INTERFAITH STUDIES AND THE PROFESSIONS
Could Heightened Religious Understanding Seed Success within Secular Careers?
Mark E. Hanshaw with Usra Ghazi
Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. . . . But their time is come. And I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.
—SWAMI VIVEKANANDA,
from The World’s Parliament of Religions
It was a prayer of hope and optimism, delivered by the Hindu teacher Swami Vivekananda, that opened the first Parliament of World Religions, held in Chicago in 1893. This gathering is often cited as the event that launched the modern interfaith movement in the United States. And while Vivekananda’s dream of a world free of sectarian and religious tension may not have been fully achieved, it is clear that the ideals that motivated this interfaith gathering have not been wholly lost, even within the context of a modern society teeming with cross-cultural angst.
The modern interfaith movement was initially fueled by the optimistic belief that engagement between individuals of differing cultural and religious backgrounds would provide a seedbed from which greater social harmony might flower and hostility between members of varied religious systems might dissipate. Without a doubt, the interfaith movement has produced positive outcomes. For example, interreligious dialogue has become commonplace on campuses across America in recent decades. Furthermore, there is an emerging academic field—interfaith studies—that brings scholarly rigor to bear on questions of civic religious diversity and trains people to engage it in ways that will benefit the broader society.
As a college administrator, I am especially interested in how taking courses or earning a degree in interfaith studies might positively affect post-graduation student outcomes. To put this question in more practical terms, how might the increased understanding of and experience with varied religious systems and communities support an individual’s practice of medicine? Or in a career as a classroom teacher? Or in the role of manager of human resources?
I consider these questions as a professor and dean at a liberal arts university in Texas, drawing upon national research as well as insights from students on my campus. The coauthor of this chapter, Usra Ghazi, helps to illustrate the relevance of this research by sharing her own experience as someone who sought and gained interfaith education during her undergraduate career—despite the lack of a formal field at the time. Usra now exemplifies the value of interfaith studies competencies years later as a young professional serving in the realm of US public policy.
WHY INTERFAITH STUDIES?
In his recent book Interfaith Leadership, Eboo Patel identifies the term “interfaith” as one that references the ways in which our interactions with individuals of differing backgrounds and perspectives affect our own religious and ethical perspectives and, further, the ways in which our own perspectives color our engagements with others.1 Thus, one who has engaged in interfaith study would have seriously considered the ways in which the religious and ethical attitudes and assumptions of an individual or group serve to influence social behaviors and interactions across a spectrum.
With this definitional framework laid, it may well be asked how students, specifically, may benefit from engaging a robust interfaith curriculum. What are the questions that students may confront, and what marketable skills might they derive from such focused study?
In assessing the potential utility of interfaith studies, one of the best sources of information is students themselves. In that regard, I was recently made aware of the depth of some of the concerns and anxieties motivating many of the students on my own campus, concerning issues related to religious and cultural diversity. The responses of students were insightful on a variety of fronts, but the two themes that seemed to be echoed most strongly were the belief that a collective lack of social awareness about differing religious groups had often been used to perpetuate resentments and stoke fear, and the strong expectation that broader education on issues related to religious and ethnic diversity would serve to reduce levels of social anxiety.
As regards the perception that most individuals lack a sufficient level of understanding regarding other cultures, a couple of comments were particularly potent. A twenty-two-year-old African-American student observed: “I feel we all need to step back and look at what we are doing to each other by not knowing each other. We would be less divided if we all learned about each other’s culture and values. This stuff was all happening before the [2016] election—now it’s kind of more desperate that we learn. Why don’t people want to understand what privilege is and how others live without it?”
Further, a fifty-nine-year-old white student likewise voiced her own belief that much popular misinformation regarding varied cultures is potentially rooted in systemic biases that might be reduced through education. As she observed: “I think there has still been so much racism, and prejudice against anyone who wasn’t Christian, since the 1970s, but we made people be quiet about it instead of teaching them how wrong these stereotypes are. I was one of those people until I came to school here. Now politicians are using that silence and calling it ‘white Christian oppression’ and making people afraid of each other. It’s so divisive.”
