CAN YOU GO to school to become an interfaith leader? An increasing number of faculty, staff, and students on campuses believe the answer is “yes.”
Interfaith leadership courses are starting to crop up at colleges across the country. At New York University and Nazareth College, you can even get a minor in the area. The organization I lead, Interfaith Youth Core, recently organized a conference for university faculty interested in this area. We expected 30 people to show up, and got nearly 120. This all suggests that this may be a field whose time has come.
Academically speaking, “interfaith leadership” is part of the larger field of “interfaith studies.” Just as you might study education at a university to become a teacher, in the future you will be able to take coursework in interfaith studies in preparation for a career in interfaith leadership.
Interfaith studies looks at the myriad ways that people who orient around religion differently interact with one another and considers the implications of that interaction for everything from personal lives to global politics. It’s a field that asks questions such as: In what religious groups is the intermarriage rate growing fastest, and what are the distinctive dynamics of such relationships? What types of political arrangements seem to foster positive interaction between faith communities, and what types are associated with interreligious tension? How effective are current religious education programs in forming young people in faith traditions?
While interfaith studies is shaping up to be a scholarly field (a study group was recently formalized at the American Academy of Religion) with traditional academic modes of inquiry, interfaith leadership is an area of practice with a normative agenda. That’s scholar-speak that basically boils down to this: Interfaith studies remains a bit detached, while interfaith leadership has goals for the world. This means that an interfaith leader is not just asking scholarly questions of a religiously diverse world, s/he is learning how to design and run programs that can actually help people with different religious identities work together better.
What kind of coursework will interfaith studies/leadership programs likely have? Clearly, religious studies and theology would be a part of this. You ought to know something about Islam and Buddhism if you want to work with Muslims and Buddhists. But—like education, public health, and environmental studies—interfaith studies is very much going to be an interdisciplinary field. The research methodologies of the social sciences, the case-studies approach from business schools, and the recent findings from cognitive science regarding how our brains are wired for certain types of belonging—all have a significant contributions to make.
Will an interfaith studies minor help you get a job? It will certainly help you at places such as Interfaith Youth Core! As our society grows more religiously diverse, the ability to work positively and proactively with people who orient around religion differently will be an increasingly sought-after set of skills, especially as religious conflict and tension continue to be defining themes in global affairs. I see hospitals, social service agencies, YM/YWCAs, schools, international development agencies, companies, and cities looking to hire these interfaith leaders.

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