What Difference Does It Make? The Impact of Religious Literacy on Engaged Pluralism in Service of A Just World at Peace

Abstract

The field of religious studies has been increasingly emphasizing the importance of religious literacy as a means of addressing many societal and global challenges such as prejudice, discrimination, marginalization, and violence. Its advocates have made many claims about its potential positive impacts on respect and empathy, a more engaged pluralism, cross- cultural relationship building, collaborative problem solving of local and global issues, and its potential role as an important component of peace building in our communities and on the world stage. But, how do we know? In this thesis, through a bibliographic survey, I examine the field- wide claims being made in support of religious literacy in an attempt to strengthen the case for these initiatives. I also recognize the current shortcomings, namely a glaring lack of empirical evidence to support these claims. However, like others cited in this work, I do not think we should abandon these efforts because of this deficit; instead, as a collective body of religious literacy professionals we have an opportunity to build on what we currently know, craft important evaluation methods into our programming, share our findings across the field, and collaborate on achieving and empirically supporting the results we believe are possible. A format for program and evaluation design developed by the Aspen Institute’s Religion and Society Program is offered as a model upon which we can build.