Where the 21st century meets the Middle Ages

Richard Rodriguez, the San Francisco author whose most recent book, “Brown,” is a provocative look at the smudgy complexities of race and culture, was at Los Angeles Central Library last week, thinking aloud about life in the early 21st century. Asked by interviewer Paul Holdengraber to comment on the politics of the moment, he zeroed in on its intertwining with religion:

“I think that we are at the beginning of a century in which the points of definition and separation between people will be more theological than at any time since the Middle Ages, possibly....

“We live in a time of this religious intensity in the world. I tell young people they better read the Bible, they better read the Koran, they better know how the world is described in sacred literature. Because they are entering the 12th century and they must confront it....

“[My parents] lived on 29th Avenue in San Francisco, and whereas a few months ago I would have described the neighborhood ethnically or racially, now it seems to me that it’s more important to describe it religiously: These Mexican Catholics lived next door to Chinese Confucians, who lived next door to Russian Jews, who lived next door to Iranian Muslims.... Never in the history of the world has such a thing been attempted, that we would be neighbors with one another.

“We are all newly aware of just how electric religion is in our lives. It is no small matter.”