August 15, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode, Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding Director Chip Gruen becomes the guest as producer Christine Flicker poses questions drawn from audience feedback. The conversation explores the methodological approaches, underlying assumptions, and programming decisions that shape the Institute's work in fostering religious understanding and a healthier public conversation on religion. Listeners get an inside look at how the Institute navigates the complexities of religious diversity in public life and the intentional choices behind its programming initiatives.
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Episode Transcript
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Chip Gruen (00:05):
Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host.
Chip Gruen, so today we're doingsomething a little different. We
have talked for a long time, soChristine Flicker and I, who is
the producer and editor of thepodcast, have talked for a long
time about whether we could do amailbag episode, because we do
get questions, whether it be atpublic programming, at
(00:25):
conferences I attend, orprofessional development, where
I'm talking about religiousliteracy and empathetic
understanding, that we getquestions. And a lot of the
questions, I think, really go tothe heart of what we do and why
we do it, and how we do it, andhow we do it, and how that might
be different from other kinds ofsimilar organizations. So we've
(00:45):
gathered some of those questionsand those comments together and
tried to formulate a set ofquestions that can get to you
know, sort of the gist of it. Asit turns out, I was a guest on a
podcast Maurice Bloom's, "Walk,Talk, Listen"a few weeks ago, I
encourage you to go and findthat and discovered that there
were a lot of things that Ithought might be interesting for
(01:07):
our listeners to hear, but maybeweren't exactly in the
wheelhouse of ReligionWise, sothis incorporates maybe a little
bit of that material as well. Sothough Christine likes to stay
behind the microphone. I havecoerced her into being co host
for this episode and to fire offthe questions. So Christine,
(01:28):
it's great to have you here.
Christine Flicker (01:29):
Thanks, Chip.
I'm glad to be here.
Chip Gruen (01:31):
So with all that being said, let's just jump
right to it.
Christine Flicker (01:35):
All right, so the Institute emphasizes what
you describe as religiousliteracy and reasoned analysis
of religion in public discourse.
Can you explain what this meansand why it's important? How does
religious literacy differ frominterfaith dialogue, and what
does this mean for how youdesign the programming?
Chip Gruen (01:53):
So I think the important thing to emphasize
first is that in the publicconversation about religion, it
is dominated by this thing thatwe call interfaith dialogue. And
one of the principal ideas, orthe foundations of interfaith
(02:14):
dialogue, is that I as areligious person, talk to you as
a religious person, and wefigure out what we have in
common, right? We figure outmaybe projects that we can work
on together, that but it allends up being, you know,
foundationally starting from theplace of your own religious
(02:35):
identity. And so I've beenthinking about this a little bit
lately, of examples of how thiscan potentially be a problem. So
one example is, I rememberteaching a class on the
historical Jesus years ago, andI had a Buddhist monk in the
class, and we would talk aboutthe teachings of Jesus as they
(02:56):
appeared, you know, in theGospel materials. And he said,
Oh yes, you know, my masteralways used to say that Jesus
was really close toenlightenment. And so it's an
interesting right, dynamic. Onthe one hand, he is coming and
learning about this material,but on the other hand, he is not
shelving his own sort ofreligious identity, and so he's
(03:19):
organizing the world in his ownworldview, right? Though, it's
sort of onboarding a differentset of material. You know
another example of this is whenI teach a New Testament class,
like one of the things we haveto do is talk about Jewish
foundations. And if you're aChristian student in the class,
and you understand Judaism fromChristianity's perspective,
(03:39):
rather than from its ownperspective, like you're going
to go wrong, right? There'ssomething that is not that full
empathetic understanding, but isstarting from a place that is
already informed with adifferent worldview. And so what
we really try to do is say, Allright, let's bracket if we can,
(04:01):
and that's not an easy thing todo, right? But bracket your own
identity, bracket your what youthink about the world, and
really be as open to other waysof imagining the world than than
your own. I think about this. Wewhen, when I first was director
of the Institute. We had one ofour local theater professors
(04:24):
came on and was talking aboutacting in a program that we did
that was sort of tangentiallyrelated to the work of the
Institute. Holly Kate and shetalked about the care and, oh,
you know, responsibility ofinhabiting a character and
really trying to get in, and itwas really kind of influential
(04:48):
on me, about thinking about howsimilar, right that is, that
that is a practice of trying tobe empathetic, trying to get
into the skin of somebody else.
Now we know. Right? You can't,you can't ever really get away
from who you are, but you got totry, right? You got to try, and
you got to try to understandpeople who are not yourself in
(05:08):
this world, otherwise, it's atremendously dull world.
Christine Flicker (05:14):
Yeah, I think we always talk about, if even
for a moment, you can pictureyourself in the shoes of
someone, someone else'sworldview and their existence,
that it's just for that momentso important.
Chip Gruen (05:25):
And I think one of the things, and I'm really
excited actually, that we'regoing to have for our one of our
events this year is theWallenberg Tribute that happens
every November. And if you'reinterested in attending that
event, you know, reach out to usand we can get you information,
but it's somebody who doesreligion and the alt right, and
he, you know, he's has nosympathy for these people, but
(05:49):
understands that if, if you wantto, you know, be able to to deal
with, encounter right, theseabhorrent ideas, that you have
to sort of be able to empathizewith people who you might not
want to have conversations within normal right, in just the
normal passage of things thatmight not be part of your world.
(06:13):
And that, I think, is one of theother pitfalls of that
interfaith idea is that you getpeople together who want to talk
to one another. Well, there area lot of religious ideas and
religious communities and peoplewho think that they're right and
are not interested in sharingwith anybody else. So are they
just not part of theconversation, right? So I think
(06:33):
that it opens up a whole notherset of religious communities
when you can sort of say, I as ahuman want to understand any
number of different groups youknow who might not participate
in public discourse otherwise.
Christine Flicker (06:50):
Your background as a scholar of
ancient Christianity and youremphasis on studying religion
from an outsider stance in thecontext of free inquiry suggests
a particular methodologicalapproach. How do you balance the
study of religion with theexperiences that people who
practice traditions, both thosethat are the subject of our
programming, and those thatmight be in the audience?
