Category: Humanism
What Exactly is “Mutual Recognition”?
The construct of “mutual recognition” is circulated frequently in the interfaith society: nearly every organization I approach as an ethnographic researcher names it as a primary goal. But... Read More
Natural Theology from a Former Atheist: A Book Review of Anthony Flew’s “There is a God” Part I
Just about any Christian who is at all familiar with apologetics has probably heard of the famous Socratic Club. Founded in 1941 at Oxford University, the Socratic Club was an open forum for debates b... Read More
“50 Years Since Nostra Aetate” with The International Council of Christians and Jews
“Jews are non-Christian in a way that other religions are not.” Meredeth Banki, speaker at the International Council of Christians and Jews, said this when speaking about her experience as part of... Read More
Ethnographic Filmmaking and the Scientific Study of Religion
What happens when a social scientist uses a camera as a tool in ethnographic fieldwork? For a decade prior to pursuing graduate school, I worked as a composer, film editor and documentary filmmaker. W... Read More
On Taking a Selfie with Pope Francis
Recently I attended an audience with Pope Francis with the International Council of Christians and Jews. It was my second audience, as I had also gained access to the Vatican’s elaborate reception r... Read More
Methodological Challenges to Measuring Transformation
When I set out on my dissertation research, my main question was whether and how interfaith dialogue functions to transform people. I had a hypothesis that people do interfaith dialogue because when d... Read More
Choice and Safety: Required Ingredients for Interfaith Progress
Classic “contact theory” predicts that diverse societies automatically bring about tolerance. I argued against this idea here when I discussed how proximity generally exacerbates the anxiety of di... Read More
What Is the Unity of “Unity in Diversity”?
Notwithstanding the prizing of diversity, there IS some unified bottom line to interfaith dialogue. Nonviolent behavior is the basis for “unity in diversity.” Behavior is a category about which a... Read More