I will say that the power of being a stranger in someone else's religious community has its own lessons, really. It is something like the power of visiting another very happy extended family and being at their table.

My first intellectual challenge was to try to understand this incredible city of Banaras (also called Varanasi) in India and its meaning for Hindus. That was the place I lived for the first year I was in India and I've been back many times. It's a kind of home to me.

I do think that the U.S. has an opportunity as a democracy to really exemplify what a religiously diverse society can be when it embraces the pluralism.

I grew up going around with family, camping and living in a very beautiful mountain valley, knowing the names of the mountains and the rivers. I think it's no accident that I ended up studying the geography of India and knowing the names of the mountains and the rivers and all of that. I loved it. I think it gives a sense of space and a can-do-ness that was very powerful.

The issue of "who we are" has been an ongoing one. It's part of the ongoing identity crisis of America.

When immigrants come, the freedom to practice their faith is a guarantee. They may have trouble with their neighbors, but freedom of religion is part of the blueprint for America, and that is the recipe for the religious diversity that we have today.

We tend to gravitate towards our tribes; the challenge is to understand the people of other tribes.