In both essays, the authors are concerned with the role of religion in society. E. L. Doctorow focuses on foreigners’ perceptions of the religious stances of people in the United States, while Salman Rushdie considers the global impact of religion. Both authors are primarily concerned with twenty-first-century society, as they wrote their essays after the United States was attacked in September 2001.

Doctorow raises the point that in the United States, people practice religions and related belief systems. Overall, he sees Americans a religious people. A relevant paradox is that the US Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, meaning that the nation has no official church or requirement to embrace a religion, which promotes spiritual inquiry and encourages people to become involved in faith-based activities and organizations, as well as churches per se, but also places ritualized aspects of behavior into the realm of tradition.

[I]t is precisely because of this principle of religious freedom that we enjoy such a continual uproar of praying and singing and studying and fasting and confessing and atoning and praising and preaching and dancing and dunking and vowing and quaking and shaking and abstaining and ordaining . . . .

Doctorow probes the negative effects of misguided beliefs, perpetrated by infidels who are “believers of the wrong stripe.” Examining the negative consequences of religion, he shows multiple occasions and time periods when Americans used it to justify discriminatory actions and practices, such as white supremacy and the related enslavement of black people. Contrasting to the derogatory label of “infidel” by people who believe totally in divine power, the author suggests that it can be applied positively to those who voluntarily seek answers to spiritual questions.

Rushdie questions religion as the basis of worldview. Addressing the person imagined as the 6 billionth born on Earth, he asks them to think about why the planet is “plagued” with conflicts generated by religion. He writes in support of intellectual approaches to comprehending the universe and humans’ place in it—an approach based in scientific understanding, or “mind over dogma.” For Rushdie, religious orthodoxy is externally formulated and imposed on people. He connects religion to outmoded worldviews that people developed both not only to understand the deep questions of existence but to rationalize their superiority over and efforts to control those with different beliefs—“the evil done in their name.” Such rationalizations, or “beautiful,” “seductive” stories, are presented to the religion’s members as vital, which in turn causes them to fear anything that challenges those beliefs.