Scriptural Reasoning Unit
For the 2026 meeting, the Scriptural Reasoning Unit will host two sessions.
Session 1 - Scriptural Reasoning (SR) Session: Vocation
This session will introduce the practice of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), an interfaith study practice that gathers people of different faiths around short scriptural texts from the three Abrahamic traditions. This year, our SR session will consider texts that address the theme of vocation in the Qur’an, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament.
Session 2 - Authors Meet Readers: Scriptural Reasoning: Abrahamic Inter-faith Practice (Wiley-Blackwell, 2026)
This roundtable session will feature a conversation with the contributors to the new book on the practice of Scriptural Reasoning, Maria Dakake, Tom Greggs, and Steven Kepnes. Scriptural Reasoning: Abrahamic Inter-faith Practice provides an accessible and practical introduction to a unique form of inter-faith engagement centered on shared sacred text study. Rather than minimizing deep commitments to one's own faith, this approach encourages participants to enter more fully into their own traditions while offering and receiving hospitality across religious boundaries. Focusing on the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—this book equips students and lay practitioners to participate meaningfully in Scriptural Reasoning (SR) groups, where members of different faiths read and reason together from their respective Scriptures. See their book on the publisher's website, here.
Scriptural Reasoning (SR) is a practice of inter-religious text study in which participants from the three ‘Abrahamic’ religions (and increasingly, from other traditions as well) study short selections of their scriptures together in an open-ended but structured manner. When scholars read scripture across inter-religious difference, the effect is to put traditional wisdom and academic formation into play simultaneously. Over the years, this practice has proved effective at making familiar texts strange and offering a window into the deep patterns of reasoning and implicit logics of these different traditions. The Scriptural Reasoning Unit facilitates a unique mode of academic engagement within the setting of the AAR, rooted in this distinctive practice. It cultivates an approach to the academic study of scriptural traditions centered on the ways in which scriptures generate communities of religious practice: practices of study, of interpretation, of reflection, of ritual, and of social life. Its scholars seek to develop methods for analyzing aspects of this process and to offer philosophical or theological interventions in the ongoing life of the traditions.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Essam Fahim | essam.fahim@lums.edu.pk | - | View |
| Kelly Figueroa-Ray, Hamline University | chaplain@hamline.edu | - | View |
| Steering Member | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashleigh Elser | aelser@hsc.edu | - | View |
| Daniel Weiss | dhw27@cam.ac.uk | - | View |
| Kevin L. Hughes | kevin.hughes@villanova… | - | View |
| Mubashir Abbasi | khizarmubashir@gmail.com | - | View |
| William Young | wyoung@endicott.edu | - | View |