Kids and Religious Literacy - Vicki Garlock

This episode of ReligionWise features Vicki Garlock, Ph.D., the founder of World Religions for Kids. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, Dr. Garlock's longtime interest in religion and religious diversity has inspired her to produce children's books and train educators on the importance of religious literacy for even the youngest learners. Today's conversation considers the legal and pedagogical issues entailed with religious literacy for students and some of the practical concerns of such a curriculum.

Show Notes:

• World Religions for Kids (https://worldreligions4kids.com/)

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Episode Transcript

Chip Gruen (00:05):
Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host Chip
Gruen. Today's episode goes backto a theme that we hit on
relatively frequently. And thatis education as an educator
myself working at a institutionof higher education. When we
think about religion and publiclife and how we might make for a
better conversation aboutreligion and public life, it

(00:29):
just seems to me maybe it's anoccupational hazard, that
education is key to that goalkey to that endeavor. So today's
guest is Dr. Vicki Garlock.
She's trained as a cognitivepsychologist. But after leaving
her psychology position at auniversity, she started working

(00:52):
on the question of religiousliteracy, in particular
religious literacy for youngchildren elementary age. And
this work is informed by heracademic discipline, by the way
that we think the way that wedevelop as thinkers, from young
children into adults, what isage appropriate, etc, her career

(01:12):
takes a number of turns that arereally interesting, and I'll
leave it to her to talk about,but moving from an interfaith
model that is religious in itsorigins to something that is
more secular and more suited forconsumption within the public
sphere of public education. Soyou can see, if you follow the

(01:34):
work of the Institute, and youfollow the podcast, you can see
why that's really interesting tome. The other thing about this
conversation that I find reallyuseful is that there are a
number of other conversationsthat spring off of it, that we
could dedicate whole episodesto, who owns whose stories?
Where does authority for talkingabout religion lie? Does that

(01:55):
authority sit with individualswithin those communities alone?
Or can you develop expertise onthe outside? Again, obviously,
my role in higher education as aprofessor of religious studies,
you can see, you know why I feellike I have a horse in this
game. But then also questionsabout the role of interfaith
discourse, as I like to talkabout it, that there is we'll

(02:19):
talk about an interfaithmovement. But again, is that the
only way or the best way toexpose children to the
complexity of the human story,the complexity of human
worldviews of belief andpractice, understanding their
their neighbors, one of thethings I'm actually writing

(02:40):
about right now I'm thinking alot about are the values that
are inherent in a literacyproject versus the values that
that might be in something thatis more particularly geared
towards interfaith cooperation.
Without further ado, here's myconversation with Vicki Garlock.
I hope that you enjoy it as muchas I did. Vicki Garlock, thanks

(03:05):
for coming on ReligionWise.

Vicki Garlock (03:07):
Thanks for having me.

Chip Gruen (03:09):
So before we start thinking about your work in the
development of educationalmaterials, that teach kids about
religious literacy, I'd like totalk to you about how you got to
this place, how has yourprofessional training, or your
experience led you into thiswork that you're doing now?

Vicki Garlock (03:28):
Well, I sort of think about this as a
combination of various thingsI've done over the course of my
career. So originally, I went tograduate school, I have dual
specialties in neuroscience, Istudied rat brains for four
years. And then I switched intocognitive development, my
dissertation was on four toeight year olds. So I was a
professor in the psychologydepartment at a small liberal

(03:50):
arts school, outside ofAsheville, North Carolina, where
I live. And I taught a range ofcourses, neuroscience courses
and developmental courses. Andafter I had my second child, I
decided that working 55 or 60hours a week was not
particularly sustainable. And soI left that position and took a
job at a progressive typeChristian church. And one of my

(04:13):
major responsibilities there wasto develop a multifaith
curriculum for kids aged threethrough eighth grade. And so I
did that for over a decade. Andin fact I lost that job during
the pandemic. It was a great jobfor me. And so during the
pandemic, I decided to try tofigure out how to write some
kids books and take my cognitivedevelopment experience and

(04:38):
training and my multifaithexperience and training and put
them together. Because I think Ihave some techniques for
teaching kids about the world'sreligions that work. So here I
am. Now I'm a book author andtrying to figure out how to
spread the word about how we canteach kids about the world's
religions.

Chip Gruen (04:59):
Yes, so I want to talk a little bit more actually
about that cognitive psychologybackground. You know, and you
talk about it on the one hand asa career break, right, going
from a professor in that field,you know, to then working within
that faith community. And thenand then moving on, and we'll
talk about the moving on in aminute to more towards religious

(05:20):
literacy. But I want to thinkabout the way I mean, how would
you talk about that cognitivescience background as being
instrumental in your work now, Imean, you know, it's not what
you studied, your epistemologiesare very different from mine,
for example, as a religiousstudies, somebody trained in
religious studies, butobviously, right thinking about
childhood development and ageappropriateness, and all of

(05:42):
that, like this all comestogether. Can you talk a little
bit about that?