These comments, taken together, indicate a strong awareness by students of the negative impacts that biases can generate within the social sphere as well as personal cravings for opportunities to learn more about other cultures and for a greater societal depth of understanding about varied religious traditions. Many other students participating in focus groups echoed these comments.
As concerns the desirability of including enhanced interfaith and cross-cultural coursework within the university’s broader curriculum, a twenty-five-year-old Caucasian student offered: “I don’t think taking one religion class to meet your [General Education Curriculum] prepares you for any kind of understanding of other religions or cultures. There should be a core set of classes that discuss how culture shapes religions. I guess that’s where interfaith [studies] would apply.”
What this comment and others like it expose is an awareness of many students that standard offerings in religious and ethnic studies may not be sufficient to provide individuals with the background needed to navigate an increasingly diverse social environment. Further, this comment additionally exposes an important level of awareness that religious philosophies and traditional perspectives play a potentially significant role in shaping the way each person interprets the surrounding cultural landscape.
While these focus group results are anecdotal, they appear to be consistent with findings from other studies. In the recently published, expansive study of student perceptions related to religious diversity, Emerging Interfaith Trends, respondents voiced a strong belief in the importance of interfaith engagement.2 According to the study, which included twenty thousand student respondents across more than 120 universities in the United States, about 65 percent of those surveyed expressed a personal desire to take coursework designed to help them better understand differing religious perspectives and cultural orientations. As well, more than 80 percent of respondents expressed the opinion that many of the world’s leading challenges could be “overcome” if individuals of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds worked more closely together.3 Even more recently, a US Department of Education study linked an institutional commitment by universities to “diversity” with stronger performance by students of varied backgrounds across a variety of performance scales.4
Based on both anecdotal and quantitative analysis, it appears that interfaith studies is precisely the type of academic program students desire. In the next section, I hope to show that it is also the type of program they will need with regard to important professional competencies.
FROM INTERFAITH ENGAGEMENT TO PROFESSIONAL PREPAREDNESS
Interfaith studies as a discipline prompts students to seriously consider the relationship between religion and “culture” and their porous boundaries. For any student focused upon a career path that will require some engagement with individuals of diverse backgrounds, a primary educational goal should be to better understand the relation between faith and cultural experience and how the overlap between these categories can impact even the most mundane social interactions. Interfaith studies programs may aid in this quest.
The value placed upon intercultural competence by prospective employers of new college graduates was vividly underscored in the recent Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) study, College Learning for the New Global Century. In that broad survey of employers, a strong concern was voiced regarding the limited ability of many college graduates to recognize and assess important cultural differences. Indeed, one of the skill sets most desired by employers for its new hires was cultural competence. In the survey, more than 70 percent of prospective employers voiced a desire for colleges and universities to better prepare students in each of three areas: (1) understanding of “Global Issues,” (2) acquisition of “Intercultural Competence,” and (3) “Intercultural Knowledge.”5
Interfaith studies programs expose students to differing religious communities and expressions with the express goal of increasing both understanding and the opportunity for positive engagement. In the recent study “Interfaith Cooperation and American Higher Education,” best practices for the field were outlined. Central to this list was an emphasis upon “professional application.” In that regard, report authors recommended that courses in interfaith programs focus attention upon the applicability of interfaith cooperation to a broad array of fields, including, “health care, journalism, business, ministry and social science.”6 This list may well be too narrow. The report went on to recommend that interfaith programs include experiential learning opportunities through which students might directly apply concepts gained to real-world problems.
The best practice recommendations included in this report mirror themes highlighted in the 2015 study of employer attitudes Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success. That study, conducted by Hart Research for AAC&U, found that many employers surveyed placed greater value on a group of core, desired skills than upon a graduate’s major. Among the most desired skills highlighted was experience in solving “problems with people whose views differ from their own,” with some 96 percent of employers citing this as a valuable learning outcome. Moreover, some 78 percent of respondents in the same survey indicated that “college students should gain intercultural skills and an understanding of societies and countries outside of the United States.”7 While the survey did not ask specifically about religious cultures, I believe that the goals articulated can only be accomplished if interfaith studies plays some role within the curriculum.