Chip Gruen (07:11):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I've that I
think informs my work, and issort of disappointing to me, is
I really love the discipline I'min the religious studies
discipline. And there's acertain sub community in that
religious studies world that,you know, one of the monikers
is, you know, neither criticsnor caretakers, right? It's not
our job to support religion andtalk about how religion is this
(07:35):
great thing and this positiveforce in the world. And, on the
other hand, it's not our job torun it down and say, Oh, more
people have been killed in thename a religion than any other
cultural force, right? Likewe're here to call balls and
strikes. We're here tounderstand this thing as a human
phenomenon. And it'sdisappointing to me how much
that is not a part of the publicconversation. I mean, that
(07:57):
happens in religious studies,classrooms, in higher education
all across the country, allaround the world. It's not every
religious studies classroom, butit's a big part of it. And I've
really started to be interested,particularly with the Institute,
of taking some of those lessonsand making them less niche, less
(08:19):
abstract, and showing theirpractical value, right? So we do
professional development forschool teachers, right? For
example, there are lots ofopportunities to do professional
development for medicalprofessionals or legal
professionals or firstresponders, you know, people who
need to understand religion, notin a kind of interfaith dialog
(08:41):
kind of way. But hey, I'mencountering religious
individuals and communities inmy work. How can a more nuanced,
more empathetic, more literateview of religious difference
help me do my job better? And sothat really informs our
programming. That informs, youknow, how we do what we do, and
(09:04):
it is the case, if you listen tome long enough, I will drop
ancient references on you. It isthe case that that's what I
studied, right? That religion inthe Roman Empire was sort of the
focus of my PhD work, althoughin a religious studies
methodological, more broadmethodological framework, but
you know, the past, as it issaid, is a foreign country,
(09:24):
right? Like that there is a anact of sort of creative empathy
because of the distance of 2000years that you have to develop.
And I would say to my students,if a method is a good method, it
can transcend time, right? Andit can transcend into different
communities. And so I've taken,you know, what does it mean to
(09:46):
try to understand ancientChristian Gnostics or, you know,
marcionites, or whatever thatI'm interested in in my own
work. How can we translate thatinto thinking about our own
local communities? And you knowthat ends up fueling the kinds
of questions we ask, and reallyaugments that, that critical
(10:07):
distance, that scholarlydistance, that I think is
sometimes lacking in the publicconversation.
Christine Flicker (10:13):
Your research increasingly focuses on using
religious studies methods, asyou just talked about, to
influence the publicconversation on contemporary
religious diversity. Thisobviously suggests kind of a
move from traditional academicscholarship towards a more
public facing kind of work. Inwhat ways do you envision
(10:33):
religious studies methods beingable to address religious
literacy in that publicconversation?
Chip Gruen (10:39):
Yeah, and I think you know, just kind of building
on what we were just talkingabout, that this can be very
hard for people in the public. Imean, I remember talking to a
group of principals in the areaand sort of giving my my spiel,
my presentation, as a part ofthis professional development
about how important it is tounderstand the the children in
(11:02):
your classroom. In this case,because you're talking about
public schools, and we live inthe in the Lehigh Valley and
increasingly diverse world, Ithink we'll talk about that
little little later. It's anincreasingly diverse community.
And this principal came up to meand she said, I just never
thought about talking aboutreligion, not from a religious
perspective. And, you know,sometimes, you know, when I'm
(11:27):
sitting alone in the dark, Ithink, gosh, is everything I say
about this topic just the mostobvious thing ever. And then I
realized, you know, I havesomething like that happen. I'm
like, No, this is not native,right? This is not sort of the
natural hardware we're givenwhen we talk about religion. It
is our sort of go to to want totalk about my religion, right
(11:49):
when we have this and we, youknow, we view it as this sort of
deeply, not only personal, butprivate thing. And so we
sometimes lack the capacity todo this well, and so it is a
challenge right to bring this toa public audience. This is a
little bit in the weeds, but Ithink it's really good example.
(12:12):
I did a public talk, andsomebody had sent me a poster on
the golden rule. So, you knowthe golden rule. Of course,
people from Christianbackgrounds will know, you know,
do unto others as you would havethem do unto you. And what this
(12:32):
poster did is it trained. Itsaid, Oh, this isn't just a
Christian idea. You can findthis in Judaism, you can find in
Islam, you can find in Hinduism.
And it sort of had quotes that,more or less you know, had a
similar idea. So you might befamiliar with what's sometimes
called the Silver Rule, right?
That is a sort of a less, lessselfless understanding of this,
(12:56):
don't do unto others as youwould have them, not do unto
you, or something like this,right? But you get various
versions of something similar.
It's just basic ethicalprinciple, and I remember, so I
sort of unpacked this thing andsaid, Yeah, but notice how this
is saying that this is valuablein all these other traditions,
because it's found inChristianity. So it's that thing
of regular, you know, sort ofnormalizing other beliefs by
finding commonality with thething that you're already a part
(13:19):
of, and that that's, that's sortof a questionable way to
approach religious difference.
And so I go in whole spiel, andsomebody afterwards comes up to
me, and he says, I really lovethat poster. Where can I get a
copy of it? I shared the posterwith him. It's not a, you know,
(13:40):
a useless thing, but I was like,oh, you weren't listening
really, right? So, so this canbe right when, when you're, when
you're sort of originalsoftware. Is to think about all
religion in terms of your ownthat can be a real challenge.
Christine Flicker (13:56):
You have argued that knowledge of world
religions from a nonconfessional perspective is not
a luxury, but a necessity for21st Century leaders, and that
the most important attributethat the academic study of
religion offers is the abilityto understand others. Can you
explain what you mean by a nonconfessional perspective? And
then, how does that claim aboutthe academic study of religion
(14:17):
affect the work of theInstitute?
Chip Gruen (14:20):
Yeah, so non confessional is just kind of a
fancy way of talking about, youknow, not from a religious
perspective, right? So in ourreligious studies classes, we
don't teach people how to be abetter Christian or a better Jew
or a better Hindu, right? It'snot, it's not seminary, it's not
theology. It is studyingreligion is a cultural product,
(14:41):
right? So the example Isometimes give is in a political
science department, youshouldn't, I don't know if this
is true of all political sciencedepartments, but you shouldn't
learn how to be a betterRepublican or how to be a better
Democrat, right? You learn aboutpolitical processes. You learn
about political systems. Youlearn about how they work,
right? Maybe you learn how to bean inside operative from that,
(15:05):
but it's not the fundamentalgoals. And so it is here, right?
