America, with its history of immigration, has long been the veritable and now cliché “melting-pot” in which a new sort of people would emerge—the forerunners of a global society.
 

This road has certainly not been smooth—call it the scenic route through not-so-scenic country. This road has not reached its destination, but it is not a road to nowhere.
 

Something, however, is threatening the composition of this melting pot, and the destination of that road. There is a great population in this country, a people that knowingly fight and refuse assimilation.
 

Despite calls from some Americans for illegal immigrants to assimilate or go home—despite the inclusion of media voices such as Lou Dobbs in this call—those who have illegally crossed a southern border are not the only group that is far from integrated.
 

Granted, the religious “right” has not done all the drifting on its own—the flavor of the soup is changing—yet this group increasingly distances itself from America.
 

This is certainly not to say that everyone who holds a religious belief is in this group—that would be a gross stereotype and a crude act of intolerance. Still, there is a type of religious person who cuts themselves off from divergent minds and opinions—and a new subculture is growing around them.
 

These people have their own language, customs, celebrations, style of dress, history, schools, textbooks—even communities. They have their own styles of art, genres of music, often decorate in a distinct manner, and have a unique perspective on life. They are a culture unto themselves.
 

Charles Dickens, in “Great Expectations,” wrote, “”[she] had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.”
 

These are the people who have broken free from mainstream America and seek to become something else—which is by no means to say that religious affiliation is no longer mainstream.
 

Culture can be a beautiful thing. Indeed, the beauty of America is the amalgamation of cultures and influences into a cohesive yet far from homogenous whole.
 

True, these people may have some justification in reacting to the shift of mainstream culture away from their values, yet, their withdrawal from the mainstream will only widen the rift between America and its religious citizens.
 

Participation is not force, legislation, intolerance or derision—it is a step towards assimilation.
 

This participation, of all parties, in the greater arena of America does not necessitate the loss of the participants culture and ideas, just an open-minded approach to the marketplace of ideas.
 

This open-minded approach is how black culture has become mainstream, how ever-increasing numbers of Hispanics participate in the rock music scene here in Lubbock, how meditation and yoga have reached suburbia—among people of non-eastern religions—and, if it happens, will be how abstinence and rapping about religion (thank you, Kanye) become accepted and not surprising behavior.
 

Assimilation—participation in public life—is not just a message to and mandate for people with colored skin or accents, it is a mandate for Americans of all ages and beliefs.
 

Participation separates Americans from those who just live on American soil—it is the glue that holds together many people with millennia of historical conflict behind them and allows our children to grow up, and grow old, without intimate knowledge of conflicts like the one playing out right now in Israel and Lebanon.