To feel safe online? To know that diversity (even beliefs I don’t agree with) is still a good thing?
When I see that my coworker has been threatened by a so-called neighborhood watch group, how am I feeling? Outraged? Surprised? Confused? Disbelieving? Disappointed?
What do I need? To let him know not all white people or Christians believe like that? To mobilize politically? To apologize? To buy a gun? To be reassured that our community really is affirming?
For many of us, when we’re consuming digital media, we’re moving, acting, and reacting incredibly rapidly. Indeed, many digital platforms and tools (Twitter, Snapchat, e-courses, Pinterest) are designed to give us as many images and nuggets of information as quickly and seductively as possible. It’s soothing to, for example, scroll through images of homes decorated for a holiday on Pinterest: the images are endless, and they wash over us. It’s empowering (in a sense) to scroll through our newsfeed on Twitter, “liking” and retweeting, sharing with outrage and a sense of purpose.
Our emotions, hungers, hopes, and fears are being activated. The yawning sense of “I want/I need/I should” is activated, but not in a way that can lead to a healthy outcome: education, study, reflection, time for pause, time for connection, conversation, sustenance.
For these reasons, when we encounter something violent or disturbing online, we are not in the practice of pausing. Our choices seem to be: defriend or block the offending person, immediately type out a response that either solidifies our own position as expert or “the right one” or undermines the other person’s point of view or credibility, or ignore, delete, or retreat.
When we feel overwhelmed at the types of conversation we’re seeing, we may find that sharing humorous or inspiring quotes or videos is helpful, or we may vigorously “like” and re-share images and statements that take down the points of view of those with whom we disagree. All of this happens very rapidly: click, share, like, retweet, delete, block. In early 2017, in Los Angeles, March mid-term elections were held. Measures on the ballot included issues on raising or lowering taxes and addressing homelessness, roads, bicycle lanes, and health care. As local politicians and organizers pointed out, these issues arguably affect Angelenos’ lives to a greater degree than which president won national election. And yet, in Los Angeles County, only 11 percent of registered voters turned out to vote.
Why don’t we vote? Why isn’t the dialogue, debate, and wide array of stormy, inspiring, infuriating, seductive, and creative content with which we so constantly engage online indicative of actual political action? One answer: we don’t take time to pause, process, or reflect. Time for reflection has the capacity to transform us, body and mind, but we rarely access this resource. When “time is money” and we glorify “being busy” and multitasking, we suffer—but reflective practice is always available, and can be used immediately by anyone, anywhere. It’s our most immediate and underused ingredient for fostering interfaith grit.
Because encounter with difference can be discomfiting and transformative, it is likely that connecting reflective practice to grit will benefit us individually, and also benefit leaders who seek to develop and foster interfaith education and initiatives. This chapter is a starting point for considering how interfaith leaders can best facilitate spaces, methods, and encounters that lead to the kind of personal and community transformation interfaith work makes possible.
What does “interfaith” mean?
Interfaith: For me, religious education seeks to develop methods and techniques for participants to query questions of faith and spirituality, and which then leads to participants growing and becoming transformed.
Thus, it follows that inter-religious education seeks to allow for spaces where participants from different faith traditions (or religious traditions, or from ethical commitments) come together for learning, for dialogue, and for mutual enrichment. For interfaith education to work, it must allow for participants to share their perspectives and wisdom, co-creating meaning and purpose. An inter-religious educator will be a facilitator, shepherd, coach, or co-learner, but will not be teaching content . . . because the content of inter-religious education comes, by necessity, from and through those engaging in it. We are the content. Our lives are the content. Our fears, children, parents, tragedies, hopes, and similarities are the content.
It is also important to define key terms that I use throughout: “inter-religious,” “inter-religious education,” and “interfaith.” In this book, “inter-religious” refers to a conversation or space shared by multiple dialogue partners. That is, within the conversation, lesson, experience, or encounter, participants name and can be known by their religious or ethical tradition, and this religion or ethical tradition can inform their participation in the space.
Participation is key. This kind of learning cannot be passive. Imagine the difference between watching a cooking show and attempting to make ravioli from scratch the first time. Watching passively, you may appreciate both how beautiful and difficult it is to stretch, fill, and form the pasta. But when actually doing it—you are learning the texture of the dough, the nuanced difference between rolling just thin enough and the dough breaking, the scent and heat of the filling, the pleasing way the edges crimp with the fork, and the disappointment when poorly formed ones break in water. While making them, you might be experiencing memories about eating canned ravioli as a child with cousins, or fantasies you had about having parents who cooked, or new ideas about traveling to Italy with a lover. You may experience frustration with your thick, unyielding fingers, and embarrassment that you have never been able to afford good cookware, and impatience with your significant other who doesn’t want to help.
In passive learning, some parts of our brains, hearts, and bodies are activated.
In participatory learning, so many more parts of your brain, body, memory, emotions, and abilities to collaborate, problem solve, balance, and build up your capacity to make mistakes and keep trying.
In addition, when we partake of participatory learning with others, all of these capacities and strengths are magnified. It can be frightening—or exhilarating!—to try new things, make mistakes, and learn about ourselves in front of others. And yet, the relationships that are built, and the self-knowledge that we gain from learning with others—these positive outcomes strengthen all points of learning, especially learning in diverse contexts.
There are some problems with multiculturalism and religious education. I use “inter-religious education,” as distinct from “religious education” or “multicultural education.” In the latter, differences are named and valued, but religious, faith, or ethical commitments are not necessarily made explicit or leveraged. Often, in multiculturalism, we highlight, share, celebrate, and work to tolerate differences. The differences we choose to highlight are often surface-level differences, and can often make outsiders to various traditions mistakenly believe they are monolithic.
For example, in the month of December, well-meaning teachers and religious leaders often share Christmas and Hanukkah side by side, as key examples from two Abrahamic traditions, and in hopes of being inclusive. And that’s a great start! However, Christmas is one of two major, foundational holidays in Christianity. It represents one of two key beliefs (that God found a way to be born as a human into our world). (The other key belief is that Jesus died and came back to life, celebrated in Easter.) But Hanukkah is a “lesser feast” in Judaism—key holidays in Judaism are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is good to know about Hanukkah, and very good to make space in our inclusive holiday lives to learn about it and celebrate it, but years of seeing Christmas and Hanukkah highlighted side by side has given many Americans the false impression that they are equal in some way. Worse, this false equivalency has given many Americans the sense that they know something important about Judaism, and so they don’t need to learn much else.
In “religious education,” either the educator or material is mono-religious or ecumenical, or the starting place or frameworks come from Christian religious education. In contrast, “inter-religious education” seeks to have multiple voices as “teachers,” a diverse body of learners, and attempts to bring into the educational space—either by material or through facilitation—time and space for learning about religious difference and for learning how to learn or live