So you learn how religionfunctions. Some of it is
history. Some it isphenomenological. Like, what is
it, you know? What is it like tostep into a cathedral, for
example, what are the ritualsthat you'll see? How do you
understand those? And you know,and maybe you know students,
(15:26):
using that example, Catholicstudents come learn about their
own tradition, and they arehappy with that and that that's
good, but that's not myfundamental goal. My fundamental
goal is to sort of offer up amore neutral view, non
confessional view of this thingas a thing that humans do,
religion as a thing that humansdo. And you know, my take on
(15:47):
this, I really, I'm biased, ofcourse, but I really think that
that we should be one of themost popular majors on campus,
because no matter what you do,you have to deal with people,
right? And or you get to dealwith people. I can be more
positive. You get to deal withpeople. So, you know, if you're
in pre med, like, what a greatsecond major, right to major.
(16:11):
And we have students who dothis, but how you understand
what it is to be human, how youunderstand what the relationship
is to the body, is to the self,what you think death means, what
you think birth means, what whatis like? All of those questions
that are dealt with fromreligious perspectives are front
and center in the doctor'soffice a lot. And so if you
(16:32):
haven't considered right thatyou know those more more
abstract, more cosmologicalquestions when you're talking to
a patient, you're really missingout, right? I like to tell my
pre med students that being adoctor is not like working on a
car, right, that there's, it'snot like you just take one part
out and put another in, likethere's a whole context there,
(16:54):
that if you're going to be agood doctor, right, you need to
pay attention to. And I thinkthat you could run down the
gamut of professions. I meanfrom, you know, business, if you
do, I mean not onlyinternational business, but
just, you know, businessgenerally, that you're going to
deal with people whofundamentally view the world
differently from the way thatyou do and and even if you don't
(17:15):
know all the ins and outs ofthat worldview that you're
encountering, that it is adifferent worldview would make
you so much better at whatyou're doing, or, like I said,
law, we do a lot with schoolteachers, right? That you know
that the religious diversity inyour classroom, how you how they
think about the world, and whattheir family background is, and
(17:37):
how that affects the way thatthey think again, of all of
these things, what it means tolive a good life, what is the
purpose of education? So many ofthose things are inflected by
religion. So yeah, so I thinkthat that's really that's why I
say it's not a luxury, but anecessity. If you're going to
deal in our smaller and smallerworld with lots of different
kinds of people like this is aleg up for you.
Christine Flicker (17:59):
Part of the Institute's mission emphasizes
learning how to examine, analyzeand publicly discuss religious
traditions productively andwithout judgment, and you've
written about the need for adispassionate third party
perspective when viewingreligious phenomena.
Understanding and analyzingwhile withholding judgment seems
central to academic religiousstudies, but as we discussed, it
(18:21):
can be really challenging forpublic audiences. How do you
help community members developthese analytical skills when
discussing traditions that mayconflict with what they hold as
deep beliefs?
Chip Gruen (18:35):
So I want to answer this by getting a little more
specific about the kinds ofprogramming we do. So if you're
a ReligionWise listener, youknow you can see that we really
run the gamut around differenttypes of not only religious
practice, but also ways in whichreligion affects public life in
a million different ways, likewe really want to be all
(18:57):
encompassing. And if you're nota ReligionWise listener,
regularly go back and listen toour back catalog, but one of the
other events that we do iscalled WorldViews. And
WorldViews happens live oncampus, although you can stream
that as well. Go toreligionandculture.com, and you
can find the links for the livestreaming, get on our mailing
(19:17):
list and all of that. But thatis different. It invites people
from religious communities totalk about their own worldviews,
their belief and practice, howtheir community interacts with
and is a part of the the localarea or the region. And you
know, you know, Christine, wehave these conversations all the
(19:38):
time because, on the one hand,they are a really interesting
primary source for ourconstituency, right to hear a,
you know, for example, we hadsomeone who was a certifying
Rabbi for kosher regulations ona couple of years ago, and to
hear him talk about kashrut,right, and to talk about the how
(20:00):
of that and some of the why. Itjust gives you a totally
different right perspective. Butlike I say, we are really
interested in casting a verywide net. And so we will have
people from Jewish communities,Christian communities, Hindu
communities, Muslim communities,and then also, you know, pagan
(20:22):
communities, or humanists. Wehad a humanist on before, or,
you know, we really try tospread that net out so that if
is, if it is something that youmight encounter within our own
landscape, you will encounter itin WorldViews. And you can
imagine, you know, that thatmight ruffle people's feathers,
(20:44):
and we've a great supporter ofthe Institute, comes up to me
sometimes to say, Well, this onewas a hard one for me. You know?
And it's like, yeah, that'sThat's right, right, that's
right. Because if we're onlyever surrounded by things that
we, you know, are verycomfortable with, we're not
growing, we're not learning,we're not sort of stretching
those muscles as to how to, youknow, how to encounter
(21:04):
difference. And, you know, andwe push that envelope. We had a
Raelian on last year onWorldViews, you know, which is
one of the UFO religions reallyinterested in Alien discourses.
And, you know, we got a commentonline. Somebody had responded
and said, Why do I need to payattention to this charlatan
(21:27):
religious practice, right? And,you know, clearly not the words
I would use. I think we need torespect, you know, particularly
our guests, but people in ourworld generally. It's like,
Yeah, but look at theopportunity for methodological
sophistication here, right?
Like, how can you practicetaking something seriously and
learning about it, understandingit when you have no regard for
(21:47):
it, right? So shelve thatjudgment, shelve that no regard
in order to strengthen thosemuscles, because you can learn
lessons. I mean, maybe you'llnever come into contact with a
Raelian again in your life. Butif you're strengthening those
muscles about how to deal withdifference, then you know, I
don't know, you grew up in aBaptist house, you go to a
Catholic wedding. Like you havethe tools then to understand and
(22:09):
unpack and to and to reallyappreciate something that is
different from what you mightyou might be used to. Another
thing that we have dealt with,and we've talked about this in
our WorldViews program as well,is that there are different ways
of talking about religion,obviously, so that our
(22:32):
WorldViews guests come asinsiders, right? And talking
about their deeply held beliefs,right? Talk about their own
communities, and I, as ascholar, some of my colleagues
in the audience of scholars.
Some of my students certainlywill be doing this dispassionate
perspective, trying tounderstand and trying to
analyze, and not every guest whocomes to talk about their
(22:56):
worldview is particularlyinterested in that. So we've
thought about doing a talkbacksession that is separate. You
know, like I say, we try to bevery respectful and empathetic
to our to our guests, but Ialways like to have my students
talk afterwards, like, what didyou notice? What met your
expectations? What didn't meetyour expectations? And so
(23:17):
there's a little bit of abifurcation there between what
happens in the session, and whatmight be the debriefing that
happens after. So to go back forjust to give an example of this,
talking about the kosherregulations like one of the
things that you notice if you'rethinking sociologically about
religious systems or religiouspractice, is that kosher
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regulations just sociologicallyseparate people who follow
kosher from not, I mean, evensomething as simple as our
dining hall on campus, which hasgreat kosher offerings, but they
because of some of theseregulations, they are served on
paper rather than on ceramic.
