Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Unit

Future/s of Interreligious Studies: Growing Edges, Intra-faith Dynamics, and New Models

Interreligious and Interfaith Studies is a multidisciplinary field shaped by shifting global religious demographics, the rise of nonreligion, intensifying political polarization, and growing civic instability. Scholars and practitioners also navigate new digital and AI-mediated encounters, pressures within higher education and para-academic settings, and intrareligious tensions that reverberate across religiously diverse landscapes. In keeping with the 2026 AAR Presidential Theme, this session invites proposals that critically and imaginatively explore how such dynamics are reshaping the future/s of the field.

• New Models: What emerging frameworks, methods, or conceptual approaches have appeared in the past decade? We welcome theoretical, pedagogical, or practice-based models that respond to changing conditions of interreligious encounter.
• Current Challenges: How are current social, political, intra-religious, or institutional pressures revealing limitations of inherited assumptions about dialogue, diversity, and pluralism? How do these challenges prompt methodological or conceptual innovation.
• Applied Interreligious Studies: How do concrete cases (e.g., from higher education, professional industries, civic life, religious institutions) clarify possible futures for the field? We welcome analyses of programs, pedagogies, partnerships, or institutional configurations that illuminate emerging trajectories.

Papers may address one area or explore the intersections among them.

Interactive Workshop

Based on the success of our previous workshops, we invite brief presentations (10 minutes) designed to stimulate substantive conversation on critical issues in Interreligious and Interfaith Studies and engagement. Please submit it as a paper proposal and indicate in your text that you intend it for the interactive workshop. Presentations will unfold as intimate, small-group conversations simultaneously at separate tables, with attendees selecting the conversations in which they would like to participate. Note: These are more seminar or roundtable-style presentations rather than a paper presentation that is read aloud (as is typical in many AAR/SBL sessions) to the entire audience

The session will address several of the following topics:

• Future/s of Interreligious Studies: Emerging Modes, Models, and Possibilities
• Interreligious Studies, Artificial Intelligence, and/or Generative AI: Ethical Issues or Programmatic Strategies
• Recent Publications in the Field: Discuss your own work or review significant new contributions
• Interreligious Studies and Activism
• Pedagogy Beyond the World Religions Paradigm
• Syllabus Design and Exchange: Share your own syllabus and/or those of others teaching in the field to examine various approaches.
• Secularisms and Religious Diversity
• Nones, Nothing-in-Particulars, Unaffiliated and Indifferent in religiously diverse societies
• Intra-Religious Dynamics in Interreligious Contexts
• Emerging Scholarship in Interreligious Studies
• Everyday Sites of Interreligious Encounter: Civic, Professional, Public, and Institutional Contexts (do we need this one?)
• Interreligious Studies on Campus: Strategies for curricular, co-curricular, and community engagement
• Interreligious Studies after violent ongoing conflicts

Call for Papers: Interreligious and Interfaith Engagement After Gaza 

(Co-sponsored session with the Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies unit)

The events in Gaza have profoundly reshaped academic discourse and interreligious engagement both nationally and internationally. Communities across diverse religious, political, racial, and generational lines have been compelled to confront questions of solidarity, moral responsibility, and public witness in unprecedented ways. While many groups have deepened their collaborative efforts in response to the humanitarian crisis, others have experienced heightened tensions, fractured partnerships, or significant reevaluations of their approaches to dialogue and shared action. 

College and university campuses have been particularly affected. Differences in generational perspectives have become more pronounced, and institutions have struggled to navigate the ethical, political, and pastoral complexities raised by student activism, administrative responses, and a variety of external pressures. These dynamics have placed interfaith initiatives under extraordinary strain.

For this session, we invite papers that critically and constructively examine intra-and- interfaith and interreligious work in the wake of the annihilation of Gaza. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• How previously disparate communities or traditions have found common cause or forged new alliances
• Cases in which longstanding interfaith partnerships have faltered, dissolved, or required significant reframing
• The role of generational, racial, and political differences in shaping interfaith engagement around this topic
• The impact of institutional, governmental, or public pressures on interfaith programs, discourse, and leadership
• Internal tensions within interfaith spaces as participants negotiate competing commitments, narratives, and expectations

We seek contributions that draw from empirical research, theological or ethical analysis, historical perspectives, or practitioner experience. Our aim is to foster a nuanced, rigorous conversation about how interreligious engagement is being transformed by the ongoing crisis and what possibilities and challenges lie ahead for interfaith work in this shifting landscape.