One of the central ideas of my family while I was growing up was the idea that we should never make fun of anything Christian or something that reflects Christianity. As ancient Michael W. Smith and S...Read More
I conducted anthropological research on interfaith couples and marriages in Indonesia in 2010, and have continued to investigate interfaith dialogue practices, religious diversity management and inter...Read More
It was raining at dusk. I decided not to ride my bike to the progressive Yom Kippur service on the Boston University campus. If I rode my bike, I would get too thirsty coming home and I wouldn’t ke...Read More
One “fold” on the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path toward enlightenment is Right View. “Right view” is the skill of dissolving interpretations in favor of drawing closer to the reality of the wor...Read More
Anyone who has embarked upon the study of religion immediately runs into a debate of the meaning of the very word religion. Definitions abound and debates rage about whether a general definition of re...Read More
In a previous article I explored how “choice and safety” are the key ingredients in converting de facto religious diversity into religious pluralism, an environment more conducive to transformativ...Read More
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
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
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