Berkley Center

I was extremely fortunate to be one of 60 invited international experts from 31 countries who participated in the President's Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge’s second International Higher Education Interfaith Leadership Forum.

As a sociologist of religion, focused on religious diversity and interreligious relations, I have studied the interfaith movement since the mid-2000s. As a Buddhist and Yoga practitioner, I have been involved in the movement since the 1990s. And as a scholar-activist, as I was recently referred to in a review of my book The Multifaith Movement: Global Risks and Cosmopolitan Solutions (2013), I have been conducting applied research where my studies are informing policy and pedagogy on religious diversity in and beyond Australia.

My study of interfaith movements identified four principal aims: developing understanding of diverse faiths and of the nature of reality, challenging exclusivity and normalizing pluralism, addressing global risks and injustices, and creating multi-actor peacebuilding networks for common security. It also proposed a new “netpeace” framework, which acknowledges the interconnectedness of global problems and solutions and the capacity of critical and collaborative networks—including state, non-state, and religious actors committed towards common good—to solve the world’s most pressing issues.

In the past five years, my research has focused on young people’s attitudes to religious diversity, Australia’s interfaith youth network InterAction, and educational programs about diverse religions and non-religious worldviews in government schools. The benefits of interfaith initiatives and a diverse worldview education are very similar in that both can provide opportunities to develop greater understanding of diverse traditions and to dispel misconceptions and fears through educative and communicative processes. They can also affirm common values and strengthen awareness of the peacebuilding role of religion by encouraging respect for diversity and countering structural violence within a framework of equal rights for all. School and university educational programs about diverse religious and non-religious worldviews are increasingly being implemented and studied across the EU, in Quebec, and in Victoria, Australia as part of broader social inclusion strategies.

Widespread youth participation in interfaith activities is a relatively new phenomenon, led and spread by Eboo Patel and the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) throughout the United States. The President's Challenge is an extension of IFYC’s activities, and it is truly inspiring and impressive to see how so many universities are participating in this event and organizing interfaith service activities and educational programs on campuses. These initiatives not only have the benefits of interfaith engagement listed above, they also provide opportunities for contact between people of different faiths and no faiths as they address social justice issues at the grassroots level, inspired by the worldviews of their traditions.

In Australia, two IFYC staff members traveled to Melbourne preceding the 2009 Melbourne Parliament of World’s Religions to train a group of young people in interfaith leadership and service. This two-day workshop led to the formation of Australia’s interfaith youth network, InterAction. Many of InterAction’s trainings and workshops have taken place at universities, and many of their activities have been enabled by government funding, although we have not seen the same level of state support for interfaith campus service or dialogue as the United States in the past decade.

This kind of support for university and also school interfaith programs would be welcomed by many, including interfaith youth activists, scholars of religion, and Australia’s diverse faith and no-faith communities, who have made many calls for the need for more educational programs about diverse worldviews. Initiatives, such as the President's Challenge, grassroots interfaith youth work, and worldviews education programs, are needed now more than ever to counter racism, religious vilification, and growing divisions in our societies between those who value and welcome diversity and those who do not.

Victoria, the Australian state in which I live, introduced a new emphasis on learning about world views and religions in its government school curriculum in 2015. It did so in consultation with religious and non-religious scholars and community leaders and educators, many of whom have long been active in interfaith networks. It has been inspiring to see elders and young people work together to further interreligious understanding in my hometown, and as part of the second International Higher Education Interfaith Leadership Forum. This forum enabled leaders in the field to learn from one another’s experiences, to share best practices across nations and to form networks, and, at this crucial time, to work collectively toward the creation of more peaceful societies. It was a perfect example of netpeace in action!