And so there's something that isan immediate tell that you're
eating the kosher food, and it'slike, that's fine. I mean,
(23:59):
nobody's judging anybody aboutthat. It's a perfectly great
thing. The food is good. I eatat the Noshery myself, but it is
a visible recognition of aparticular kind of practice and
that that serves certainsociological goals, whether
they're intended or not. Well,that might be a weird thing to
talk about, right with thisperson who does the
(24:21):
certification, because I thinkhe would not imagine, or want to
imagine, these regulations assomething that separates people,
right? He would want to see itmore as something that binds the
community together. So, youknow, there is sensitivity here.
Christine Flicker (24:35):
So listening to you, it is clear that
emphasizing difference, ratherthan just focusing on similarity
as a key method for getting atthe religious literacy and
empathetic understanding. Do youever receive pushback on this
idea that calling out differenceis creating division? When what
we should be doing is bringingindividuals and communities
(24:56):
together?
Chip Gruen (24:58):
I think this is a great question. Actually it's,
it's one that was, was asked ofme at a at a conference on
thinking about religiousdiversity in public education.
We were doing a program there,and I'm sensitive to it, right?
In a world that is so polarizedand there's so much animosity,
(25:19):
right, even you know,politically, much less racially
or religiously or culturally,right? There's lots of
suspicion. That emphasizingsimilarity knee jerk reaction
seems like the thing that makesmost sense, right? Can't we all
just get along? Can't we allagree right on X or on Y, and I
(25:42):
think that I don't blame anybodyfor feeling that way. I think it
is, again, a good sort of firststep. But if you take that to
you think about the consequencesof that, I think it's in the
long term more dangerous andmore divisive than confronting
(26:02):
difference from the get go,because, and I think, you know,
I think we've seen this on ourown campus. You take something
like, you know, if you take anykind of religious conflict from
around the world, that, ifyou've been telling yourself
that there really are notfundamental differences in the
(26:23):
way that you view the world,that you really agree on the
most important things. And thenan event happens that splits the
community, and one group says,you know, understands it one
way, and another groupunderstands it another way, but
that if you haven't stopped toconsider why people might view
(26:48):
those events differently, right,you've convinced yourself that
we all really do just see theworld the same way. My code for
this is we're all pink on theinside, right? If you don't
think about the cultural andreligious difference that that
might lead people to understandor interpret or unpack events
differently. Then when somethinglike that happens, you're left
(27:10):
looking across the table andthinking, I don't know you. I
thought I did, but I don't,right. And so I think our
strategy here, and I say thisall the time, particularly in
those WorldViews sessions thatI've mentioned and some of our
other professional developmentprograms that we do, is that if
you have relatively low stakesconversations across difference,
(27:34):
then that can prepare you forwhen there is a high stakes
conversation across difference.
So one of my favorite programsthat we did is we had local some
members of local Muslimcommunity reached out about
World Hijab Day, that happens inFebruary. And so we had someone
leader, a female leader fromthat community, who came and
(27:56):
talked about wearing the hijab.
And you know, at least fromwhere I'm sitting, that feels
much lower stakes, right? Thenone of the local Imams always
says, I want to come and I wantto talk about Jihad and what
that means, and that's higherstakes, right? But you can
practice with thinking about,Okay, this community, or members
(28:18):
of this community, have a headcovering, and what does that
mean, and why is that importantto them, and how do they want to
be treated when they're wearingit, and what does it signal, and
all of those things like, youknow, no doubt that everybody
went home from that event andslept just fine that night, even
though we were talking aboutdifference, right? Even though
we were talking about somethingthat is a marker of cultural
(28:40):
difference, and we got into morecomplicated things there, right?
You can talk about gender andpower dynamics and leadership
and all of these sorts ofthings, but it was good
practice. And again, I mean, Ialways think about, like lifting
weights here, right? That youneed to sort of prepare your
your intellectual, you know,capabilities, the way that you
prepare your muscles, right? Youneed to test them and and those
(29:02):
are good tests. And then whensomething harder comes along,
well maybe you're betterprepared to deal with it. No, I
think if you go into a room, adiverse room, whether, again,
racially, culturally,religiously, gender, sexuality,
and you just convince yourselfthat everybody is really
fundamentally the same, you'regoing to have that erode really
(29:27):
quickly, and you're not going toknow how to deal with the
differences there. So my take onthis is to deal with difference
head on from the very beginning.
And this can be easy. I mean, wehave a program called
Understanding Our Neighbors,that is a book project for
elementary school libraries andclassrooms. And you know, this
can be as zero entry as you wantit to be, where the food that is
(29:52):
eaten in this community looksdifferent than the food that you
might be used to, right? Andthat's okay, yeah. Right? That
that that can be a conversationabout difference, you know, and
then you obviously can get moremore complicated from there.
Christine Flicker (30:07):
Yeah, I always think of it as, you know,
again, that muscle memory thatyou're building of practicing
that skill. And though our topicis about religion, over the
years that I've been workingwith you here at the Institute,
it's that skill is coming up injust conversations with people
where I where they'll saysomething, whether it's
political or whatever the casemay be. And I think, okay,
(30:29):
suspend my judgment. You know,think about the empathy of
trying to understand theirworldviews. Why might they be
thinking that way? What's Whatare they coming from that brings
that opinion to thiscircumstance? And you're right,
the more that you do that withlow, low impact, low risk, we
talk about that as we bring upour children, you know, in this
low risk, low consequenceenvironment, what can you learn
(30:51):
about interacting with otherpeople that you could then take
to the more difficultsituations?
Chip Gruen (30:58):
I mean, think about, you know, I've been thinking
more and more about about howthese muscles are good for other
things, other than understandingreligious diversity and again,
our political, you know,situation right now is just
really, really awful, right? Andthink about watching, I mean,
nobody watches the evening newsanymore, but Right? Think about
watching a film clip of peoplejust absolutely in one another's
faces, yelling at one another.
That's what we don't want,right?
Christine Flicker (31:22):
Right.
Chip Gruen (31:23):
And so you know, when next time you see that,
think about, all right, whatcould some empathy for somebody
who's very different from you?
