Exciting news! Today I'm announcing the kickoff of a new project to create resources on multiple religious practice, for educators. And I just posted on YouTube the first three episodes of a video series on multiple religious practice, under the title "Got More Than One Religion?"
I created these new resources to support high school and college educators in including multiple religious practice in courses such as Religion 101, or World Religions, or Religious Pluralism. The "Got More Than One Religion?" series aligns with going beyond the old model of presenting religions as discrete, mutually exclusive, and unchanging. The videos (each less than two minutes) introduce students to the idea that individuals can and do participate in more than one religion (or claim complex religious identities), for many reasons, in many places around the globe.
This is a complex subject (pun intended), and I take full responsibility for the inevitable distortions that occur when you compress any complex subject into a two-minute video. But I have been fortunate to have advisors for this project: Dr. Tim Hall, a K-12 Social Studies expert, who is the President-Elect of the North Carolina Council for the Social Studies and founder of the resource website Religion Matters, and anthropologist Henry Goldschmidt, Director of Programs at the Interfaith Center of New York.
In conjunction with the videos, Tim and I are also creating high school curriculum modules on multiple religious practice, and we'll be beta-testing those with high school teachers starting now, so stay tuned for more on that. The primary texts include , and Duane Bidwell's book, When One Religion Isn't Enough. So if you know anyone who teaches religious pluralism in high school or college, please forward this post to them.
And if you are an educator, you can join the conversation this week! Tim and I will be co-hosting a "twitter" chat on multiple religious practice, for social studies educators, next Monday at 8pm ET, under the hashtag #SSChat. I hope both high school and college educators will join this online conversation, so hop on with us.
The Backstory:
How did all this come about? Ever since was published almost ten years ago, I have been dreaming about ways to support educators in including the "doing both" and "being both" ideas in classrooms. My first chance to really make that happen came last summer, when Henry Goldschmidt invited me to talk to high school teachers gathered from around the country to experience The Religious Worlds of New York Summer Institute, a marvelous, immersive program at the Interfaith Center of New York. At the end of my conversation with these high school educators, several of them said they would love to include the idea of multiple religious practice in their courses on World Religions or Religious Pluralism. But they needed curriculum and resources in order to do that.
Next, Henry took a leap and offered to make that happen, by pairing me with curriculum expert Tim Hall, a participant in the Summer Institute. And the Summer Institute was able to offer some National Endowment for the Humanities funding, through a grant to the Institute that covers associated projects by participants such as Tim.
So right away, I began sending Tim content and readings on multiple religious practice to use in developing the curriculum.
But then Tim asked, "Readings? Okay. But have you met any high school students lately? What we need is one-minute videos. Please send links to very short videos on multiple religious practice."
And I replied, "Ummm, well, there really aren't any. So I guess I need to make some!"
And that's what I did, with the help of videographer Liz Porter. So far, we have created three episodes, focused on:
- the fact that multiple religious practice exists and the labels used to describe it
- why and how people end up practicing more than one religion
- where in the world people practice multiple religions (spoiler alert, almost everywhere)
I already have ideas for more episodes, and will be looking for resources to fund the creation of more videos on this topic. Please reach out if you have ideas for episodes, or for funding.
Believe it or not, this is only the first of three projects I am launching in celebration of the upcoming 10 th anniversary of the publication of . Kick off the celebration with me and send this blog post to your favorite high school social studies teacher or college religious studies professor.
