A well-known contemporary scholar of comparative religion, Diana Eck's name has, in recent years, become synonymous with the study of American religious pluralism. In addition to her posts as Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and member of the Faculty of Divinity at Harvard, Eck is also the founder and director of the Pluralism Project, a Harvard-based research project that documents and examines the growing phenomenon of religious pluralism and the social impact of this diversity on American and other multi-religious cultures.

Raised in Montana as a Methodist and trained at Harvard, Eck's engagement with religious diversity began during her undergraduate travels to India. As the following essay details, the background for much of her work is rooted in an interest in reconciling her Christian faith with other religious perspectives. A strong proponent of interfaith dialogue, Eck has promoted a theological pluralism that advocates engagement and embrace of other religions, arguing that one can maintain one's own religious faith while simultaneously appreciating the differences between, the value in, and the great insights available from other religious systems. Ultimately, she argues, Christians can learn from an approach that pushes beyond the classic exclusivist (“no religion but my own is true”), or even inclusivist (“all religions worship the same God, although mine does it best”) positions toward a pluralism that invites and celebrates difference. In her more recent work on the diversity of American religious culture, entitled A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Became the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation (2001), she offers a model of civic pluralism very similar to this theological one.