Professionals, meanwhile, are often required to do more than exercise a specific set of job-related skills. Such individuals are typically encouraged to play leadership roles within the community, even outside of their professional obligations. In Falling Short? some 86 percent of respondents indicated a belief that university education should provide students access to “the civic knowledge, skills and judgment” to help them contribute to the larger society. Interfaith studies will certainly prepare graduates for active civic engagement in the religiously diverse neighborhoods of America.
THE PROMISE OF GRADUATES IN INTERFAITH STUDIES
Our students are often stereotyped as being ambivalent regarding events transpiring in their communities. In contrast to this, the students in our focus groups were well aware of many social inequities that exist around them, and they voiced a strong desire to see change. President Barack Obama sought to describe such social passion in his 2014 address to the United Nations General Assembly, when he proclaimed, “Around the world, young people are moving forward hungry for a better world. Around the world, in small places, they’re overcoming hatred and bigotry and sectarianism. And they’re learning to respect each other, despite differences.”8
Obama’s assessment of the activism of youth around the globe came as part of his broader observation that many of the most divisive and destabilizing forces on both local and international levels capitalize on religious and cultural difference, and it is only through engagement across traditional societal boundaries that anxieties rooted in such differences may be mitigated. As he argued, the central question of our age is “whether we will solve our problems together,” or whether our actions will be guided by “the destructive rivalries of the past.”9 And it is our youth who must be prepared to carry forward the mantle of leadership in response to the challenges and opportunities stemming from growing cultural and religious diversity.
The former president’s words appear to suggest the utility of interfaith engagement and understanding within the field of diplomacy. Indeed, as he further observed, the ability to recognize and distinguish between fanaticism and religious devotion is a critical component in effective global leadership in the modern world. Yet religious misunderstandings and bias affect far more than the diplomatic realm.
Within the context of my own university, I have worked with students who desired to acquire a broader base of understanding of varied religious systems and cultures to support their career paths in such diverse areas as law, business, health professions, counseling, and elementary education. One of my former students who taught me much about the breadth of the need for enhanced interfaith education was a medical school student finishing her residency. It was this student who explained that while her medical school had trained her well to deal with health-related conditions, it had not helped her to understand how to relate to individuals of diverse cultures. For this insight, she turned to our program in comparative religious studies.
Perhaps even more telling was the experience of a recent graduate who went to work in the marketing department of an international corporation based in Texas. Shortly after arriving, the corporation began downsizing, and most people in her office were dismissed, though she was asked to stay. When she later questioned why she, a graduate with a degree in comparative religious studies, was retained even as many people with degrees in marketing and business were laid off, she was told that her ability to understand customers, no matter their background, was an asset too valuable to lose.
Interfaith studies is an emerging field in the academy important precisely because it offers students tools that they may use to respond to critical professional challenges. For current graduates to be successful in assuming leadership roles in the modern workplace, they will need to be aware of religious and cultural differences and to have strategies to respond to disagreements, as they emerge, and to encourage cooperation. Such skills will be of value in a vast array of professional settings. As Usra Ghazi will speak to in the next section, one area where such skills will be of increasing importance is diplomacy and politics.
INTERFAITH LEADERSHIP IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE
Usra Ghazi*
The academic discipline of interfaith studies did not exist, as it does today, when I enrolled at DePaul University in 2005. Rather than learning about religious and interfaith literacy and interfaith leadership in a formal program, I built my knowledge base and skill set by attending interfaith dialogues and service projects and then organizing them myself. I enrolled in peace studies classes offered by DePaul’s Department of Religious Studies and befriended religiously diverse student leaders on campus. These experiences allowed me to develop a pluralism orientation. As a result of these encounters and opportunities I learned to recognize the incredible religious diversity around me and see the potential for social change if I chose to engage that diversity toward positive ends. This perspective of the world is something I have carried with me into my professional life, along with my tool kit of interfaith skills and knowledge.
