Educating for Religious Particularism and Pluralism
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The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning is delighted to announce an ongoing partnership with two remarkable researchers in religious education, Profs. Mary Boys and Sara Lee. Initially, their work as consultants and collaborators on educational studies and programs with the Center will be funded by a grant from the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, and later by the Center itself. These pages describe our joint project in Educating for Religious Particularism and Pluralism. |
Introduction
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Catholic-Jewish Colloquium: The Nature of Interreligious Learning
(1992-1995)
Defining Particularism and Pluralism (1997-2002) |
The beginnings of rapprochement between the Jewish and Christian communities over the past four decades have produced many educational challenges. Both Christians and Jews have inherited stereotypes about each other and both are fearful of the impact on their religious self-identities of too close an encounter with the other. In different ways, each community also struggles with various limitations in educating people in their own traditions. These accumulated challenges tend to marginalize the role of dialogue or education about the Jewish or Christian other in religious education agendas.
Additionally, the contemporary meeting of Jews and Christians occurs in the context of a growing awareness of global religious diversity. Typical responses to this awareness range from religious relativism, in which all religions are seen as equally valid or invalid, to an intensification of religious exclusivism, the conviction that one's own religious tradition is the only legitimate spiritual path for humanity.
Educating for Religious Particularism and Pluralism is an ongoing educational initiative of the Center for Christian - Jewish Learning in partnership with Profs. Mary Boys and Sara Lee, whose collaborative research into the dynamics of interreligious learning has been underway for almost twenty years. Mary C. Boys, SNJM is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Sara S. Lee is Director of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.
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Reframing the Jewish and Christian Relationship |
Educating for Religious Particularism and Pluralism aims to research, develop, and provide resources and implement processes by which Christians and Jews can, by studying and dialoguing together, come to comprehend the particularities of their respective traditions in ways that encourage a pluralistic engagement with the other. Encountering the Jewish or Christian other thereby becomes an integral aspect of educating people within their own religious heritage. This overarching purpose requires an understanding of particularity that is not superficial, parochial, or adversarial. It also demands an approach to religious pluralism that is not syncretistic, absolutist, or relativist. This conceptual framework will enable Jews and Christians to move into a new phase of their rapprochement, a phase characterized by the growing realization that the encounter with each other is an intrinsic demand of each tradition's faith commitments.
The webpages linked below make available the previous work of Profs. Boys and Lee in The Catholic-Jewish Colloquium (1992-1995), funded by the Lilly Endowment, and the initial stage of Educating for Religious Particularism and Pluralism (1997-2002), supported by a grant from the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith. It includes resources to assist local educational and dialogical interreligious efforts, together with information on developing features of the initiative.
Contents
A major collection of articles on "Interreligious Learning" and the transformation of attitudes about the Jewish or Christian "other," originally published in the journal Religious Education 91/4 (Fall 1996).
Defining Religious Particularism and Pluralism
A mapping out of various types of religious "particularism" and "pluralism" and the complex relations between them. This analysis provides a useful model for educators and theologians who seek to form people in the particularities of their own Jewish or Christian faith tradition so as to encourage mutually enriching pluralistic engagement with the other faith community.
