Interreligious Formation, Community-Based Learning, and Justice: The Case of Formerly Incarcerated Citizens

Abstract

Graduate schools of theology frequently offer interreligious studies classes and programs. But simply teaching about a religious tradition is not enough. For interreligious studies and dialogue to be effective, there needs to be a deeper understanding and appreciation that can be transformative. Interreligious community-based learning can serve as a critical educational bridge between the classroom and the real world and also help students live into the shared religious value of social justice. In this article, I utilize Catholic and Islamic theologies related to human dignity and interreligious engagement to demonstrate how a theological graduate school’s interreligious educational curriculum can be improved through a community-based learning program.

Keywords:

• Interreligious
• interfaith
• Christian
• Catholic
• Islamic
• Muslim
• community-based learning

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I thank Profs. Scott C. Alexander and Sara A. Williams for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article. I also thank Prof. Christine R. Zaker for being a conversation partner and for educating me on community-based learning. All shortcomings are mine and mine alone. I am also grateful to Shamar Hemphill and Akizou Kamina for being such wonderful students with deep interreligious sensibilities and teaching me what it means to be in interreligious solidarity. I am indebted to Mr. Nasir Blackwell, Mr. Bilal Evans, and the participants of the MuSLiM Certificate Program for showing me how to live into the ethics of social justice and to celebrate the dignity of people when systems of injustice do the exact opposite.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example and an overview, see Ziolkowski (2014).

2 Secretariat for Non-Christians (1985); see also https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_19051991_dialogue-and-proclamatio_en.html.

3 Arabic to English translations are mine unless indicated otherwise.

4 Aleshire (2021), 129; as Eboo Patel notes, “faith identities are implicated by [interfaith] interaction.” See Patel (2016).

5 IMAN is a Muslim-led “community organization that fosters health, wellness and healing in the inner-city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts, and operating a holistic health center.” See https://www.imancentral.org/about/.

6 https://www.imancentral.org/chicago/project-green-reentry/.

7 Jacoby (2015); Smith and Sobel write that schools and communities ought to work together to determine the possibilities instead of the inadequacies. See Smith and Sobel (2010).

8 See generally Hatcher and and Bringle (1997).

9 I am not aware of any other graduate schools of theology that have developed CBL programs for returning citizens with the goal of interreligious formation. For an insightful and information discussion on the benefits of interreligious community organizing, see generally Stauffer (2024).