Vicki Garlock (05:45):
Sure. And in some ways, I think you don't always
know what's going to be helpfulwhen you're in the moment. I
mean, at the time, I was just agraduate student, my
dissertation was on earlylinguistic predictors of later
reading achievement. So we werebasically you know, giving kids
age four to eight, these variouslistening tasks, memory tasks,

(06:06):
vocabulary tasks, and thenlooking statistically, to see
how it would predict laterreading achievement, you know,
so that's okay, great, anddissertation and published an
article and got a job. But thenthe way my life played out, I
really looked at the job at thechurch as an applied cognitive

(06:26):
psychology job, right, I was ina position to be able to, to
really take my knowledge abouthow four to eight year olds, and
also, you know, four to 12 yearolds or whatever, take my
cognitive development knowledgeand say, you know, how can I use
this to teach kids about theworld's religions? What can a
four year old understand whatcan an eight year old understand

(06:49):
what can a 12 year oldunderstand? I also had my own
children at the time, so some ofit was just about, Gosh, why are
there no resources out there forme to help my kids learn about
the world's religions. So I alsohad, you know, sort of them as
cognitive development subjects,so to speak, and I had my
academic training. And it turnedout that I felt like I really

(07:12):
was capable of trying to putthese things together. One of
the things that's beenunexpectedly interesting, as an
author of a book is, there's nowquite a bit of research out
there to show that one of theways that elementary school kids
and even younger learnvocabulary words is by reading
books, right? Books are a hugesource of vocabulary words. And

(07:34):
so I go all the way back to mydissertation. And it turns out
that one of the ways I think oneof the aspects of teaching kids
about the world's religions thatis important is just teaching
them the vocabulary words,right, the vocabulary words that
are used. And so these picturebooks are an amazing way to do
it. And that's something thatsort of came out of my

(07:56):
dissertation that I never wouldhave expected all those years
ago.

Chip Gruen (08:01):
That's really funny.
I mean one of the central partsof my pedagogy, you know,
teaching in higher ed and, and Inever thought about it until I
had outside observer come in andsay, it's really interesting and
important, how much vocabularyserves the purpose of of
learning, you know, thesediverse worldviews within your
within your classes. And, youknow, and after it was pointed

(08:22):
out to me, I was like, oh, yeah,I guess I am doing that. So it's
nice to have confirmation,right, that that's, that that's
a helpful pedagogical, you know,going all the way back to
kindergarten or earlier. So Iwant to come back to other
aspects of, of your biography,you know, particularly visa vie
religious tradition in a minute.
But before we do before we gettoo far in, I really love for

(08:44):
you just to talk a little bitabout the organization, you
founded this World Religions forKids. What does it do? What are
the products? You know, how doyou interact with, you know,
we'll talk about the variouspublics right, whether those be
religious or public schools, orwhat have you, but can you just
talk about the work of WorldReligions for Kids?

Vicki Garlock (09:02):
Sure. So I really consider the overall mission of
it is to help people who areinterested and it turns out lots
of different types of people areinterested to help people who
are interested, learn aboutworld religions. I do that
actually by gearing my productsto kids, but it turns out that

(09:24):
adults like to read my books,too. I have all these people who
say it well, I bought your book,and I was like, okay, you know,
that's for like four to 12 yearolds, and they're like, Oh, I
know, but I learned so much fromit. So I sometimes jokingly tell
people that you couldn't pay meenough to work with grownups. I
really love working with kids. Ifind them to be so easy to work

(09:45):
with and really for. So anyways,so there are several different
aspects to what I do. One is Iwrite you know, published kids
books so people can go on Amazonand order them and use them.
Parents can you use them,teachers can use them in the
classroom. It turns outgrandparents are very interested

(10:06):
in my work, because they'relooking at their adult children
who are often unaffiliated orthe the so called "nones". And
they're very concerned thattheir grandchildren don't know
anything about the world'sreligions. And so grandparents
are sort of a sub market for me.
So that's one thing I do.
Another thing I do is I do makepresentations around the

(10:27):
country. I'm currently kind ofon the social studies teacher
circuit. So I go to differentstate level social studies
conferences, and talk toteachers about how to teach
about the world's religions inschools. So I have a whole page
about presentations that I'vedone. I also sometimes teachers
want to, or parents orgrandparents want to talk about

(10:52):
world religions, not with one ofmy books, they just want to get
a regular book. And those bookstend to be siloed. Right, so
Jewish traditions, Jewish holydays, Muslim holy days, Islamic
holy days, Hindu holy days. Andso I also have on my website, a
list of recommended books. Andby recommended, I mean, books

(11:12):
that are not trying to convertyou to that religion. And so
that just sort of telling youabout the holy day without
trying to bring you into thatparticular flock so to speak. So
that's on my website. And that'sprobably it. I'm also on Tik
Tok. So I've started making TikTok videos, those actually are
for adults. My handle on Tik Tokis @learnreligions. But the

(11:35):
hashtag that I use is#religionminute. And the reason
is because I think one minute isabout all that people can take
on a on a, you know, a coupletimes a week basis. And I just
tried to teach people a littletidbit something interesting
about the world's religions. Sothe Tik Tok videos that are on
my website are just sort of tointroduce my website, but I am

(11:57):
actually on Tik Tok and I try topost a couple videos a week.

Chip Gruen (12:01):
So I'm really interested in in in a number of
aspects of your work. I mean,one that occurs to me is
something that I've been tryingto do with local school
districts here, you know, in ourneighborhood, Muhlenberg's
neighborhood in the LehighValley, and that's curate
resources. So we're launching aprogram, actually, this fall,

(12:21):
that is a curated list ofresources that, as you indicate,
are not about the diversity ofworld religions, but about one
at a time. So you have to createa collection of a dozen or so to
try to capture some of that. Andit's a real challenge, because
they might be a lot of themmight be geared towards children
within the religious communityitself, for example, and the

(12:42):
quality of them can be spotty,right? For particularly for an
outside audience. So I'm, I'mreally interested in that work
as well. But for the work thatyou do, you describe the world
religions for kids materials asOkay, use these three words, and
I want to lay them all out therenow and then we're gonna go
through them one at a time.
Non-devotional, age appropriateand constitutional. So let's

(13:07):
start with non-devotional. Andthis sort of gets back to your
biography a little bit, right,because you describe yourself
got some of your bio informationfrom LinkedIn, you describe
yourself as year having years asa multifaith children's
ministers, you talked about, infact, when you first started
this, it was called Faith SeekerKids. And now you've moved to
be, you know, you've renamedrebranded as World Religions for

(13:31):
Kids, you seek to createnon-devotional resources. Can
you tell us about thatdevelopment and how you got to
this place?