It doesn't mean you agree withthem. It doesn't mean that you
think their ideas bear equalweight to yours, even, or that
they're legitimate, right? Butjust sort of thinking about why,
(31:43):
given who they are and theirworldview and where they're
coming from, maybe how they grewup, or what their community
looks like, just for 30 seconds,how can that help you interact
with them better, morefruitfully, not only for your
own good and your own sanity,but for theirs. But it's tough,
right? It's tough, particularlyas the conversations are more
(32:07):
heated and closer to the bone,right? You don't want to give
your opponent that much grace,right, or that much legitimacy.
But I would argue that that'sonly imagining them as humans,
right, who operate and humansare capable of bad things,
right? This should be a surpriseto no one. Humans are capable of
believing bad things, of actingbadly, of being intolerant. So
(32:31):
we're trying to provide a set oftools that allows us to think
about that difference, orperfectly fine people who the
Methodist next door. You canunderstand them too, right? Like
that there's like that this isjust a way of understanding
humanity.
Christine Flicker (32:52):
As we think about and what we've been
talking about a lot has beensort of our local community here
in the Lehigh Valley. But theInstitute also seeks to address
global religious diversity. Howdo you balance the needs of the
local community with thisbroader perspective? Do you find
that local audiences are morereceptive to certain types of
religious diversity than others,and how does this influence the
(33:13):
programming decisions?
Chip Gruen (33:15):
You know, I think we're we're in a really good
place to do the work that we'redoing. So, you know, we've
mentioned the Lehigh Valley,sort of mid Atlantic. We're
about an hour north of Philly,an hour and a half west of of
New York City. And this area,I've been in this area for about
20 years now, and even in thetime that I've been here, it's
(33:37):
gotten, I mean, the Sikhcommunity, actually, I was gonna
say it's gotten more and morediverse, right? I think we're
recognizing the diversity moreand more. Like the Sikh
community has been here waylonger, right, since the 80s.
The local, or the local Syriancommunity, that is some
Christian and some, you know,some Muslim, has been here. I
(33:57):
mean, the local Syrian Christiancommunity has been here 100
years. I mean, it's very old. Soit's not just a matter of
chronology, but, you know, ofthis area getting more diverse
over time, but, but I thinkdemographically, it is shifting
a little bit, right, even thoughthese communities have been,
have been here a while, so thatthere is more immigration to the
(34:19):
Lehigh Valley, we have a very wehave some industries that
attract people from particularkinds of communities, or that,
because there are oldcommunities, these seem like
safe or welcoming things for newimmigrant families to come here,
so that they grow so. So I thinkthat the local and the global
(34:40):
collapse a little bit when youcan find Islamic communities,
Hindu communities, Sikhcommunities, Jain communities.
You know, every variety ofChristianity and Judaism that
you can think of, pagancommunities. Like a lot of the
religious diversity that isglobal is here as well. Now,
obviously it's inflecteddifferently, right? That it, it
(35:01):
sort of manifests itselfdifferently in a 21st Century,
moderately urban environmentthan it would in South Asia or
in the Middle East, or whereverthose those religious systems or
the religious communitiesoriginated. So I don't think
we're having to make thatdistinction as much I mean, as
(35:24):
if we were in a more homogeneousarea. And for us, it's really
great too, because we have localinformants, right? We have
people, we have localcommunities that we can tap. So
one of the great joys of myposition is being able to make
relationships with the HinduTemple Society or the Islamic
Education Center ofPennsylvania, or the local
(35:48):
church of Jesus Christ, LatterDay Saints. We got a great, a
great informant from thatcommunity, you know, the local
there's a Lehigh Valley PaganPride organization making
connections with them. We wantto be involved, right with all
of that diversity, we want themto be a part of what we do and
to appreciate not only thatwe're trying to understand and
(36:08):
trying to bring greater literacyabout their communities, but
also that they have as muchresponsibility as anybody else
to understand communities thatare not there themselves either.
So makes me, you know,incredibly happy when you see
your friends from local Muslimcommunity who come for the event
that features Hinduism, forexample, right? Because we, you
(36:31):
know, this is a two way street.
It's always got to be a two waystreet. You know, one of the
old, I think that this is aascribed to St Francis, but I
love it, so I'll give it to StFrancis again, who knows where
it originally came from, butit's "understand before seeking
to be understood." And I thinkif we all did that right, if we
all sort of, you know, ratherthan wanting to tell our story,
(36:54):
and maybe that's why it's takenfour years for me to want to
talk about on the podcast, youknow, like, what the
methodological rightunderpinnings are. We want to
share other people'sperspectives and stories first.
But if we seek to understandothers before we tell everybody
right or want to share our ownstories, then you know, we're
halfway home then.
Christine Flicker (37:18):
You have argued that contemporary
discourse too quickly dismissesreligious motivations as, quote,
unquote, really being aboutpolitics, power or class,
refusing to take religiousaspects seriously. Yet you also
note that religion is somethingwe are encouraged not to
discuss. What's your assessmentof the state of religion and
public discourse?
Chip Gruen (37:39):
I get frustrated a little bit when you have a world
event, or, you know, somethingin the news, or interaction with
the community that, on thesurface is looks religious
right, and you know, some ofsome other fields in academia
(38:03):
will look at that and say, Oh,well, religion is just a thin
veil for, you know, power orclass or politics or other
things. And so what you reallyneed to do is you need to
understand the politics, youneed to understand the
sociology. You need tounderstand, right, the history
of the region, whatever, tryingto regularize religion
(38:24):
underneath another kind of wayof knowing. Now I'm here to tell
you history and sociology andpolitics and political science,
and you know, some of thediscourses on power that we have
all great, super useful.
Absolutely, go study all thatstuff, but don't do it at the
expense of the motivations ofthe what the people say
(38:46):
themselves, right? If I say I'mdoing this as a religious
individual, maybe you need tounderstand their religion and
their religious community. Oneof the places, and this is equal
on the right and the left. Imean, you can probably guess my
I will never out myselfpolitically, but you can
probably guess my leanings. Buthere I will give you an
indictment of both the left andthe right when talking about
(39:11):
religion, that when somethingbad happens in the name of
religion, that you'll get apolitician or somebody in the
public square will stand up andsay, well, that's not legitimate
Christianity, or that's notlegitimate Judaism or legitimate
Islam or legitimate Hinduism.
