Category: Leadership
On Dignity, Morality, and Responsibility: The Effect of Obergefell vs. Hodges
This summer has been full of some pretty amazing and terrifying historic moments, and the Supreme Court decisions definitely made the list for me. As someone who finds the judicial process fascinating... 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
Should Civil and Church Marriage be Separated?
Some Christians have responded to the court's recent ruling in favor of same-sex marriage by calling for Christians to totally separate 'civil' marriage from 'church' marriage. But this position is to... 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
Searching for the Buddha’s Climate Change Policy
On May 14, I joined some 130 Buddhist leaders, teachers and scholars representing over 60 major Buddhist schools and ethnicities in Washington D.C. for the first White House U.S. Buddhist Leaders Conf... Read More