At the organization where I work, the Veritas Forum, I lead efforts facilitating the participation of Christian faculty and graduate students in discipline-based professional mentorship in pursuing Christian academic vocation. In designing programs that help scholars understand their professional sense of calling in religious terms—identifying the religious “why” behind their vocation in religiously diverse university communities—I’ve found the idea of cross-cultural religious literacy (CCRL) extremely helpful.
I’ve found it helpful because it clarifies how a holistic and proactive religious literacy can be a part of functioning, healthy communities for people of any religious faith or non-faith. I’ve also found it helpful for how it outlines mindsets and practices for partnering across religious/worldview differences in thriving communities. Finally, by situating religious literacy within communities and addressing the respective understanding and action involved in partnering across deep difference, the concept of CCRL implicitly suggests a process for people and communities to not just survive but thrive in their diversity.
CCRL suggests how people might become more capable of building common vision, purposes, and values, alongside people of very different, even unbridgeable, persuasions. CCRL teaches how: 1) people might endure and bear witness to their distinctive religious (or non-religious) values; even as, 2) communities become more capable of sustaining the competition of values, religious or non-religious, in a public square through moments of conflict and cooperation.
Terms of Reference
Let me step through two terms of reference that will be helpful in describing my experience with CCRL:
First, what is pluralism, and how does covenantal pluralism differ from tolerance alone or indifferent relativism? Diana Eck of Harvard’s Pluralism Project defines pluralism as ‘“Not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity…not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference….not relativism, but the encounter of commitments…. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to another.” W. Christopher Stewart, Chris Seiple, and Dennis R. Hoover concur with Eck’s general vision of pluralism but have further developed and specified it in their articulation of the philosophy of “covenantal pluralism.” If diversity is the “presence of difference,” pluralism is “energetic engagement with difference,” and covenantal pluralism is engagement with religious/worldview difference in a positive spirit (loving and respectful) and under positive social/legal conditions (free and fair).
Second, what is CCRL? Chris Seiple and Dennis Hoover describe cross-cultural religious literacy as a leadership tool that yields practical insight into: a) how one’s own religion/worldview motivates engagement of others across religious/worldview difference (“personal competency”), b) how others understand their own religion/worldview and what it says about engagement of others (“comparative competency”), and, c) how to collaborate across religious/worldview difference (“collaborative competency”), accompanied by a practical capacity to evaluate, negotiate, and communicate across difference in order to facilitate mutually respectful engagement. As Seiple and Hoover succinctly conclude, “Cross-cultural religious literacy is a set of competencies and skills oriented to a normative vision for robust pluralism”:
- The competencies: personal, comparative, and collaborative competency
- The skills: evaluation, negotiation, and communication
How Does CCRL Relate to What I Do?
Veritas Forum is a Christian organization that has long held campus-based dialogues. Veritas Forums address the biggest questions of life across religious/worldview difference, e.g., “What is the good life?” and “What is the purpose of education?” For over 30 years, Veritas has sought to build a trusted space for inquiry, exploration, and respectful dialogue about the questions that matter most, a place where people engage in dialogue across difference for the flourishing of all. Three program areas drive Veritas’ mission: university partnerships, community formation, and content engagement.
In recent years, as part of its “community formation” efforts, Veritas has begun to more intentionally equip Christian students and faculty to foster campus environments marked by dialogue, wisdom, and a search for truth. As part of these efforts, in 2022 Veritas began to hold annual events and mentorship cohorts for the next generation of Christian faculty. My role at Veritas focuses primarily on these programs of professional and personal development that raise up Christian faculty to be catalysts and exemplars of a cross-cultural religious literacy that advances covenantal pluralism in the modern university.
In one sense cultivating CCRL in students and faculty is something that Veritas has long sought to do through convening dialogue across difference in the university. In another sense, by being presented with the above concept that advances a definition for CCRL, I have been forced to newly learn about how CCRL (and its absence) practically shapes the conversion of religious diversity into a robust religious pluralism in the university. I’ve been forced to think about how a genuinely robust and holistic form of religious literacy is actually acquired and exercised.
Here is what I’ve learned about CCRL through my work as a practitioner.
Personal Competency: Imagination, Friendship, and Practice
In our faculty mentorship program, Christian scholars develop a sense of Christian academic vocation. They reflect on how they feel called to religiously diverse universities. They also reflect on the experience and example of more senior faculty who have experience actively engaging across religion/worldview difference and serving and contributing within their university environment as motivated by their Christian faith. Mentored faculty have a chance to observe, assess, and analyze how peers and mentors engage across difference, and contribute and serve to the academy as Christian scholars.
One of our learnings about CCRL through this work is that the values formation that equipping in CCRL entails occurs not only through content and information, but through imagination, friendship, and practice. Any kind of professional labor can be isolating, but the nature of academic work can be particularly solitary. Early-career scholars participating in mentorship activities often come having a strong sense of direction, but little understanding of how faith commitments that shape the whole of their life relate to their core labors. And they often have few opportunities (and little community) by which to foster such an understanding. By giving them a place to reflect on their core labors in terms of faith, and convening peers and mentors similarly interested in pursuing academic vocation, we give them a vocabulary, process, and community for being a religiously faithful member of a religiously pluralistic professional community. We both cast vision for what a religiously pluralistic university can be at its best, and give scholars the tools by which to participate in such a university.
