project.

Also in the coming year our Scripture Forum will launch a new initiative that will explore the interplay of economics and reli-gion. Many foundational religious categories have economic roots, and we are eager to investigate how notions such as "debt," "redemption," "forgiveness," "repentance and restitu-tion," and "duty" shape the horizons of our moral responsibilities. We will investigate the ways in which religious and economic obligations are woven together and given a distinct texture within Judaism and Christianity.

This year the ICJS will engage diverse audiences in a multi-plicity of programs, and the path will invariably bring people into spirited conversation with biblical texts. We will measure our success on the basis of whether we equip people to argue wisely and compassionately with the Good Book and with one another. The habits of mind and heart that we hope to develop will lead to more expansive engagement with our traditions and our neighbors. The governing questions we will ask of every interpretation are these: How are we translating the living words of our scriptures into action? Are we using the Bible to authorize partisan political platforms, or does our read-ing enable us to recognize and respond to the nation in all its wondrously confounding diversity, most especially to those we are inclined to overlook? Do religious and political leaders read the Bible in ways that yield justice for all, or justice for some?