Author: nrloewen

The Wabash Foundation-funded project  prepares faculty to teach courses in philosophy of religion from multiple perspectives and to provide a safe space for students to explore a diversity of positions and to encounter a variety of religious truth claims on their own terms. The final, in-person meeting of the project will take place at the 2021 AAR annual meeting.

In recent years, the student body of our colleges and universities has become increasingly diverse and inclusive. At the same time academic institutions have been striving to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Despite these facts, most curricula in philosophy of religion have remained Christocentric and/or Eurocentric. The reason for this conundrum is twofold:

1. Most instructors have been exposed to only a few methods and traditions and thus lack the training to teach philosophy of religion with a variety of approaches from a multiplicity of traditions using a variety of methods.
2. While eager to learn “different positions” and encounter “different cultures,” many students feel uncomfortable when confronted with a plurality of irreconcilable and, thus, dissonant views.
   
   In short, despite the awareness for need for global and critical philosophy of religion, there still is a lacuna of concrete pedagogical strategies on how to translate these concerns into the creation of a safe and brave leaning-environment that enables students to engage multiple approaches to this field of inquiry.

After a five-year tenure as a seminar in global-critical philosophy of religion at the American Academy of Religion, a diverse group of scholars and philosophers of religion has formed to produce a textbook, teaching manual, and a companion series in global and critical philosophies of religion. To translate our academic discussions into teaching pedagogy, this group would like to create, implement, and assess teaching strategies to make college and university classrooms in philosophy of religion truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive. The goal of this project is twofold:

1. We would like to empower students to explore a diversity of positions and to encounter a variety of philosophical positions and religious truth claims on their own terms.
2. We would like to prepare faculty to teach courses in philosophy of religion from the perspective of multiple traditions using a variety of methods that provide a safe and brave space for our students.

Specifically, we envision formulating a pedagogical theory and concrete teaching strategies to facilitate student-centered global critical philosophy of religion. Our endeavor is driven by four central concerns:

• How to make students from diverse backgrounds feel represented and at home in an increasingly diverse classroom environment?
• How can we enable students in these diverse classroom settings to understand the beliefs and ways of thinking of their neighbors beyond the pervasive images and stereotypes characteristic of orientalism?
• How might we enable faculty to teach global and critical approaches to the philosophy of religion in courses that provide a safe and brave learning environment?
• How do we implement diversity, equity, and inclusion in our teaching of philosophy of religion?

15 scholars met at Drake University for a two-day workshop organized by Tim Knepper to generate topics and materials for undergraduate courses in philosophy of religion. The workshop was supported by the Wabash Center, the Drake Center for the Humanities , and The Comparison Project .

The group of scholars focused their efforts on Knepper’s proposed categories involving the component parts of the journey of the self and the cosmos: What is the “self”? What is its original condition? Does it survive death and if so how? By what path does it reach its destination? What obstacles stand in the way of it reaching its destination? What is the cosmos? Does the cosmos have a origin or creator? Does the cosmos have an end? What is the role of anomalous events and experiences in the religious functioning of the cosmos? What obstacles stand in the way of the religious functioning of the cosmos and its inhabitants? The results of these efforts were a rich repository of thinkers, texts, and traditions with regard to each of these philosophical questions.

The other 14 participants were:

• Purushottama Bilimoria
• Fritz Detwiler
• Morny Joy
• Leah Kalmanson
• Louis Komjathy
• Gereon Kopf
• Nathan Loewen
• Willy Mafuta
• Herbert Moyo
• Oludamini Ogunnaike
• Jin Park
• Kevin Schilbrack
• Nikky Singh
• Daria Trentini

Through an National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant awarded in 2020, scholars of diverse philosophical and religious traditions will gather at Drake University to propose, test, and modify a set of categories and questions for cross-cultural philosophy of religion. Scholars will each propose a set of categories and questions for cross-cultural philosophy of religion that is internal to their tradition of expertise (day 1), next test these categories and questions against the other sets of categories and questions (morning of day 2), and finally offer a modified set of categories and questions that is suitable for cross-cultural philosophy of religion (afternoon of day 2). After the workshop, scholars will write up their sets of proposed, tested, and modified categories and questions in an essay for an edited collection. Tim Knepper, the director of project, will write a concluding essay that compares the proposals and offers an inclusive set of categories and questions for cross-cultural philosophy of religion.