Vicki Garlock (13:39):
Yeah, so one of the things I didn't even when I
was Faith Seeker Kids, myoriginal idea, actually, was
that I would market to otherprogressive Christian churches.
And and really, when I startedmarketing, at that time, it was
my interfaith peace curriculumwas what I was trying to market.
And it was, it was difficult tomarket, in part because it came

(14:02):
out in 2018, and 2019. And thenwhen everything shut down for
the pandemic, churches weren'topen, and they didn't have
Sunday school. So it was thatthat that was one piece of the
difficulty. But the other pieceof the difficulty I realized was
that even in progressivechurches, what many ministers
were telling me was, listen, wegot these kids for one hour a

(14:24):
week, and not even every week,because most people don't go to
church every Sunday anymore. Soyou know, maybe a couple times a
month, we have them for 45minutes. And you know, we need
to teach them about the Bible.
We need to teach them aboutChristianity. And so that was so
interesting for me. And then Ialso met my colleague, Tim Hall
of Religion Matters. And he saidto me, Look, you're not going to

(14:45):
be able to do anything in publicschools with a company that's
called Faith Seeker Kids.
Anything with faith in it isgoing to scare people away. And
I also felt like I was doing toomuch. So I was trying to teach
people about the worldreligions, and also offer that

(15:06):
as a way to help children findtheir own faith path. And it was
just too many things to askpeople to do. You know, I had
been steeped in it for so long,and I was working at a very
successful very progressive typechurch. And I just realized it
was just too much to do in sortof one lifetime. And so I
rebranded to World Religions forKids, and really started to

(15:29):
focus on the non-devotionalaspect of it, because all along,
I was of the opinion that peopleneed to find their own way, they
need to find their own way ofarticulating the divine, they
need to find their rituals thatwork for them. And so that is
sort of non-devotional, but Ibecame much more explicit about
it and took the faith part outof the name of my company,

(15:52):
essentially, to broaden mymarket. And I'm not sure if
people even really understandwhat non-devotional means. But
as you pointed out, these siloedbooks are often written for, you
know, Sikh people, right forSikh kids, and they're trying to
teach them how to be a goodSikh. And the same thing in
Judaism, the same thing inIslam, all of it. And so there

(16:15):
are literally only a handful ofkids books that look at various
religious traditions in a singlevolume, with some sort of step
back away from that devotionalperspective, and, and look at it
kind of a little bit morebroadly, a little bit with a
single eye on these varioustraditions. And it's just not

(16:36):
easy to find those resources.

Chip Gruen (16:38):
It's interesting, because what I always say about
the religious studiesdiscipline, right, in higher
education and academia, is thatthe heart of it is comparative.
Right? If you go back, you look,the heart of it is thinking
about these big categories, likeritual and story and myth,
narrative, whatever. And it istotally not the impulse, right

(16:59):
to talk to kids in that in thatvein, right, that it does sort
of start off not only from asingular religion, but religious
identity, right of the group,which, which I guess, in a lot
of ways, in a lot of, for a lotof reasons makes sense. Right?
If like your minister, youtalked about right, we got to
teach them about Christianityfirst, right? It makes sense.

(17:22):
Okay, so let's move on to theage appropriate, right? Because
this is another one that I'vebeen thinking about. Because on
the one hand, it seems likethere is a developmental stage
where, like, everybody's notlike you. At another point, you
know, there's a developmentalstage where maybe basic
religious literacy is important,right? And then you know, that
we can imagine that this issomething that would grow. So

(17:45):
given the relatively broad agerange you deal with, can you
talk a little bit about what'sage appropriate for when and how
you deal with that issue?

Vicki Garlock (17:54):
Yeah, sure. So I think that I take a lot of my
inspiration, really, from ourcultural movements on other
difficult topics, right. So ofcourse, the easy thing to say
is, well, we shouldn't talkabout religion, because religion
is complicated. Religion isfraught with difficulty. You

(18:16):
know, we can blame religion formany wars over the millennia,
etc, etc. But what what welearned, I think, from certain
things, in particular, rightnow, I think conversations
around racism is we have to lookat the price we pay as a culture
and as a species in not talkingabout those things. And I think
what we've learned, I alsosometimes mention the topic of

(18:39):
death, right? So death iscomplicated. Most people are not
sure what actually happens afteryou die. And yet kids are really
curious about that. And they askquestions about it. And I think
the same thing is true forreligion. So number one, we have
to think about where it's gottenus to not talk about religion
with kids. And I think there's alot of evidence to suggest that

(19:04):
we're not in a good place. Andso my one of my ideas is we need
to start with kids. But also,what we know from cognitive
development is that, in general,kids prefer things that are
concrete, right? So a lot ofpeople say to me, Well, you
can't talk about religion withkids because religions are
abstract and kids can't doabstract thinking. This is kind

(19:26):
of an old Piaget-ian typeapproach to cognitive
development, which says thatkids really don't do abstract
thinking until the age of 10 or12. And in general, there are
certain aspects of cognitivethinking that that is true for.
However, kids know what the wordbeauty means, right? Kids have a
concept of the word fairness,right? Those are abstract

