Berkley Center

From bioethics and the pursuit of justice to addressing climate change and international politics, religion shapes critical issues of contemporary society.

According to Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, "we live in a world that's clearly very religious," and yet, there is a great deal of interdisciplinary tension when religion is involved.

"For a long time it was considered almost impolite to raise the issue of religion. There was an element of taboo about it in many policy and also academic policy conversations, partly because it was assumed it was less important in the modern era, and in general with so many other disciplines and approaches, religious knowledge and religious scholarship seemed irrelevant," Marshall said. "That's changed, and changed quite dramatically, because of the omnipresence of a whole host of different religious factors in contemporary world politics, economics, and society."

Religious traditions serve as a unifying principle between many people, while at the same time, they have historically been associated with culture clashes and violent divisiveness. Many scholars, including Robin Lovin of Princeton University, have called for the involvement of religious leaders in policymaking, peacebuilding, ethics, and other critical fields for more effective, diplomatic change.

"If we can really risk getting inside the assumptions of another field, allowing those assumptions to challenge our theological vocabulary, our theological narratives, that I think creates the possibility that as scholars of religion, we can have an influence on the really serious issues of violence, of inequality, that are shaping our time," Lovin said.