We’ve observed that, paradoxically, scholars who are able to deeply understand and embrace their own religious values are more capable of engaging religious/worldview difference. This isn’t a given, but through reflection on: a) practical expression of common virtues, b) how distinctives of Christian faith practically support a vision of the flourishing of pluralistic universities, c) practical stories of how Christians have successfully engaged across deep divides to partner with non-Christians for contribution to the common good of the university, we have seen scholars leave mentorship more ready to pursue long careers of contribution and service to their fields and institutions.
Thinking about CCRL, and wrestling with its requisite competencies and skills, has caused me to think more intentionally about how we structure values formation within our faculty mentorship program.
Comparative Competency: Shared Points of Reference and the Power of Modeling
As mentioned above, Veritas’ university partnership work convenes engaged dialogue across religious/worldview difference. Though these efforts are supported by separate program teams from my own, one of my learnings about CCRL from observing these efforts is how a shared question, shared problem, or shared text can focus the acquisition of this comparative competency of CCRL. Understanding how one’s own life journey is shaped by religion/worldview distinctives is complex, and the points of overlap and departure from another’s life journey can be numerous and profound. Engaging difference, and even imagining what engagement might be like, can provoke a range of emotions—delight, terror, and even fury. Starting from a shared point of reference can be a good first step toward building a comparative competency of CCRL.
Another learning about CCRL from observing our campus dialogues is the power of modeling for values formation. Veritas has had the privilege over the past 30 years of journeying alongside Christian and non-Christian faculty capable of upholding their deepest values in the public square. They are people with a deep “Why?” for the pluralistic university that comes from a deep literacy in their religion/worldview, embodied in a radical intellectual hospitality that represents the very best of the university. Over time our organizational ethos has come to be defined by these scholars practiced in speaking truth with charity, listening with humility, and asking questions that invite reasons for hope, scholars who through formation over time have built competencies and skills for engagement across religious/worldview difference. We strive to find mentors for our faculty mentorship work who have intentionally learned how to translate their CCRL competencies and skills to serve and contribute to pluralistic university communities as Christians.
As a program practitioner at an organization that convenes dialogue across engaged difference, the vision of CCRL (especially its comparative competency) has caused me to think more intentionally about how we provide practical and plausible pathways for faculty to grow in their openness and readiness for constructive encounter across religious/worldview difference.
Collaborative Competency: The Power of Asking the Unasked & Unanswered Question
Far from being the end, after Veritas Forums are held, they often result in follow-on conversations as speakers, co-sponsors, and attendees continue to grapple with the big questions of life. Good dialogue both gives reasons and answers to common questions humans face, and surfaces new questions and frontiers for collaborative inquiry and exploration.
The relevance of our mentorship work for improved collaborative inquiry was voiced by one of our mentors. A few years ago, I was trying to explain our faculty mentor work to a prospective mentor, and when the explanation clicked she said, “You are providing a place for scholars to ask the unasked and unanswered questions of their fields, not in spite of their faith but because of their faith.” Yes! At its best, religious pluralism can become a means toward uncovering new possibilities for our common life. What could the university become if people pursued its mission and engaged across religious/worldview differences? How might better questions be asked because university citizens possess self-understanding and convictions around “why they do what they do,” convictions that they can articulate and translate to citizens who share their religion/worldview and those who don’t? What collaborative opportunities might be discovered that were previously passed over?
Engaging with the CCRL concept has caused me to think more intentionally about how public squares are built. Yes, as a Christian, the question of how Christians might uphold and participate in the public square has often been paramount. But wrestling with CCRL has also forced me to think more intentionally about potential partners in the public square who hold different religious (and non-religious) beliefs, what engagement might look like, and how the distinct and respective contributions of Christians and non-Christians might enrich the common learning experience of a shared community.
Conclusion
Based on my experience leading programs within an organization that convenes dialogue across religious/worldview difference, I’ve gained learnings that might be useful to practitioners also seeking to engage diverse environments and explore what CCRL is and its implications for bridging differences. The process has caused me to think more intentionally about how values formation is structured, how individuals model and mature in the practice of CCRL, as well as how public squares are built and people ready themselves to partner with others of different religions/worldviews to uphold and participate in the competition of values in the public square. The concept has helped me think more intentionally about the literacies required for sustainable and effective pluralism, and the ways that greater religious literacy in particular contributes to deepening and enlarging such a pluralism.
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About the Author
Jared Daughtery is the Vice President of the Veritas Scholars Program at The Veritas Forum. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science with a concentration on Security, Peace, and Conflict from Duke University and received his Bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies with a minor in Music from Dartmouth College. He has over 10 years of experience working in the government- and non-profit sector, with a sustained interest in the intersection of religion, security, and citizenship. Prior to coming to Veritas, he worked as a strategy consultant at Ernst & Young. Jared lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.