Diana Eck's academic work has a dual focus—India and America—and in both cases she is interested in the challenges of religious pluralism in a multireligious society. Her work on India includes the books Banaras: City of Light and Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. Since 1991, she has headed the Pluralism Project, which explores and interprets the religious dimensions of America's new immigration; the growth of Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and Zoroastrian communities in the United States; and the new issues of religious pluralism and American civil society. The Pluralism Project's award-winning CD-ROM, On Common Ground: World Religions in America, was published in 1997; her book A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation was published in 2001. Her book Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey From Bozeman to Banaras is in the area of Christian theology and interfaith dialogue. It won the Grawemeyer Book Award in 1995, and a 10th-anniversary edition was published in 2003. She received the National Humanities Award from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1996, the Montana Governor's Humanities Award in 2003, and the Melcher Lifetime Achievement Award from the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2003. In 2005-06 she served as president of the American Academy of Religion. Diana Eck has worked closely with churches on issues of interreligious relations, including her own United Methodist Church and the World Council of Churches. She is currently chair of the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches.
| Current Institution | Harvard University |
| Current School | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences |
| Department | Committee on the Study of Religion |
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| Birthday | July 5,1945 |
| Address | 12 Quincy Street, Barker Center Cambridge Massachusetts 02138 United States Phone: 617-495-5781 |
| Office Hours | By Appointment. |
A research project studying the changing religious landscape of the United States and the implications of religious pluralism for American public life. Funded by major grants from: The Lilly Endowment, Inc., the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Templeton Foundation, the North Star Fund, with ongoing current funding from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Total funding of about three million dollars. In June 2003, the Pluralism Project Website (http://www.pluralism.org) won the Webby Award in the category of Religion and Spirituality from the International Academy of Digital Arts.