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
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
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
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
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
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
Since I’m conducting field research on interfaith dialogue in Rome, I thought it would be an important part of my participant-observation to embark upon a dialogue. I met some Mormon sisters conduct...Read More
It’s not easy to find clear examples of “interreligious violence” in Rome. The closest thing Rome suffers to religious violence are distant shrieks from ISIS across the Mediterranean Sea...Read More
Read Part I here, and Part II here. When I ate lunch with the rabbi he inveighed against interfaith dialogue and its inability to reach or transform the minds of those who are closed to dialogue. He s...Read More
Read Part I here. At lunch after Purim, I heard the rabbi criticize interfaith projects for being “just another religious group.” I reflected on the irony of a religious clergy person dismissing t...Read More