This is the tradition has beenhijacked for their own nefarious
(39:35):
purposes. I don't I'm not in theI'm not in the business of
talking about what is real,authentic tradition and what is
not. I can talk about if I wereof x tradition, that is not the
way that I would want tointerpret it and understand it.
So much of what we do is stickyor difficult, right? But you get
somebody who bombs an abortionclinic or something like that,
(39:58):
horrible, heinous right? Right,really awful. But they say that
they do it because theirChristianity demands it, right,
that this is what Jesus wantsfor them to do. Not the way that
I would interpret the tradition,right, not the way that I would
sort of sign up to be Christian.
But I think that to dismiss thatis not a sincere motivation is
(40:22):
short circuiting your ability tounderstand why they do, why they
chose to do this thing, right?
And you know, you can thinkabout about any number of things
that people claim to do as apart of their religious
practice. And I think if we justdismiss religion as a motivating
(40:45):
factor, it doesn't get us closerto understanding. And if
understanding is the way ofcountering, deradicalizing, you
know, then, then I think, youknow, I think that the
understanding piece is moreimportant than the satisfaction
that we might get by sayingthat's not my religion, right?
(41:09):
My that there's no way that youcould come from, you know, the
Christian religious tradition,for example, and do that thing.
Well, there is a way, because wecan see that it happened, and it
happens in patterns, right? Somaybe we need to, you know, take
seriously these, these peopleand think about it, right? What
is the scriptural interpretationthat happens within that
(41:30):
community? How do theyunderstand history? How do they
understand community? How dothey understand the good life?
How do they understand eternallife? How do they understand,
you know, death and so forth.
It's not going to get youfurther away from understanding
what they've done, right and whythey might have done it. Doesn't
mean you have to condone it.
Doesn't mean that you have toaccept it as a legitimate form
(41:52):
of activity or a legitimate kindof discursive way of
understanding. But it's there,right? And I think hiding our
heads in the sand doesn't help.
Doesn't help at all.
Christine Flicker (42:04):
I always think of it as kind of like
you're trying to understandsomething without seeing all the
data. That all of those thingsweigh into the end result. So
let's switch gears a bit andthink about the Institute
operating within a liberal artscollege. How does the context of
Muhlenberg College affect thework of the institute? What
(42:26):
advantages does it offer andwhat challenges do you face in
maintaining community engagementwhile serving an academic
institution?
Chip Gruen (42:34):
Yeah, it's, you know, I've always said that
being in a liberal artsenvironment, being in a small
college like Muhlenberg is greatfor what I do, that I know
colleagues and some of thoseother disciplines we've just
mentioned right in history andsociology and anthropology and
philosophy and so forth, and sowe have this really great
opportunity to think aboutshared phenomena, right, history
(43:00):
or culture or whatever, from afrom a variety of different
perspectives, and that's reallygreat. And you know, in the
context here in particular, youknow, we have great support from
our administration right thatreally sees what we do as
valuable. And some of that istied to the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America, the Lutheranheritage of the of the college.
(43:22):
So we celebrate, for example,Raoul Wallenberg mentioned the
Wallenberg event earlier,courageous moral action on
behalf of others. Right that?
The idea is that on behalf ofothers has roots right in in the
tradition in some places and andso while we don't practice
Lutheranism like I wouldn't saywhat we do is particularly
(43:43):
Lutheran it certainly hasoverlaps. It has overlays that
really make it a part of thehistory and heritage of college.
And I think that's great Thechallenges. I mean, we could
talk about the challenges facinghigher education generally right
now, and those are stiff, right?
Those are very stiff. I thinkone of the challenges is because
(44:06):
of the financial commitment thatis higher education. Parents,
for reasons I don't blame themfor, are really interested in
the what the business communityused to only be the business
community would call ROI. Nowit's everybody talks about ROI
return on investment. You know,what skills are you going to get
from that major, that education,that class, that justify you
(44:30):
spending the time and money todo it. And so those skills are,
very often you dual columnaccounting or computer
programming, or, you know,whatever, statistics, right?
Those things are really easilyquantifiable skills that might
be useful in the workplace,although I think even that is
starting to be challenged alittle bit with the rise of of
(44:50):
AI and computer technologygenerally, depending on the
field that you're looking at.
Humanities disciplines like ourshave long sort of we've had
always bad language and talkingabout the soft skills, or the
transferable skills, being ableto think critically or write
cogently or whatever, right? Theyeah, we'll take that, right? We
(45:10):
teach all that that's good. WhatI would really like people to
recognize, though, is what wetalked about earlier, like
understanding humans isimportant to living in the
world, and I think we do thatright? And I think that's our
challenge, is it's hard to getpeople to see and take seriously
that, right? I think the otherthing we joke about is, if you
(45:33):
declared your major when youwere 70 years old, religion
studies would be the biggestmajor on campus, right? Because
people start to think about, youknow, those big questions,
right, questions of meaning andvalue. I mean, not that 20 year
olds never think about them, butthe proportion of your thinking
gets bigger and bigger as as youmove on in your in your life.
(45:55):
And so, you know, convincing a20 year old that you know this
is not only useful, but this ispart of the good life, is
thinking about these bigquestions and learning how to
operate and understand your ownworld like is deeply meaningful
in itself and will help younavigate our world better. And
(46:17):
that's that's our challenge isto be promoters of what we do as
not just this fun thing on theside or this thing that some
people are interested in, butsomething that is essential for
navigating the world as best asyou can.
Christine Flicker (46:32):
Okay, so the question that you like to ask
all of our ReligionWise guests,I will now ask you, what have we
not talked about? What would besomething that you would want to
make sure to talk about beforewe end today?
Chip Gruen (46:45):
I think I would answer this question you know
asked me on 10 different days, Iwould probably have 10 different
answers. But one of the thingsthat you know, here we are
sitting in August. We're gettingready to at the end of the month
go back and meet a new group ofstudents that I'm teaching. And
the thing that I think on thefirst day of class, that I
emphasize more and more and moreand more, is engagement. It is
(47:08):
really easy to operate inautopilot through this world we
live in. It is really easy toscroll through one's phone,
right? Let AI do the heavylifting for you, to check out of
what's really important in ourworld. Don't do that, right?
