IN NOVEMBER 2010 Lawrence Sullivan asked one of us to be the chair of the Council of the Human Sciences at the Fetzer Institute, a private philanthropic foundation based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, established by broadcast pioneer John E. Fetzer (1901–1991). An earlier fruitful cooperation on the subject of so-called political theologies and public religions in the modern, postsecular world,1 when Larry was director of the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard University, thus received a worthy follow-up as he took over as Fetzer’s new president and CEO. “Join its efforts and do something you haven’t done yet, potentially extending beyond the walls of academia and thinking in a different perspective and tone,” seemed his surprising suggestion, as he himself signed up with a singular organization and even more daring mission that both seemed, well, off the beaten track.
The Council of the Human Sciences, one of approximately fifteen and consisting of a dozen prominent international members,2 was sponsored as part of a multiyear project to “foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community.” It was asked to disburse a significant annual sum of $550,000 and to help prepare a global gathering in Assisi, Italy, which took place in September 2012. The Council of the Human Sciences, for its part, sponsored a host of initiatives. It funded a radio soap opera in Arabic that focused on peace messaging for Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem, an Afghan women’s poetry writing project, an arts project of the Sant Atizana Matenwa women’s collective in a remote Haitian village, a comparative documentation project on social activism and service in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (with special emphasis on the roles played by Dom Helder Câmara, a Brazilian bishop who worked for the poor and for human rights; Felix Varela, a Cuban priest who worked for peace and interreligious dialogue; and Dorothy Day, an American laywoman, activist, and peace builder who worked with the poor), and an innovative curriculum of the Fundación para la Reconciliación, allowing that organization to expand its program from Colombia into four more Latin American countries. And this list is far from complete.
The council further received a generous grant to organize one of two international humanities workshops on the very same topic. The first of these took place in June 2012 and the present volume contains some of the papers read and discussed on that occasion. An additional generous grant offered research assistance to further conceive an appropriate publication, bibliographic documentation and, if possible, a media archive that would capture some of the central intuitions and driving arguments behind the project as a whole.
In this context, we also received a grant to develop the concept and outline for a so-called Alternative Reality Game (ARG), tentatively called “A Serious Game,” so as to reimagine what, paradoxically, might be called a “mobile canon” (Hent de Vries’s concept) or also a “secular catechism” (Nils F. Schott’s term). Building on an exemplary body of work using digital technologies for positive social change, our idea was to use interactive digital technology to highlight exemplars and foster greater awareness of the power of love and forgiveness. With that aim in mind, the Humanities Council convened by the Fetzer Institute partnered with a New York based production company, Jumping Pages, which brings out animated interactive apps for iPad and iPhones, to create a pilot for children ages five to ten that could serve as a model for further tools for worldwide instruction in the subject of love and forgiveness. This interactive digital platform would aim to engage children in problem solving and to develop their awareness of love and forgiveness in action in the world around them through a creative storyline and imaginative characters. Furthermore, the members of the development team for the app, led by Rania Ajami, would engage in a reflective process and document their experience while integrating the concepts of love and forgiveness into their work.
As we bring part of this overall project to a provisional close, we would like to thank several individuals without whose support and inspiration we could not have accomplished our tasks. In addition to thanking the Fetzer Institute for its hospitality and unique financial assistance, we would to express our gratitude, first of all, to Lawrence E. Sullivan, whose visionary leadership and calm confidence in our abilities to do something out of the ordinary never relinquished and motivates us to this day. Second, to Michelle Scheidt, our program coordinator at the Fetzer Council, whose gentle but firm competence and limitless kindness carried us each step of the way. Thanks also to Haleh Gafori, Segahl Avin, and Rania Ajami for allowing us to include their creations not only in this book but also on the Web site at Columbia University Press that accompanies it. We would like to express our thanks further to the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, for permission to translate an interview with Jean-Luc Marion, and to Éditions Galilée, Indiana University Press, and Routledge for allowing us to reprint the two texts by Jacques Derrida that, likewise, speak directly to our topic. We were also extremely fortunate to receive the truly generous gift of an original work of art for our book cover by the Israeli artist Tsibi Geva, entitled Keffiyeh (2010). Our deep gratitude, finally, to Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, Philip Leventhal, and Susan Pensak, our editors at Columbia University Press, whose immediate and unrelenting faith in this challenging project, together with their remarkable efficiency, have made the work on this volume an exciting adventure and genuine pleasure.
New York, Paris, January 2015
NOTES
1. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006).