In addition to NEH support, the workshop is sponsored by numerous offices and programs at Drake University (Center for the Humanities, The Comparison Project, Global Engagement Office).

The invited participants include the following:

Bilimoria, Purushottama. Graduate Theological Union

Detwiler, Fritz. Adrian College

Gorisse, Marie-Hélène. Ghent University

Kalmanson, Leah. Drake University

Kim, Halla. University of Nebraska-Omaha

Knepper, Timothy. Drake University – project director

Komjathy, Louis. University of San Diego

Kopf, Gereon. Luther College

Loewen, Nathan. University of Alabama – project co-director

Moyo, Herbert. University of KwaZulu Natal

Ogunnaike, Ayodeji. Bowdoin College

Ogunnaike, Oludamini. University of Virginia

Park, Jin. American University

Patil, Parimal. Harvard University

Schilbrack, Kevin. Appalachian State University

Simmons, J. Aaron. Furman University

Singh, Nikky. Colby College

You, Bin. Minzu University of China

The contributing authors for the multi-entry teaching volume gathered online for a series of meetings to workshop each other’s draft chapters. Contributors presented their work as well as responded to others in breakout sessions. The meetings laid groundwork for the Wabash Foundation-funded project on inclusive teaching.

Mikel Burley organized a conference on innovations in the philosophical study of religion in a pluralistic world. Selected papers, including Knepper’s about teaching philosophy of religion globally and critically to undergraduate students, were published in the journal Religious Studies.

In response to their call for papers, Tim Knepper and Gereon Kopf presented  overviews of the textbook and teaching companion publications.

The colloquium invited scholars to examine ideas surrounding education in the context of global philosophy and religion. Educational environments are becoming ever-more international with increasing focus on the mobility of people and of ideas. The globalization of education poses particular challenges and opportunities. If philosophy and religion are recognized as global phenomena, how might this impact on understandings of and approaches to education? How do culturally divergent views of education and its philosophical significance differ?

The 2019 seminar focused discussion on proposed contents for Gereon Kopf’s edited volume, A Multi-Entry Approach to Philosophy of Religion. The volume is an anthology of collected essays to function as a teaching manual for courses in philosophy of religion that embrace a global-critical approach. The contents explore sixteen diverse approaches to our discipline. Each chapter introduces a philosophical system, contextualizes it in a specific religious tradition, outlines how philosophy of religion would be envisioned from this standpoint, and then assesses other approaches from this standpoint. 

The following draft chapters were presented at the seminar:

“Practices, Transformation, and Language Games: Religion without an
Essence,” Gereon Kopf (Luther College)

“Derrida, Zen Buddhism, and the Act of Religion,” Jin Y. Park (American University)

“Knots in the Real: An Akbari “Philosophy of Religion”,” (University of Virginia)

“Philosophizing “Religion” through Qi-Cosmology,” Leah Kalmanson (Drake University)

“Proper Acts, Knowledge, and Categories in Jainism: Reshaping
Traditional Distinctions,” Marie-Helene Gorisse (Ghent University)

“Relationalism (Lakota),” Fritz Detwiler (Adrian College)

“Rethinking Conventional Approaches in Philosophy of Religion: Classification, Comparison, Appropriation,” Nathan R. B. Loewen (University of Alabama)

“Sikh Scripture and Sacred Synesthesia,” Nikky Singh (Colby College)

“Symbolic Language (Tillichian Approach),” Nathan Eric Dickman (University of the Ozarks)

“Religions,” “Philosophies,” and the Problem of Mapping,” Peter Nekola ( Luther College)

The 2017 session invited papers that re-imagine philosophy of religion in a globally inclusive or critically engaged manner. The session discussed different ways of understanding the self in religious and/or philosophical perspectives. What is the nature of the self? What are the criteria for selfhood? When and from where does the self emerge? What are the trajectories or paths of the self? What are obstacles along the way of the journey or of self-discovery (Selbstfindung, 自己発見)?

Three papers were discussed at this session:

“Two Islamic Global Philosophies of Religion: Suhrawardī and Shushtarī,” Oludamini Ogunnaike (University of Virginia)

“Nyāya theory of knowledge generating processes – the case of testimony. A comparative study of Nyāya and A. Goldman,” Agnieszka Rostalska (Ghent University)

“The Understanding of Self as a Psychosomatic Complex and Relational Nexus,” Kiseong shin (Drew University)