(19:46):
concepts that kids so it's notthat they can't do anything
abstract. So I take sort of atwo pronged approach. One is to
focus on the more concreteaspects of religion, right
things like the holy days,things like what people wear,
what people eat. Those arethings that kids can, you know,
concrete that kids can sort oftouch and see and smell right or

(20:10):
taste, right. And so as it turnsout, that is what adults like to
learn about religions too. So Ihave had people say to me, Well,
you're just sort of doingholidays, and religions are much
more than holidays, I get that.
And that's fine. And they cantalk about belief systems or
whatever they want. But for me,I find focusing on those
concrete aspects is reallyinteresting. It's interesting,

(20:32):
and it's fun. And it's valuablefor grownups too. By the same
token, I don't eschew allabstract concepts, right. So the
truth of the matter is, religionis largely about articulating
something that we can't seearticulating the divine and the
divine presence and what thatmeans and how we grab on to

(20:54):
that. So I think if we look atthings like beauty and fairness,
I think there are some aspectsof that the kids, even four year
olds and five year olds, who arethinking about God asking
questions about God, thinkingabout death, asking questions
about death. And so my jobreally one of my job's is to
say, you know, how far can Isort of push that? How much

(21:16):
abstract stuff can I bring in.
And I think that to introducesome of that those issues about
God and the divine, when kidsare four or five is quite
doable. When kids get intomiddle school, then you can
really start to compare andcontrast, right? And you can

(21:36):
start to think about thepositive aspects of religion and
the more negative aspects ofreligion, and certainly
curriculum and resourcesavailable for teachers in middle
school, middle school and highschool do that. But what's
happening now is that a middleschool and high school, we're
spending a lot of time justtrying to get the vocabulary,
right, just trying to get themto kids to make sure they know

(21:58):
what the sacred space is called,what the sacred texts are
called, when the religions werefounded, that there's no time
then in the school to actuallyreally delve into some of the
more interesting aspects ofreligion and how it plays out
politically, culturally,ethnically, in terms of
identity. So my idea is really,I pretty much run in a very
narrow lane of just saying, hey,let's give the kids a little bit

(22:21):
of vocabulary, a little bit ofunderstanding, they may be
driving by a synagogue or amosque on their way to school,
just look out the window, andyou can see that religion is
happening in our communities.
How can we teach kids aboutthat?

Chip Gruen (22:36):
Yeah. And so you've mentioned in thinking about age
appropriateness, a lot of thatthird word that we're going to
talk about, which isconstitutional, right. So if
you're teaching within, within afaith community, for example,
right, within a privateorganization, or what I like to
call quasi public organization,it's not a big deal, right. But
once you sort of step over intothings that are associated with

(22:57):
government and politics andschool boards, and you know,
public schools and publicpolicy, right, then we're
thinking about separation ofchurch and state, we're thinking
about the Constitution. And youand I are really on the same
page here about howmisunderstood that is, can you
talk about that, and how thework you do does not run afoul
of sort of our basic civicculture?

Vicki Garlock (23:21):
I actually give presentations around the country
about this, in particular,because I talk to social studies
teachers in various states. Soone of the things that people
fail to understand is whereseparation of church and state
actually came from, and whatthat actually means and how it
got started with ThomasJefferson. And so one of the

(23:41):
things that happened is peopletook the concept of separation
of church and state and kind ofbuilt a wall there. And so what
I hear a lot of people say tome, both teachers and non
teachers say, Well, you can'ttalk about religion in schools.
And I'm like, Well, okay, that'snot actually true. You can't
promote a religion. You can'treally you can't denigrate a

(24:02):
religion, but you can talk aboutreligion, right. So that's the
phrase we always use, how do youtalk about religion in schools?
The other thing that's happenedis that we've had a number of
Supreme Court cases, inparticular, since World War II,
and these Supreme Court casesand the rulings that come down
from them are very complicated.
Some of them are corrections toprevious rulings. Some of the

(24:26):
rulings are really about veryintricate and specific aspects
of the law. And so they theyloom large because news outlets
report on these Supreme Courtcases, right, so there's a
football coach in Texas who'ssaying a prayer after the
football game. Is that legal orillegal? And there are so many

(24:47):
intricacies in those cases thatwe don't hear about. So I often
tell teachers, and they alwaysbristle at it, do not pay
attention to Supreme Court casesand they really bristled at
that. But my alternative that Ioffer them is there are plenty
of resources and guidelines outthere about how to teach about
religion in public schools andto do it non-devotionally. And

(25:10):
constitutionally. And thoseresources come from very
reputable sources. And then alot of times, teachers aren't
even aware that these resourcesare available to them. And
they're freely available, right?
The Religion Matters has sitehas all the links. And so there
are resources from the FirstAmendment Center. So these are

(25:32):
people like lawyers who havestudied this and figured out how
you can teach about religions inpublic school, they write their
guidelines out for teachers, theAmerican Academy of Religion, in
conjunction with HarvardDivinity School, right, they
have guidelines, and also theNational Council for Social
Studies has guidelines, right?
So a lot of teachers use what'scalled the C3 framework, they

(25:53):
wrote very specifically,religion related guidelines for
the C3 framework. So and what'sfascinating about it is there's
a fair amount of agreement abouthow to do this in public
schools. So part of anotherpiece of my job is just to let
teachers know that this isavailable for them, and that

(26:15):
they don't have to worry aboutthe intricacies of Supreme Court
decisions. And they, in fact,don't even have to worry about
what Thomas Jefferson said inhis letter to the Baptists in
the late 1700s, they can justlook at these modern day
documents that have bulletpoints dot points about how we
teach about religion in schools.