That that is not what it meansto be human. We are inquisitive
(47:33):
by nature, as Clifford Geertz,the anthropologist, says, we are
meaning seeking animals. And Ithink to neglect that aspect of
who we are and what it means tobe human will not only lead to a
more impoverished life,spiritually, mentally,
emotionally, but also a lesssuccessful one. And so choose to
(47:57):
engage and here I'll give thepitch for what we do be engaged
with us, right? Unfortunately,our listenership is highly
dependent on if people like orsubscribe or comment on
episodes, but if you think whatyou've heard is useful on
ReligionWise, do all of thosethings so that you can help
(48:19):
somebody else the algorithms tofind other people, right? We can
use these tools. We can use thesort of strangely dystopian
electronic world we live in totalk about the meaning and value
and the things that are soimportant that help us connect
with other people. If you'rereally super interested, come to
Muhlenberg College and you know,some Tuesday evenings and during
(48:42):
the academic year and come to aa WorldViews session, or reach
out to us for an invitation tothe Wallenberg Lecture. You may
quibble with how we do thingsright, and you may have
disagreements with our methodsand how we operate, and I'm
totally fine with that. That'sgreat. I'd love to have that
conversation, but we really forno ulterior motives, try to
(49:07):
address these problems that areso pressing. And we need
conversation partners. We needpeople to help us on that
journey. So be engaged with us.
And if you're a part of areligious community that you
feel has not been adequatelyrepresented in our programming,
reach out to us. We are happy totake suggestions. Or if you're a
(49:28):
lawyer or a doctor or a teacheror a EMT or you know, a business
person you know who likes tothink about the intersections of
your field and religion. Youknow, that's a great
ReligionWise episode, one of theones I'll just give a pitch
about how this may not alwaysseem again, part of our native
(49:49):
programming, but one of myfavorite episodes we've done on
here, I encourage you to go backand look was Dustin Grim, who is
a funeral director. And think,thinking about, how does
thinking about religion affectthe way that you deal with end
of life issues as a funeraldirector, like that's
fascinating. That's interesting.
And I think that that is one ofhundreds of places where
(50:12):
religion interacts with ourprofessional lives or our
cultural lives. You don't haveto be a priest or a rabbi or a
pastor to have interactions withreligion. So that's what we try
to do. So be engaged with us.
You know, we're always happy tohave the conversation. And I
just want to give a shout out toChristine, who has hosted this
episode. She does not like to bebehind the mic. She likes to be
(50:38):
behind the scenes a little bitmore, so I really appreciate her
crossing over and joining me inthis episode. So thank you very
much.
Christine Flicker (50:48):
Thanks, Chip.
This has been fun.
Chip Gruen (50:52):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. ReligionWiseis produced and directed by
Christine Flicker. For moreinformation about additional
programming or to make aninquiry about a speaking
engagement, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com There,you'll find our contact
(51:12):
information, links to otherprogramming and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. Please
subscribe to ReligionWisewherever you get your podcasts,
We look forward to seeing younext time.
Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host.
Chip Gruen, so today we're doingsomething a little different. We
have talked for a long time, soChristine Flicker and I, who is
the producer and editor of thepodcast, have talked for a long
time about whether we could do amailbag episode, because we do
get questions, whether it be atpublic programming, at
(00:25):
conferences I attend, orprofessional development, where
I'm talking about religiousliteracy and empathetic
understanding, that we getquestions. And a lot of the
questions, I think, really go tothe heart of what we do and why
we do it, and how we do it, andhow we do it, and how that might
be different from other kinds ofsimilar organizations. So we've
(00:45):
gathered some of those questionsand those comments together and
tried to formulate a set ofquestions that can get to you
know, sort of the gist of it. Asit turns out, I was a guest on a
podcast Maurice Bloom's, "Walk,Talk, Listen"a few weeks ago, I
encourage you to go and findthat and discovered that there
were a lot of things that Ithought might be interesting for
(01:07):
our listeners to hear, but maybeweren't exactly in the
wheelhouse of ReligionWise, sothis incorporates maybe a little
bit of that material as well. Sothough Christine likes to stay
behind the microphone. I havecoerced her into being co host
for this episode and to fire offthe questions. So Christine,
(01:28):
it's great to have you here.
Christine Flicker (01:29):
Thanks, Chip.
I'm glad to be here.
Chip Gruen (01:31):
So with all that being said, let's just jump
right to it.
Christine Flicker (01:35):
All right, so the Institute emphasizes what
you describe as religiousliteracy and reasoned analysis
of religion in public discourse.
Can you explain what this meansand why it's important? How does
religious literacy differ frominterfaith dialogue, and what
does this mean for how youdesign the programming?
Chip Gruen (01:53):
So I think the important thing to emphasize
first is that in the publicconversation about religion, it
is dominated by this thing thatwe call interfaith dialogue. And
one of the principal ideas, orthe foundations of interfaith
(02:14):
dialogue, is that I as areligious person, talk to you as
a religious person, and wefigure out what we have in
common, right? We figure outmaybe projects that we can work
on together, that but it allends up being, you know,
foundationally starting from theplace of your own religious
(02:35):
identity. And so I've beenthinking about this a little bit
lately, of examples of how thiscan potentially be a problem. So
one example is, I rememberteaching a class on the
historical Jesus years ago, andI had a Buddhist monk in the
class, and we would talk aboutthe teachings of Jesus as they
(02:56):
appeared, you know, in theGospel materials. And he said,
Oh yes, you know, my masteralways used to say that Jesus
was really close toenlightenment. And so it's an
interesting right, dynamic. Onthe one hand, he is coming and
learning about this material,but on the other hand, he is not
shelving his own sort ofreligious identity, and so he's
(03:19):
organizing the world in his ownworldview, right? Though, it's
sort of onboarding a differentset of material. You know
another example of this is whenI teach a New Testament class,
like one of the things we haveto do is talk about Jewish
foundations. And if you're aChristian student in the class,
and you understand Judaism fromChristianity's perspective,
(03:39):
rather than from its ownperspective, like you're going
to go wrong, right? There'ssomething that is not that full
empathetic understanding, but isstarting from a place that is
already informed with adifferent worldview. And so what
we really try to do is say, Allright, let's bracket if we can,
(04:01):
and that's not an easy thing todo, right? But bracket your own
identity, bracket your what youthink about the world, and
really be as open to other waysof imagining the world than than
your own. I think about this. Wewhen, when I first was director
of the Institute. We had one ofour local theater professors
(04:24):
came on and was talking aboutacting in a program that we did
that was sort of tangentiallyrelated to the work of the
Institute. Holly Kate and shetalked about the care and, oh,
you know, responsibility ofinhabiting a character and
really trying to get in, and itwas really kind of influential
(04:48):
on me, about thinking about howsimilar, right that is, that
that is a practice of trying tobe empathetic, trying to get
into the skin of somebody else.
