Advancing Interreligious Studies: Interactive Workshop

Join a discussion about *Interreligious Studies: An Introduction*, a new textbook for graduate and undergraduate students. Part I, “Mapping the Field,” presents emerging principles, objectives, concepts, terms, and nuances of the field; a history of interreligious learning and engagement; and an investigation of ethical, philosophical, and theological grounding for religious pluralism.

Part II, “Meeting Spaces,” explores multiple contexts in which we encounter religious difference on a regular basis: families, congregations, college campuses, workplaces, media, and the public square. There is also a discursus on antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Part III, “Modes of Engagement,” addresses work being done in the world that is designed to draw together people who orient around religion differently—and the scholarship that relates to these efforts. It sketches principles, projects, practices, problems, and possibilities of the following areas: dialogue, study, spiritual encounter, community-based service, organizing, advocacy, the arts, and conflict transformation.

Join a discussion about *Everyday Wisdom: Interreligious Studies in a Pluralistic World,* a new book for students and instructors that introduces the growing field of interreligious studies, with an emphasis on lived religion, interfaith engagement, and leadership. Its themes include the study of religion, religious identity, the global religious landscape, lived-religion approaches to the study of religion, (inter)religious literacy, the relationship between the academic field of interreligious studies and the civic project of interfaith engagement, various responses to religious diversity, the role of secular and pluralist forces in religiously diverse societies, dominant theological modes of approach to other religious traditions and to interreligious theological encounter, and the role of human relationship across religious difference for inter- and intra-personal development, self-discovery, changemaking, and leadership. Tying together several  ultimate aims and learning objectives of interreligious studies courses, it proposes a framework, based on practical wisdom, for interreligious studies and interfaith leadership.

Institutions like Wheaton College have unique challenges and opportunities regarding interreligious scholarship and pedagogy. Regarding scholarship, faculty must navigate the tension between the institution’s desire for excellent scholarship with donors and board members who might see such scholarship as violating the institution’s statement of faith. On the other hand, faculty are relatively free to teach and develop courses for interreligious engagement that promote critical rethinking of religious beliefs with students who have a deep understanding of the power of religion and desire to learn interreligiously. I propose a way to ameliorate the disparity the scholarly freedom to publish and the pedagogical freedom to teach is to increase inter-collegiate collaboration with religiously diverse institutions. Not only will such collaboration provide public facing examples of mutually transformative interreligious engagement at Wheaton, but it also offers opportunities to engage with a unique set of students who desire authentic interreligious dialogue.

Teaching interfaith studies is context-dependent, presenting distinct opportunities and challenges based on student and institutional identities. This presentation focuses on teaching interfaith studies in a Christian institution with little religious diversity. Using my own experiences teaching “interfaith cooperation” at a historically conservative Christian university, I will explore best practices, innovative pedagogies, and institutional justifications for interfaith studies. I start with my experience designing this course and establishing it in the regular offerings. I then address its relationship to a larger current interfaith engagement at the university. Finally, I share successes and struggles in helping students with exclusivist commitments to engage in John Dewey’s task of “creative democracy” toward what Eboo Patel has envisioned as “Interfaith America.” Afterward, we will collectively explore effective pedagogical methods for teaching interfaith studies in other Christian institutional contexts.

Frontline research generated through activism becomes more interesting, relevant, and accessible for a much wider audience when the core content is diversified through intersectionality, which then orients the core theme to an expanded, but distinct, context. The particular witness for justice focus remains constant, but the activist researcher expands and/or contracts the content (as appropriate/necessary) to contextualize the focus for a particular new academic and/or public audience. Drawing on her scholarship (6 recent academic books), experience as a volunteer chaplain with displaced families at the US-Mexico border, and teaching undergraduate interreligious studies, the presenter will invite conversation about how to diversify a core writing/teaching theme to reach more audiences, inside and outside of the Academy.

In the middle of the United States of America, Omaha, Nebraska, four co-located organizations contend with the question of who is included in “Tri-Faith”. Internalized antisemitism, international politics, and the radical leadership transition of partners losing their top leadership within one year of each other forces questions about the roles and responsibilities of leadership in the interfaith movement. Particular attention will be paid to the shift from a pseudo-fundamentalist strategy, prioritizing the supremacy of so-called “Abrahamic” religions, to the recognition of monotheistic privilege and the religious and cultural expectation to put reputations on the line for marginalized religious communities. Interweaving ethnographic research through direct interviews of Tri-Faith Commons stakeholders alongside a critical theoretical lens, I will demonstrate the ways that certain methods of interreligious dialogue are molded, contended with, and debated toward significantly different goals.

Reflective Structured Dialogue was developed as method of dialogue across difference in response to the intractable violence surrounding abortion debates in Boston in the 1990s. From its very start it was part of public activism aimed at promoting mutual understanding across religious and cultural differences as a foundation for civic cooperation. Originally organized as the Public Conversations Project and now as Essential Partners, Reflective Structured Dialogue has been used in civic dialogue projects in many contexts from interfaith groups in the United States to addressing Christian-Muslim conflicts in Nigeria. This presentation shares what I have learned over the past five years as I have collaborated with colleagues to bring Reflective Structured Dialogue from the context of civic activism into the classroom to cultivate learning across religious and cultural difference into higher education contexts in the United States and in Muslim majority countries.

Although our institutions currently offer a bevy of interfaith opportunities (lecture series, site visits, summer camp, student organizations, cohorts and fellows), the number of participants has decreased in the last several years. While this may be partially due to the lingering effects of COVID, we would benefit from some honest conversations with members of other academic institutions about successes and failures in campus-based curricular and co-curricular interfaith programming. A faculty member and several undergraduates from Drake University will share their perspectives as a platform for conversation.

When al-Bīrūnī (d. 1050) first encountered what we now call the Hindu tradition, and wrote his magisterial Arabic text Kitāb al-Hind (The Book of India), he mentioned Vāsudeva (the son of Vasudeva) repeatedly, more commonly known as Kṛṣṇa. Fast forward to 2023, and worshippers of Allāh and Kṛṣṇa span the globe. Both Islam and Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism (a specific tradition of Kṛṣṇa worship) have scholarly representatives in the Western academy, as well as multi-generational convert and immigrant communities in Western nations, but interfaith dialogue and interreligious contact between them has been extremely limited. This presentation opens a discussion based on research meant to push forward interreligous scholarship by making space for conversations between these two traditions historically subject to colonial domination. It aims to recover and revitalize the rich tradition of Muslim engagement with the Hindu tradition in a contemporary scholarly modality.

This presentation explores an Islamic theology of religions, one that considers the theological borders of interreligious dialogue, emphasizes reciprocal relationship, and recognizes the dynamic of “going forth and coming back” to address intrafaith dynamics in grappling with religious diversity. The ”A Common Word Between Us and You” initiative serves as a case study for the presentation and discussion.