(26:37):
And so that's the theconstitutionality piece of it.
The other thing I remind peopleof is that this idea of having
separation of church and state,and a publicly funded public
school system, these arerelatively speaking new ideas in
the course of human history. Sowe haven't got it all figured

(26:57):
out. This is this has been sincethe nation was founded, it's
been difficult to figure out howto make all this work, right. Do
we fund parochial schools do wefund and it's still happening,
there's a court case in Oklahomaright now. So so some of it is
about kind of recognizing with acertain amount of perspective,

(27:19):
that it's okay, that this is anissue. But also seeing that we
do have resources and guidelinesand some ways to see our way
through it for people on theground trying to make this work.

Chip Gruen (27:30):
Yeah, it's one of the things when I do
presentations, professionaldevelopment for local teachers,
I go and, you know, call upstate standards. And I think
they're a lot of teachers, youknow, they're very busy with
lots of things they might notpour through the state standards
as closely as, as they could.
And it's like, look, you know,here it is, in the Pennsylvania
state standards, I think thesethings are sometimes maybe

(27:51):
wiser, right, and maybe, youknow, at the policy level than
we sometimes give them creditfor, because it's the bullet
point or the fight at schoolboard meeting or the
misunderstanding of the SupremeCourt case that gets gets the
attention.

Vicki Garlock (28:05):
Well, the state standards, I'm glad you brought
that up, because it addressesboth the constitutionality and
the age appropriateness. So I'veI as well, have looked at lots
of different state standards,those are also freely available.
One of the things that Tim Halland I hear regularly is, so we
talk about why do you not wantto teach about religion in
schools, when you just can lookout into your classroom, of

(28:28):
course, you can't tell whatreligion a person is by looking
at them. But sometimes you kindof can. And teachers in school
districts know their community,they live in their community,
they're part of their community.
They know when they look outinto their classroom and talk to
these parents, at the parentsnights, that everyone is not
Christian, right. And yet, theydon't know what to do about it.
And they're nervous and afraid.

(28:52):
And one of the things Tim and Iroutinely say is, go back to the
standards, and it's not usuallypushback from administrators.
It's pushback from parents andpushback from sometimes other
colleagues, other teachers inyour school. And so the state
standards are amazing. Again,like you say, very few teachers,
especially at the K five levelwant to sit around and sift

(29:15):
through the state standards. Butwhat's fascinating about it, is
I can look at the kindergartenstandards for every state I've
looked at so far. And there'ssomething in there. Maybe it
doesn't mention religion, perse. But there's something in
there about recognizing thatyou're part of a community,
recognizing that you and othermembers of the community are

(29:35):
similar in some ways anddifferent in some ways that is
in kindergarten. So of course,you know, that builds throughout
the years. And so it does go tothe idea that recognizing that
people in the community might bedifferent from you, in some
ways, similar in some waysdifferent. That is something
that shows up at the very, verybeginning that educators have

(29:59):
recognized as important. Andreligion is clearly part of
identity. I'm just reading astudy about how, you know, we
all know people don't go tochurch all the time anymore. And
we hear about churches closingdown. In fact, in my, in my
hometown, I grew up in themiddle of the Midwest in a town
that has about 30,000 people init. There is an Islamic center
there now. And they bought achurch that shut down. And

(30:21):
that's now where they meet asthe Islamic center. Right. And
so, I think that, you know,we're starting to realize that
we have to be able toincorporate this stuff.

Chip Gruen (30:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
The careful listener noticedthat we agree on a lot of
things, that we are sort ofsinging from the same hymn book
in a lot of ways. But I want topush a couple things in my
research I've done and I justwant to give you the opportunity
to talk about them a little bit,things where I was like, hmm,
okay, let's think about that onea little more. So, for example,
on your website, you say faithtraditions are fascinating,

(30:55):
ancient, influential, unique andbeautiful. And I say on a good
day. Yeah, I would agree withmost of that. But certainly
right in the broad diversity ofworld religions, and over time,
both abroad closer to home,religious traditions can be
beautiful, and they can also beugly, right, that they can be
intolerant, right, that they canbe violent, you know, the vast

(31:17):
majority of human conflict inone way, shape, or form can be
talked about in terms ofreligion, on some level. So
let's talk about that. And maybethis gets back to the age
appropriateness question? And Ithink it also has to do with
what's included, when we'retalking about curriculum like
this?

Vicki Garlock (31:36):
Yeah. Well, it was sort of interesting to me
that you mentioned the wordbeautiful, because, you know,
I'm always not always, but Ispend a lot of time thinking
about the concrete aspects ofreligion, right. So when I say
beautiful, I'm thinking about,you know, sacred spaces and
altars and icons, and theinfluence of religion on art,

(31:59):
and literature and culture ingeneral. And then when you think
about beautiful, you sort ofthought about it in the most
abstract way, right like that.
They are beautiful entities inour world. And we can argue with
that. So I thought our take onthe word beautiful, in fact, was
sort of interesting. Ourdifferent takes on the word
beautiful. So yeah, I do thinkthat at some point, and

(32:20):
certainly what cognitive theorywould suggest is in middle
school and high school, thatthis is the time when we sort of
wrestle with those ideas, right?
We we wrestle with the pros andcons of having a military we
wrestle, we ask students towrestle with the pros and cons
of having a two party system inthis country. And so I think

(32:43):
there is certainly a place forthat. Religion is I mean, I
think, I don't know what peopleare waiting for. I think people
are sort of looking at the"nones," and the unaffiliated's
are saying, Oh, my gosh, maybereligion will just go away. And
what I'm here to say, that isnot going to happen anytime
soon. Not in our lifetimes, youknow, if there are 8 billion

(33:07):
people on the planet estimatesright now, or that over 5
billion of them identify with aparticular religion. So so this
is where we're at and I thinkthen the question becomes, what
do we do about that? And again,I think that talking about I
think, certainly in middleschool, and I think a lot of
middle school standards alludeto this, looking at religion, as

(33:31):
it has influenced literature andarts and culture, I think is is
important. And I would like Ithink it serves us all well, if
kids have some idea about whatdifferent religions are and what
some of the vocabulary is,before we get to that point. So
that middle, by the time they'rein middle school and high
school, they can play aroundwith some of these more

(33:54):
complicated, more complexissues.