I borrow the term “pluralism orientation” from scholars Alyssa N. Rockenbach and Matthew J. Mayhew, who define it as “the degree to which one is accepting of, recognizes shared values and divergent beliefs with, and meaningfully engages with others of different worldviews.”10 This orientation is made up of a number of skills I was able to practice and develop as a result of my college experiences with interfaith dialogue and religious studies. One of those skills is the ability to apply a lens of lived religion to the world around me. That is, to see that the religious diversity in any given community is made up not only of houses of worship and religious landmarks but also of the ways that religious and moral life are lived in the public square. This involves being able to identify the encounter and exchange between communities—for instance, the historic Catholic church that due to changing neighborhood demographics becomes space for Pentecostal worship and Muslim prayer at various points in the week. This lens may also allow one to see how a seemingly political demonstration or march could be a form of religious expression for some participants. This goes hand in hand with the ability to understand and speak in values-based language that strengthens relationships between diverse groups. Another critical skill is to be able to tell a compelling interfaith story that links the religious practices, values, and symbols of diverse groups in a way that builds community.
In the summer of 2013, I began working as a policy fellow at the Mayor’s Office in Boston as part of a fellowship program sponsored by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In researching this fellowship, I knew that government agencies of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the City of Boston had strong ties to religious communities and organizations, and I hoped to be placed in an office where I would be best equipped to apply my interfaith skills. After all, a majority of the resettlement agencies that supported the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants at the time were religiously affiliated organizations. The “Boston Miracle” cast the city’s network of Christian pastors and ministers into the national spotlight for their successful efforts to drive down youth gang violence in partnership with the city’s police department in the late 1990s. Thus, I was thrilled to be assigned to work at the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement (then the Office of New Bostonians) and eager to apply my interfaith skills to the field of public policy.
As the only divinity school student in my cohort of policy fellows, I assumed I would be organizing interfaith prayer breakfasts or conducting research on the city’s religiously diverse communities. While there were elements of these types of projects in my work, the most meaningful opportunities to apply my interfaith skills came through in the most mundane of moments. One day, a community member walked into the office to inquire about immigration support services. Then, noticing my hijab, she asked if I knew of a place in the city where she could make her Friday prayers. Even though Boston is home to one of the largest mosques on the East Coast, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in the Roxbury neighborhood, there is no major mosque in the downtown area. It just so happened that in my first week of work at City Hall, I conducted a bit of religion landscape mapping and learned about St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, where the Christian community opens its doors to allow Muslims in the downtown Boston area to make their Friday prayers, as well as the Paulist Center, a Catholic community that offered their space to Muslim worshipers while the cathedral was under construction. I shared this information with the community member, who was happy to know about these interfaith partnerships. My religious literacy regarding Episcopalian, Catholic, and Muslim practice as well as outreach and dialogue skills allowed me to explore the religious landscape of my city and build relationships with these religious communities.
I ended up extending my fellowship through the next year and had the opportunity to co-organize Boston’s first Ramadan event at City Hall, cohosted by Mayor Martin Walsh and Boston city councilor Tito Jackson. In addition to working on explicitly religious initiatives, I conducted outreach and held one-on-one meetings with religious leaders and religiously affiliated organizations on issues related to immigration and refugee resettlement. I worked with a senior advisor for violence prevention and public safety to launch an inaugural faith-based advisory council. My experiences with interfaith studies and organizing allowed me to think critically about various voices and communities to bring to the table. Although the Mayor’s Office has historically held strong ties with the city’s Catholic and Protestant communities, I organized side meetings with Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist community members and connected my colleagues to the secular humanist community to ensure that the City of Boston’s interfaith efforts were broad and inclusive.
