DIY/DEI: Interfaith Understanding

August 31, 2023

DIY/DEI: Interfaith Understanding
Advocates and allies are essential to promoting a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education and beyond. For many, there is a new awareness of issues associated with DEI and a growing desire to learn and engage. To support your efforts, the NC State University Libraries and the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity have created a curated list of resources to inform your inquiry, introspection, and engagement with this topic. Engaging with these resources will provide you with an opportunity to explore DEI and develop your narrative and understanding.

This month's featured topic: Interfaith Understanding
This collection of resources offers insight on interfaith engagement, religious pluralism, and religious literacy. Through a curated list of informative websites, books, articles, reports, podcasts, videos, and other resources, we encourage the NC State community to deepen their relationships with people of different religious, secular, and spiritual identities; learn about religious traditions and secular perspectives beyond their own and understand the role of religion and interfaith relations in higher education and society at large.

This list was curated by Cynthia Levine and Alyssa Rockenbach.

Books

Islamophobia in Higher Education: Combating Discrimination and Creating Understanding. Shafiqa Ahmadi and Darnell Cole, eds., 2020. Ebook.
This book begins by critically engaging with how current laws and policies institutionalize Islamophobia and affect the intersectionality and diversity within the Muslim community. It includes multidisciplinary voices, such as an international human rights attorney, a civil rights attorney, a criminal law attorney, student affairs practitioners and research faculty whose work on this marginalized student population is traditionally not recognized within academic settings. It also brings the voices of female Muslim scholars to the fore. Each chapter includes a critical analysis of the literature, a legal analysis when appropriate, a set of recommendations for policy and practice and discussion questions.

Critical Conversations About Religion: Promises and Pitfalls of a Social Justice Approach to Interfaith Dialogue. Sachi Edwards, 2016. Ebook.

Educating About Religious Diverstiy and Interfaith Engagement book cover

Educating About Religious Diversity and Interfaith Engagement: A Handbook for Student Affairs. Edited by Kathleen M. Goodman, Mary Ellen Giess and Eboo Patel, 2019. Ebook.
This book serves multiple audiences in student affairs by providing teaching ideas for practitioners who want to include a session or two about interfaith in their programs as well as ideas for student affairs faculty who may be teaching one session on this topic or a whole course.

Religion Matters: An Introduction to the World’s Religions. Stephen Prothero, 2020. Print.
A religion is a system of stories, and there is no better way to engage with the world's religions than through the stories that animate their beliefs and practices. Through the exploration of these ancient stories and contemporary practices, Stephen Prothero, a New York Times-bestselling author and gifted storyteller, helps students better grasp the role of religion in our fractured world and develop greater religious literacy. Videos and an award-winning adaptive learning tool, InQuizitive, further engage students and help them master core objectives and develop their own religious literacy.

Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education book cover

Critical Religious Pluralism in Higher Education: A Social Justice Framework to Support Religious Diversity. Jenny L. Small, 2020. Ebook.
This text presents a new critical theory addressing religious diversity, Christian religious privilege and Christian hegemony in the United States. It meets a growing and urgent need in our society—the need to bring together religiously diverse ways of thinking and being in the world and eventually transform our society through intentional pluralism.

Remixed and Reimagined: Innovations in Religion, Spirituality, and (Inter)Faith in Higher Education. J.T. Snipes and Sable Manson, eds., 2020. Ebook.
Remixed and Reimagined invites readers to rethink and re-examine the traditional paradigms in which religion, spirituality and interfaith (RSI) have been studied within higher education and student affairs settings. This volume introduces new theoretical frameworks that enrich and enliven the study of RSI, making it more dynamic, inclusive, and, most importantly, innovative. It is framed by a commitment to social justice and intersectionality, while centering the narratives of the religiously marginalized.

Articles and Reports

“The Emerging Critical Religious Studies Lens in Higher Education.” Jenny L. Small, Sachi Edwards, J. Cody Nielsen.
Journal of College and Character, Volume 22, 2021, Issue 4
The editors of this special issue on critical religious studies frame the articles, discussing examples of new critical religious theories and scholarship and setting the agenda for how research and writing in this area should develop in the future.

“What Does Secularism Look Like in Higher Education?” Julia Collett.
JCC Connexions, Vol. 8, No. 3, August 2022

“Friendships Matter: The Role of Peer Relationships in Interfaith Learning and Development.” Alyssa N. Rockenbach, Tara D. Hudson, Matthew J. Mayhew, Benjamin P. Correia-Harker, Shauna Morin, & Associates.
interfaithamerica.org

A Very Brief Guide to Antisemitism. T’ruah.
truah.org

Podcasts

Interfaith Voices Podcast
Interfaith Voices is the nation's only public radio show exclusively about religion. We were born just three days after 9/11, when a feisty nun got the idea to host a multi-faith panel on religion and terrorism live on the radio. The phones rang off the hook, and it became clear that listeners were hungry for informed, respectful dialogue on religion in the public square. We carry on that mission today with our free, weekly podcast led by our host Amber Khan.

Interfaith America with Eboo Patel
Interfaith America with Eboo Patel is inspired by the Islamic concept of “Deen and Dunya”—Faith and the World—which has anchored Patel’s approach to building Interfaith America, the nation’s premier civic organization focused on the positive engagement of religious diversity. Patel, a renowned interfaith leader, will engage artists, intellectuals, civic leaders, and politicians, people with beliefs that range from spiritualist to traditionalist, all hoping to illuminate the connection between cosmic visions and concrete social change.

“Religious Literacy and Its Discontents | Discourse! (Feb. 2023),” The Religious Studies Project
Benjamin P. Marcus is your host for this month’s episode of Discourse!, the RSP’s monthly, critical take on the category of religion in the news. Ben and his guests, Paulina Gruffman and Charles McCrary, start by looking at a recent Pew survey on religious literacy. What sorts of things do Pew count as knowledge about religion, and what religion(s) do they include? And what does this say about what we as scholars think we are doing when we talk to the public about religion? This leads into a conversation about the coverage of the so-called Asbury Revival. Do we authorize certain voices in the language we use, and whose terms we use? What happens if we describe them differently?

Videos

Many People, Many Faiths, One Nation: A Primer on Religious Pluralism. Aspen Institute.
This short, fifteen-minute curriculum is a response to the question we frequently field: what is religious pluralism?