Chip Gruen (33:57):
Yeah, so I want to kind of combine that
conversation with the next one,which is the idea of inclusion
of what's included, right?
Because then it can get a littlebit more sticky. We have a
public discourse in our culture,where we like to talk about
world religions, which has beenfamously, you know, a lot of ink
has been spilled on the conceptof world religions, because it

(34:18):
what it leaves out, right, soit's Christianity and Judaism
and Islam and Hinduism andBuddhism, right, like, people's
numbers go from six to eight onwhat counts as a world religion.
And so it mentions these big,you know, usually numerically
significant that it becomesabout sort of Western ideas of
how one builds the category ofreligion, right, it gets really

(34:40):
sticky really fast. And, youknow, you have made attempts in
some of the things that I'veread, to sort of transcend that
to some extent, but you inprevious conversations, you've
also told me that you've gottena little bit of pushback on that
as well. So you can can you talka little bit about inclusions
about the idea of world religionand about how this operates for
an elementary school audience?

Vicki Garlock (35:02):
So there's sort of three different, at least
three different tracks we couldtake with this. So first I'll
talk about which religions areincluded and which are not. So
I'm all for I mean, it dependingon how you count, right, there
are 10s, of 1000s of differentreligions. And I would actually
argue, and I have said before,that if there are 8 billion on

(35:26):
the people on the planet, thereare 8 billion different faith
stories, right? So so when youreally get right down to it,
each person develops sort oftheir own religious path, in
many ways. So where where doesthe line get drawn? And so for
me, what has kind of evolved issome mix of professional and

(35:48):
personal interests. So I dothink that five or six is about
as many as teachers can handleas many as parents can handle.
I'm looking for at least somelevel of familiarity, right? So
I often tell teachers that ifyou can, if you can do what I

(36:11):
kind of call the Big Six, whichis not a great term, but the
three monotheistic religions,right, Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, right. And the funnything is, what people many
people don't realize is howsmall of a religion Judaism is,
right? It's tiny. It's so tinyon the world scale. And yet, it

(36:33):
plays a huge role in ourculture, right, which is, I
mean, why I include it. And thenon the other side, so to speak,
as you talk about how we divideup the globe, right? Hinduism,
Buddhism and Sikhism and Sikhismis really fascinating. Because
again, it's the opp, on in someways, the opposite of what
happens with Judaism. By manycounts, Sikhism is the fifth

(36:57):
largest religion in the world.
And many Americans don't evenknow what it is, right? They see
someone in a turban, and theythink they're Muslim. So that's
kind of, if I have if I'm sortof pushed into giving people
guidelines, that's what I oftensay. And honestly, if you can do
just that, right, have somebasic understanding of those six
that will serve you well, right,you can use that knowledge base,

(37:19):
then to study all sorts of, ofother sects, factions,
religions, right. But mypersonal I live in Asheville,
North Carolina, which is arelatively small town, we have a
very active Bahá'í community.
And so I have a lot ofconnections in the Bahá'í

(37:40):
community. And I know because ofthat I know something about the
Bahá'í faith, I have people thatI can ask questions. And so I
often include the Bahá'í faith.
And that's just almost sort of apersonal thing, right? That just
is sort of a happenstance,because of where I live in that
we happen to have an activecommunity. The same thing is
true for Neo-Pagan or Wiccan, wehave a very active Wiccan

(38:02):
community here as well, I'mfriends colleagues with our she
calls herself our village witch.
And so again, I often try toinclude that just because it's
interesting to me, and I know alittle bit about it. So that's
one piece of it. The other pieceof it, I think, is to what

(38:22):
extent do we want to talk aboutbeliefs. So I'm actually not a
fan of talking about beliefs.
Because I think that we don'tknow what people believe. And
one of my mini goals in life isto get us to stop saying,
Muslims believe, Buddhistsbelieve, because I don't think
we know. And I think for most ofus, many of us are most familiar

(38:44):
with Christianity. And so Ioften use that as an example,
right? We know by being part ofthis culture, or being raised in
perhaps being raised in aChristian tradition, that not
all Christians believe the samething. We know that not all
Catholics believe the samething, right? Most of us could
probably name a Catholic who isnot pro life, right? But we tend

(39:04):
to gloss faith traditions thataren't familiar to us, right?
That same thing holds for everyreligious tradition, right?
There's a spectrum of beliefsthat go from orthodox all the
way to progressive andeverything in between. So I tend
not to focus so much on beliefsfor that reason, not to mention

(39:25):
the fact that beliefs are highlyabstract. And so I do think that
that's problematic on two levelsin my work with kids. The other
aspect is sort of other thingslike sort of on opposite ends of
the spectrum, right. So one ofthem is new religious movements.
So things that were things thatcame into being, let's say, in

(39:49):
the last, we'll call 150 200years, right? Jehovah's
Witnesses, Mormonism, right? Allof that stuff is really
interesting. Part of the reasonwhy I find those more difficult
to include in my work is thatI'm trying to find concrete