Every now and then, during my time at the Mayor’s Office, I would come across colleagues or community members who felt strongly that religion had nothing to do with public policy, that it had no place in governance and the public square. Contrarily, as a public servant I could not help but see religion everywhere. It was in the moral voice and shared values articulated by religious communities to city officials as they called for the just treatment of immigrants and refugees. It was the motivation for hospitality and social services offered to communities in need by religiously affiliated organizations. It was in the corridors of City Hall, where I encountered dark crosses on colleagues’ foreheads on Ash Wednesday, appreciated Christmas holiday decorations, shared a Ramadan meal, made my daily prayers, and reflected on the city motto, the biblical verse “God be with us as He was with our fathers,” etched in Hebrew and Latin on a plaque that hangs in the mezzanine—a gift to Boston from the City of Jerusalem. I found religion in the history, narratives, ethos, and activism of Boston’s diverse communities. My interfaith skills allowed me to better understand these features and to engage this diversity in positive and fulfilling ways.
After completing my work and studies in Boston, I headed to Washington, DC, where I worked at the Office of Religion and Global Affairs of the US Department of State. Early in my time at this office I helped organize a pilot program called the Days of Interreligious Youth Action (DIYA), inviting young leaders and alumni of US government programs to work with their religiously diverse and nonreligious peers, and with support from their local US embassies and consulates, to organize intra- and interreligious action projects. The projects themselves ranged from interreligious sports competitions to arts events and projects addressing environmental sustainability and economic opportunity. Proposing and running this pilot program allowed me, once more, to apply my religious-literacy knowledge to explain how diyas (oil lamps) are considered a symbol of hope in many religious traditions and are used by Jain, Hindu, Sikh, and Zoroastrian communities, and thus “DIYA” is an apt acronym for an interreligious initiative. This initiative also affirmed for me that my interfaith experiences and leadership skills could have global applicability on a wide range of issues. The young leaders involved in the DIYA pilot program were able to use their skills to pull together diverse communities to address local challenges. They engaged in dialogue and conversation to draw out shared values and identify common ground. These are skills that are critical to community organizing and diplomacy.
Though interfaith studies did not exist as an intentional space in the academy during my undergraduate career, I have found that many of the skills and competencies that it engenders, and which I was able to cobble together for myself, have been instrumental in my professional career and success. Now, more than ever, the world needs global citizens who can understand and engage cultural and religious diversity. It is my hope that the emerging field of interfaith studies will create the curricula and academic experiences to help others meet this need.
CONCLUSION
As the AAC&U study College Learning for the New Global Century demonstrates, prospective employers would like to see colleges and universities prepare students for global, intercultural engagement in their professional lives. The AAC&U study Falling Short? draws similar conclusions, indicating that problem solving among people with different values is a key professional skill. Moreover, the desire for these types of competencies are not just voiced by employers and business leaders. The Emerging Interfaith Trends report shows that undergraduate students across the country wish to better understand differing religious perspectives and cultural orientations.
Recognizing these dynamics, interfaith studies has the potential to meet the stated needs of both students and their future employers. A student of interfaith studies would have seriously considered her own values and ethics, as well as how ethical attitudes or assumptions might influence social behaviors and interactions within a broader context. As mentioned above, former students of mine who occupy the distinct fields of marketing and medicine have either been more successful because of their interreligious and intercultural competencies or felt that they were unequipped for their day-to-day work because they lacked such skill sets.
Usra Ghazi, the coauthor of this chapter, demonstrates the value of interfaith training in the context of her career in diplomacy and politics. She managed to cobble together an interfaith knowledge base and skill set through her voluntary attendance at extracurricular interfaith events. In that, she is the exception and also a useful signal. Our society needs professionals trained in interfaith studies too much to leave such preparation to chance or the occasional exception such as Usra. We in the academy should seek to organize the kinds of knowledge and skills that she gained, combine them with the theory and rigor of research the academy is known for, and format it all into a well-designed curriculum that students can take for credit. Such an academic program will enhance not only their college experience but also serve them well throughout their careers.
* The views expressed herein are those of the author alone and in no way constitute an endorsement, expressed or implied, by the US government, including the US Department of State.