Templeton Religion Trust
What if college campuses can serve as the impetus for a thriving and inclusive society?
What if simply tolerating other people’s beliefs isn’t enough to move the pluralism needle?
What if interfaith cooperation could lead to true and lasting civility?
Today’s college students are eager to engage in religious diversity but often lack the opportunities and skill sets to do so effectively. Moreover, higher education has a halo effect, helping to set a broader civic agenda and advancing a knowledge base for the rest of society. While this is certainly true of Generation Z, it is also true for individuals within older generations. Everyone is responsible for and benefits from the bridge of connection that religious and worldview diversity provides.
College campuses model what it means to be and thrive in a diverse democracy. Colleges and universities are ideal environments to promote and spread covenantal pluralism, as they are, in effect, mini-civil societies—communities where citizens of diverse racial, political, and religious identities interact in close proximity. The same is true of Corporate America.
Growing diversity in the United States challenges the country’s cohesion. Hate crimes against religious groups are rising and tribalism has reached dangerous levels, as many Americans entrench themselves into communities that hold one another in mutual distrust. Interfaith America understands that diversity alone is just a fact of demographics. But when diversity is energetically engaged toward a positive end, it becomes a solution to these deep-seated and complex challenges. Covenantal pluralism, as developed and articulated by the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT), is this new path forward.
This richer concept of pluralism calls for legal equality and neighborly solidarity, emphasizes relationships over transactions, and fosters deep engagement across differences to promote the common good.
Interfaith America shares that vision and is working to make it a reality. For nearly two decades, IA has focused on building respect for diverse communities, promoting relationships across lines of difference, and centering commitment to public welfare— the core underpinnings necessary for cross-cultural religious literacy and covenantal pluralism.
TRT has funded Interfaith America with the project goal of providing the tools, training, and support to individuals seeking to engage in religious bridge-building to foster a healthier society. While the tools are designed for anyone to engage with, on college campuses, for example, individuals within all campus roles—administrators, chaplains, faculty, staff, and students—will be actively participating to ensure cooperative and constructive engagement in advancing covenantal pluralism.
By providing high-impact next-step solutions, including courses aligning individuals with their goals, events encouraging engagement and cooperation, and curricula that help users learn about other faith traditions via tangible tools provide a path forward, IA believes silos will begin to break down, thereby increasing positive social interactions between individuals of different faiths and identities. In turn, relational repair can
begin—resulting in a future society based on inclusion and peace rather than division and turmoil.
Honoring belief systems is crucial as a catalyst for relational prosperity and societal flourishing, and research indicates that those closely associated with faith are more likely to have a strong sense of connection to society. By providing learning resources to advance appreciation and engagement in America’s religiously diverse democracy, divides will be bridged.
Phase I of the project will include:
These program elements will greatly enhance Interfaith America’s current work on college and university campuses while broadening its network to include even more campus locations and types.
The LAB will provide multiple access points to a wide variety of resources and opportunities to act as an assortment of customizable pathways to engage students in
multiple levels of interfaith programming. The LAB is available to anyone, not just college students.
Through this partnership with TRT, Interfaith America will develop, refine, and disseminate a comprehensive digital interfaith “toolkit” that offers a variety of easily accessible resources and clearly explicates the steps and actions necessary for advancing covenantal pluralism. For those accessing the LAB on college campuses, this digital toolkit will enable various campus actors (students, chaplains, student life staff, faculty, administrators) to discern and implement a customized, coherent strategy for engendering pluralism that is particular to the distinctive nature, history, constituencies, and dynamics of their specific institution.
The digital nature of the toolkit will allow Interfaith America to seamlessly integrate multiple resources, assessments, programmatic initiatives, and in-person opportunities into a cohesive “one-stop shop” for building pluralism across higher education. In other words, IA will design the digital toolkit such that any individual—in any campus role, at any level of knowledge or mastery of religious literacy, at any institution—can easily determine what the best next step is on the path toward building covenantal pluralism, how to assess success, and what subsequent steps to take. Widely publicized and universally accessible, the toolkit will significantly increase opportunities for students and others to engage in religious diversity in constructive, empathetic ways.
While the digital toolkit will ultimately be a comprehensive, “one-stop shop” for all campus-based educators, students, and those outside college campuses looking to
increase covenantal pluralism, its development and distribution will necessarily be iterative. A cyclical process through which Interfaith America will chart learning and implementation pathways and milestones, map existing resources against those milestones, identify gaps in resources, develop new resources, and build out the technology for an ever-expanding set of audiences and topics is anticipated.
The design and implementation of the toolkit will be managed by Interfaith America’s experienced “Learning Team,” which is responsible for assessing all of IA’s programmatic resources and assets and developing and maintaining new cross organizational resources. The team is led by Connie Meyer, Director of Learning, who has over two decades of experience with interfaith teaching and learning on three continents and a 13-year tenure with Interfaith America.
The intended results of IA’s project are to provide interfaith skills to reduce polarization and advance civic pluralism.