(40:10):
things to hang on to like holydays and sacred spaces and
sacred texts. And also stories,I have found that more difficult
to do with some of the newreligious movements, right,
again, not opposed to it. But Ifind it to be almost sort of too
detailed for people. On theopposite side, is indigenous

(40:33):
traditions, right? So those arevery, very old. In my book, We
All Have Sacred Spaces, Istarted with indigenous
traditions, because their sacredspaces were in nature. And to a
certain extent, all sacredspaces started. That's all we
had. That's what we had wasnature. And so everything
started with that. And I thoughtthat that was a necessary

(40:56):
backdrop to then talk about theearliest built spaces, the
earliest constructed spaces,which we begin to see in the
Hindu traditions, right. And sothat made sense. But one of the
things that I've run into interms of pushback, is indigenous
people who have been very clearwith me that these are not my

(41:16):
stories to tell. So one of thethings that I find lacking in
the new religious movements isthese ancient stories, these
these stories that wereoriginally told orally and
eventually written down, right?
Those stories like that are notas prevalent in the new

(41:39):
religious movements, right?
Those stories are very prevalentin indigenous traditions, tons
of stories. And yet, it's beenclear that those are not my
stories to tell. So I end up nowfocusing in a particular
historical range, right, let'ssay from three or 4000 BCE to
1850. Right? And that's aninteresting question, who owns

(42:07):
these stories? And who can tellthese stories? And what
responsibility do they have? SoI've been told that, doing
research, talking to indigenouspeople, and writing my own
version of that story is notappropriate. And so I have moved
away from that as well.

Chip Gruen (42:31):
Yeah, and that is a topic for another day in another
episode. But you know, so what'sdifficult about that is, then
the result is that the storyends up not being included and
not being told, right, which isa sort of a poverty for the
students reading your books,right?

Vicki Garlock (42:49):
Yeah, I think a poverty, a poverty for the
culture as well, right? BecauseI know because I sit in my
office alone and create theseproducts, and there's only so
much that one person can do. Andthere's only so much that a
small group of people can do, orin this case, a tribal culture
can do. And so my fear isactually that these stories will

(43:12):
be lost. Because they can't wecan't get them recorded fast
enough. We can get them writtendown and published and put out
there and marketed. It's notjust about publishing it, it's
about marketing it. And we can'tdo that fast enough. And my fear
is that the stories will be lostbecause of that. And again, that
is not my decision to makeeither I don't think, although I

(43:34):
have had storytellers tell me,Hey, if you do your research and
you want to write it, you shoulddo that. And I've made the
decision, at least in thismoment not to do that. And is
that a right decision or a wrongdecision? I have no idea. I do
think that in this wholeconversation, I think is maybe

(43:57):
important to note that I'm notsure I have the answers, right?
I'm just one person trying tosort of make my way trying to at
least let people know that thereis a way to teach kids about the
world's religions. This is oneway to do it. I'm not sure it's
the right way, quote, unquote,right way. I'm not sure it's the

(44:18):
best way. It's a way andhopefully I can be I am part of
the conversation of how weshould do this, how best to do
this. Probably at this point, wejust need to do it more. Right?
There's just so little outthere. And so a lot of people in
in both in the interfaith worldand in the religious literacy

(44:40):
world, like to argue about thesesorts of details. And I get that
and it's important for us to bereflective and to think about
it, but there's so much to bedone. And there's so little out
there, that at this point, I'mkind of like, hey, let's all put
stuff out there. I mean, this iswhat we did with climate change,
right? I mean, as I often tellpeople, Rachel Carson's book was

(45:03):
written when in 1962, SilentSpring. And it's taken us, you
know, 60 years to get to a pointwhere this is a regular everyday
discussion, right? And we'renowhere near that when it comes
to interfaith work or religiousliteracy work. So, you know, I'm

(45:23):
just one person trying to putsome stuff out there. And I
don't want to overstate mycertainty in, in my approach, or
my ideas about it.

Chip Gruen (45:35):
Well said, right, that we're at the beginning of
this, right, that the materials,sometimes the materials that are
out there are not great, butsometimes there's just a huge
lacuna, right, there's a hugegap in what's available. So, you
know, you get the 100 milliondollar grant from the Gates
Foundation, right to fix thisproblem, right, you have the

(45:56):
opportunity to work to write thebooks to, you know, hire the
staff to develop new curriculato develop new projects. What do
you think the next, you know, 50years look like? What are the
things that need to be done?
Where do we go from here?

Vicki Garlock (46:13):
Well, I think, again, if we, if we look at some
other topics, right, like thediscussion about race in
America, and the discussionabout climate change, what we
see is that the way you makereal change is to have lots of
people who are interested in themovement, right? And so and so
for me, you know, I don't knowwhat I do with $100 million. But

(46:36):
if I had $10 million, right, Iwould, I would start I would
start writing books. And I wouldgive those books away, right? So
that every school had, not onlydid they have my book, We All
Have Sacred Spaces, right? Butthey had other things like, we
all love lights, right? We allcelebrate holy days, we all eat

(46:58):
special foods, right? There's awhole series that could be done
with that, right? The same thingwith my embracing peace stories
from the world's religions,right. One of the things that I
like to look at are themes. Ifyou look really, really closely
at these, you know, quote,unquote, top six religious
traditions, or within areligious tradition, right?

