Course Overview

According to Harvard Professor Diana Eck, America is the most religiously diverse country in the world and the most religiously devout country in the West. As national and global religious strife and conflict continue to make the front page news, how can college students step up as interfaith leaders committed to shifting the discourse from conflict to cooperation? What skills and knowledge do these leaders need to make interfaith cooperation a reality on campus and beyond? Recent data suggest that one of the most important factors in increasing social cohesion between people of diverse religious and non-religious perspectives is an appreciative knowledge of different religious traditions, what might be called “interfaith literacy.” Through this course, we will explore the concept of interfaith literacy as an essential characteristic of leadership in a religiously diverse world. We will take a service-learning approach and as such will require academic coursework and co-curricular engagement beyond the classroom. In addition to weekly class meetings, we will have two skills-based training sessions focused on planning an interfaith cooperation event for the rest of the Dominican community.

Through this course, we will:

  1. Explore the importance of interfaith literacy and interfaith cooperation in a religiously diverse world.
  2. Increase our own interfaith literacy by exploring theologies of interfaith cooperation in various traditions, shared values across different
    traditions, and historical examples of interfaith cooperation.
  3. Explore the practical application of this knowledge through skills-based trainings on interfaith cooperation and by planning and leading
    interfaith cooperation projects on campus.