Askwith Forum - Religious Freedom: Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Role of Education

Moderator: James E. Ryan, Dean and Charles William Eliot Professor, HGSE

Panelists:
• Diane L. Moore, Senior Lecturer on Religious Studies and Education and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
• Farah Pandith, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; former Special Representative to Muslim Communities, U.S. Department of State
• Fernando Reimers, Ed.M.’84, Ed.D.’88, Ford Foundation Professor of Practice in International Education and Faculty Director, International Education Policy Program, HGSE

Recent debates about immigration, discrimination, and national identity have often overlapped with those about religion, belonging, and citizenship. In our global landscape, we find ourselves living alongside neighbors whose beliefs and practices are quite different from our own. With this diversity, there is a growing need worldwide to discuss religious freedom — and its limits — in democratic societies. These are not easy conversations, and the tone of recent debates about religious freedom suggests that we need to get better at talking about these issues, or else risk further polarization.

Using as a starting point George Washington's 1790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island — a landmark in the history of religious freedom in America — this interdisciplinary panel will explore inclusion and exclusion through the lens of religious differences. Join us as we consider the role that education can play in promoting informed and civil conversation about religious freedom and the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.

This forum is being held in collaboration with Facing History and Ourselves and the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom.

[PapeschP]

While I admire the sophistication and erudition of the moderator and the panelists, I suggest that the basic formulation of the topic leads to errors. Let me postulate the following: religion is perceived by each person in their very personal manner, in their minds. The same is true of the person's sense of the culture or the society in which the person is embedded. This trio of personal allegiances constitutes the belief system or mindset of each individual, and constitutes more than just a religious or social or cultural component. Therefore discussing religion or the teaching of religion in isolation is a disservice to each person's unique way of feeling what they should do and how they should act from moment to moment, just as is the teaching of a person's society or culture in isolation of their links to each other and to religion.

A theologian and zen master in Vienna, Austria, asked the following question: "Braucht der Mensch Religion?", and answered "Der Mensch ist Religion" ("does man need religion?" and "man is religion"). A person is what they believe, and this belief system has religious and social and cultural aspects, the combination of which is unique for each person. Each person also adheres to and/or disregards the norms set up by their embedding religious or social or cultural community, which will make teaching religion or social or cultural identity so much more complicated than what the panelists were addressing, but also so very much more rewarding for any learner.