(47:19):
Everything gets so specific, andeverything is different from
everything else. And it's justdetail after detail. But if you
step back just a little bit, andlook at some of the overarching
themes, what religion is oftentrying to do for a culture or
for people, is to help them, youknow, not kill each other,
right? Live in peace, right?
Live with compassion, take careof the people and the animals

(47:41):
and the beings and the plantsaround them. And so if we back
up just a little bit, soEmbracing Peace, where I took
peace related stories fromacross the world religions,
well, you could do that withcompassion. One of the units
that I did at the church wasembracing the darkness, right?
Religions are often trying tohelp people deal with those

(48:01):
human emotions that we oftencall negative, like greed or
pride, right? So there's likefive or six books that could be
written about that. And so andthen there's also sort of
fiction books that might bewritten. So I would just, you
know, hire staff and write allthese books that really look at
a variety of religioustraditions in a single volume,
from a relatively objectivestandpoint, right, so that kids

(48:26):
can sort of get this reasonablyobjective overview, right. And I
would give them all away, Iwould just put them in schools,
I would give them to teachers.
And I would spend all my time,you know, presenting to
teachers, to grandparents toparents, and saying, Look, this
is one way to do this. We can doit. Kids are capable of this,

(48:50):
and and get the conversationgoing. And what we see with what
we saw with climate change, isyou had schools getting on
board, right? You had nonprofitorganizations, developing lesson
plans and putting those outthere free resources, then you
had churches, right? Faith,faith communities for climate
change, right. So there's greenIslam, there's green Judaism,

(49:11):
there's green Christianity,right. And so that's what
ultimately, you know, having anumber of different
organizations, right, havinggovernment organizations having
nonprofit organizations, and insome respects, having if we
could ever get religiousorganizations who were actually
interested in doing this, whichI think is not going to happen

(49:32):
in my lifetime. But yeah, I'mall about just giving the
information away. Right andencouraging and inspiring
people. That's what I would dowith the money.

Chip Gruen (49:41):
So we're about out of time, but where I think, and
maybe I'm opening a can of wormshere but you talk about getting
people involved with themovement. Right? And I would
dare to say from my experience,I don't see that there's a
religious literacy movement yet.
If we have any movement at all,there's an interfaith movement
that people sometimes trace backto like the World Parliament of

(50:02):
Religions in the 1893. And youknow, and that that is really
inspired kind of a particularway of thinking about religious
diversity. Can you talk a littlebit about the relationship
between that interfaith movementthat some most people I think
might if at least heard of, andwhy that is different or
distinct from, you know, thevalues or the things that you're

(50:26):
talking about when you'retalking about religious
literacy?

Vicki Garlock (50:30):
Yeah, so I'm not sure I'm not again, I'm not sure
I'm right about this either. ButI spent many years in the
interfaith movement. That'sreally where I started out when
my company was called FaithSeeker Kids. And I was hoping to
market to progressive typeChristian churches. So I did
spend a fair bit of time in theinterfaith movement. And and

(50:51):
there were a lot of that work.
Yeah, you can talk about theParliament of World Religions in
the late 1800s. But really, alot of that work started after
9/11. Right. And many interfaithorganizations that I
interviewed, I wrote about 40articles for an online
publication at the time calledThe Interfaith Observer. And a
lot of people that I talked towhen I interviewed them for that
article, those articles they hadstarted after 9/11. Right. So

(51:14):
one of the things that I see hashappened in the interfaith
movement is that it tends toactually not talk about people's
faith very much and not talkabout people's religion very
much. It tends to center on Ithink, social justice causes and
transcending your faith and yourreligion, right to find some

(51:40):
sort of common element. And Ithink Eboo Patel of Interfaith
America, formerly of InterfaithYouth Core, has specifically
said this, right, is that whatyou really need to do is you
need to move past religiontranscend religion, and realize
that we have these common causesthat we're working on, you know,
like climate change, or racialjustice, or gender equality. And

(52:03):
so and so that again, that's allgood. And that's fine. And I
have no, I think there's a placefor that. I agree with you that
the religious literacy sphere isnot a movement, it's not a
movement at all right? It's,it's a bunch of, of kind of
well, meaning do gooderindividuals who are kind of

(52:25):
putting their stuff out there.
But and I just, you know, I doit, because I believe there's a
there's a place for thatapproach in our culture. And I
think that's becoming even moreclear, with these conversations
around intersectionalities.
Right? So this idea thatreligion is part of your
identity, right? Is isimportant. And as we continue to

(52:47):
talk about what makes us who weare, religious identity is
important. I kind of didn'tfinish my thought before, but
there's been some research. Weknow people don't go to church
every Sunday, we see varioushouses of worship shutting down.
But when you ask people, youknow about their religious

(53:07):
identity, even if they never goto church, they haven't been to
church, since they were 15 yearsold. They will tell you, Oh, my
identity is Christian. That'sthe that's the religious
language I speak. Those are therituals that make sense to me,
right? Or I'm Jewish, right? Andwe talk about being ethnically
Jewish. And like, that's athing, and it is a thing. But

(53:28):
you can also be ethnicallyChristian or ethnically Hindu or
any of those things. So I thinkthat this that just sort of
trying to transcend ourreligious identity is not the
full answer. We can't we're notgoing to get where we need to be
as a as a culture or as aspecies by just doing that. I
think we have to acknowledge theimportance of religion, on

(53:53):
literature on culture and on ourown individual identities and on
the diversity we see withinAmerica, because that is not
going away anytime soon.

Chip Gruen (54:06):
All right. Well, I think that seems like a great
place to stop the conversation.
It's a really nice bow on thewhole thing. So Vicki Garlock,
thank you very much forappearing on ReligionWise This
has been really great.

Vicki Garlock (54:18):
Thank you so much for having me. It was a great
conversation.

Chip Gruen (54:24):
This has been ReligionWise a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
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