Tag: community
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
Can We Get Real? Authentic Interfaith Truth-Telling & the Burning of Black Churches
“Why does it take a tragedy to bring us all together?” Rev. Terry McCray Hill of Bethel AME Church in Portland, Oregon asked this question the day after the Charleston massacre. We gathere... 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
Generalizations Are Never Defensible. Or Is This an Indefensible Generalization?
Figuring out how to talk about religion, especially in boundary crossing contexts, can be a struggle. Isn’t that part of what we are trying to do at State of Formation–figure out the how of in... 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
If You’re Sad About Charleston, Do Something
Recently someone asked me: “What would your community look like if it loved black people?” A few answers came to me, but the first and last answer was, “I don’t know and I want... Read More
Romantic Distance vs. Vexing Proximity: the difficulty of real up-close interfaith encounters
My research on interreligious dialogue and engagement has reinforced an old cliché: absence makes the heart grow fonder. When two people are distant from each other, it is easy to idealize each other... Read More