Advancing Interreligious Studies: Interactive Workshop

Interreligious/Interfaith Studies is an academic field that is inherently interdisciplinary. Engagement with the arts is a multifaceted aspect of this interdisciplinarity. This interactive workshop, facilitated by an interreligious-studies scholar/arts-professional, will enable a robust conversation about the interface between Interreligious/Interfaith Studies and academic study of (or engagement with) the arts. It will feature a brief assessment of the state of the engagement, as discernable in recently released arts-themed Interreligious/Interfaith Studies publications. During the ensuing discussion, attendees will consider questions such as the criteria by which particular engagements between religion(s) and art(s) _qualify_ as examples of Interreligious/Interfaith Studies per se; effective methods of critical inquiry into the arts as an Interreligious/Interfaith Studies theme; personal experiences of the interdisciplinarity of religion and the arts; or projects and publications that will further the practice and assessment of engagement of Interreligious/Interfaith Studies with the arts.

Teaching students a hermeneutic process can help them connect what they learn in interreligious and interfaith studies to their lives outside the classroom. The process begins by acknowledging each student’s unique starting point, and then moves through five further steps: first responses to what I’m encountering, self-reflection on those responses, understanding (including listening with empathy and asking with curiosity), reflection on what I’ve learned, and deciding what’s next. Students engage case studies by writing about their first responses and self-reflections on those responses; then, after applying an analytical template and practicing media-literacy skills to research the issues involved, students articulate how and why their minds have changed and how they’d approach a similar case if they encountered it in daily life. The process aims to foster an inclusive environment and help students practice intellectual virtues and metacognition, and students often report using it beyond the course.

In the Western world, we are witnessing the emergence of hybrid forms of religiosity; individuals who do not identify or belong to one religious tradition but identify with or combine elements from multiple religious traditions. Research has shown that people with a multiple religious belonging comprise as much as 24% of the population in the Netherlands, making it one of the largest religious minorities in the country. The word “belonging” has strong emotional connotations. The occurrence of people with a multiple religious belonging, a hybrid religious practice or a multi-religious identity invites us, scholars of religion, to reimagine religious belonging beyond a common understanding of “belonging to a religion”. The multiplicity of religious beliefs and practices to which individuals connect creates a new framework in which individuals experience a sense of rhizomatic belonging, which is both beyond religious traditions.

This paper will explore the non-violent, interreligious nature of the resistance during the 26-day occupation of the H.E.W. Building in 1977. Since the occupation took place over Easter and Passover, many of the activists celebrated their religious holidays in the building. Many of the organizers, such as Daniel Billups, drew on their own religious practices to lead and sustain the occupation. I will argue that the constraints of the occupation necessitated that these religious practices were interreligious and led to inter-riting among the occupants.

Using archival material from The Healing Community, an interfaith disability rights organization, newspaper articles covering the occupation, and memoirs from key disability activists, I will show that interreligious practice and inter-riting sustained the occupation through non-violent methods. This occupation can expand our notions about where interreligious ritual participation takes place and question the “host and guest” framework of interreligious practices.