Now we know. Right? You can't,you can't ever really get away
from who you are, but you got totry, right? You got to try, and
you got to try to understandpeople who are not yourself in
(05:08):
this world, otherwise, it's atremendously dull world.
Christine Flicker (05:14):
Yeah, I think we always talk about, if even
for a moment, you can pictureyourself in the shoes of
someone, someone else'sworldview and their existence,
that it's just for that momentso important.
Chip Gruen (05:25):
And I think one of the things, and I'm really
excited actually, that we'regoing to have for our one of our
events this year is theWallenberg Tribute that happens
every November. And if you'reinterested in attending that
event, you know, reach out to usand we can get you information,
but it's somebody who doesreligion and the alt right, and
he, you know, he's has nosympathy for these people, but
(05:49):
understands that if, if you wantto, you know, be able to to deal
with, encounter right, theseabhorrent ideas, that you have
to sort of be able to empathizewith people who you might not
want to have conversations within normal right, in just the
normal passage of things thatmight not be part of your world.
(06:13):
And that, I think, is one of theother pitfalls of that
interfaith idea is that you getpeople together who want to talk
to one another. Well, there area lot of religious ideas and
religious communities and peoplewho think that they're right and
are not interested in sharingwith anybody else. So are they
just not part of theconversation, right? So I think
(06:33):
that it opens up a whole notherset of religious communities
when you can sort of say, I as ahuman want to understand any
number of different groups youknow who might not participate
in public discourse otherwise.
Christine Flicker (06:50):
Your background as a scholar of
ancient Christianity and youremphasis on studying religion
from an outsider stance in thecontext of free inquiry suggests
a particular methodologicalapproach. How do you balance the
study of religion with theexperiences that people who
practice traditions, both thosethat are the subject of our
programming, and those thatmight be in the audience?
Chip Gruen (07:11):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I've that I
think informs my work, and issort of disappointing to me, is
I really love the discipline I'min the religious studies
discipline. And there's acertain sub community in that
religious studies world that,you know, one of the monikers
is, you know, neither criticsnor caretakers, right? It's not
our job to support religion andtalk about how religion is this
(07:35):
great thing and this positiveforce in the world. And, on the
other hand, it's not our job torun it down and say, Oh, more
people have been killed in thename a religion than any other
cultural force, right? Likewe're here to call balls and
strikes. We're here tounderstand this thing as a human
phenomenon. And it'sdisappointing to me how much
that is not a part of the publicconversation. I mean, that
(07:57):
happens in religious studies,classrooms, in higher education
all across the country, allaround the world. It's not every
religious studies classroom, butit's a big part of it. And I've
really started to be interested,particularly with the Institute,
of taking some of those lessonsand making them less niche, less
(08:19):
abstract, and showing theirpractical value, right? So we do
professional development forschool teachers, right? For
example, there are lots ofopportunities to do professional
development for medicalprofessionals or legal
professionals or firstresponders, you know, people who
need to understand religion, notin a kind of interfaith dialog
(08:41):
kind of way. But hey, I'mencountering religious
individuals and communities inmy work. How can a more nuanced,
more empathetic, more literateview of religious difference
help me do my job better? And sothat really informs our
programming. That informs, youknow, how we do what we do, and
(09:04):
it is the case, if you listen tome long enough, I will drop
ancient references on you. It isthe case that that's what I
studied, right? That religion inthe Roman Empire was sort of the
focus of my PhD work, althoughin a religious studies
methodological, more broadmethodological framework, but
you know, the past, as it issaid, is a foreign country,
(09:24):
right? Like that there is a anact of sort of creative empathy
because of the distance of 2000years that you have to develop.
And I would say to my students,if a method is a good method, it
can transcend time, right? Andit can transcend into different
communities. And so I've taken,you know, what does it mean to
(09:46):
try to understand ancientChristian Gnostics or, you know,
marcionites, or whatever thatI'm interested in in my own
work. How can we translate thatinto thinking about our own
local communities? And you knowthat ends up fueling the kinds
of questions we ask, and reallyaugments that, that critical
(10:07):
distance, that scholarlydistance, that I think is
sometimes lacking in the publicconversation.
Christine Flicker (10:13):
Your research increasingly focuses on using
religious studies methods, asyou just talked about, to
influence the publicconversation on contemporary
religious diversity. Thisobviously suggests kind of a
move from traditional academicscholarship towards a more
public facing kind of work. Inwhat ways do you envision
(10:33):
religious studies methods beingable to address religious
literacy in that publicconversation?
Chip Gruen (10:39):
Yeah, and I think you know, just kind of building
on what we were just talkingabout, that this can be very
hard for people in the public. Imean, I remember talking to a
group of principals in the areaand sort of giving my my spiel,
my presentation, as a part ofthis professional development
about how important it is tounderstand the the children in
(11:02):
your classroom. In this case,because you're talking about
public schools, and we live inthe in the Lehigh Valley and
increasingly diverse world, Ithink we'll talk about that
little little later. It's anincreasingly diverse community.
And this principal came up to meand she said, I just never
thought about talking aboutreligion, not from a religious
perspective. And, you know,sometimes, you know, when I'm
(11:27):
sitting alone in the dark, Ithink, gosh, is everything I say
about this topic just the mostobvious thing ever. And then I
realized, you know, I havesomething like that happen. I'm
like, No, this is not native,right? This is not sort of the
natural hardware we're givenwhen we talk about religion. It
is our sort of go to to want totalk about my religion, right
(11:49):
when we have this and we, youknow, we view it as this sort of
deeply, not only personal, butprivate thing. And so we
sometimes lack the capacity todo this well, and so it is a
challenge right to bring this toa public audience. This is a
little bit in the weeds, but Ithink it's really good example.
(12:12):
I did a public talk, andsomebody had sent me a poster on
the golden rule. So, you knowthe golden rule. Of course,
people from Christianbackgrounds will know, you know,
do unto others as you would havethem do unto you. And what this
(12:32):
poster did is it trained. Itsaid, Oh, this isn't just a
Christian idea. You can findthis in Judaism, you can find in
Islam, you can find in Hinduism.
And it sort of had quotes that,more or less you know, had a
similar idea. So you might befamiliar with what's sometimes
called the Silver Rule, right?
That is a sort of a less, lessselfless understanding of this,
(12:56):
don't do unto others as youwould have them, not do unto
you, or something like this,right? But you get various
versions of something similar.
It's just basic ethicalprinciple, and I remember, so I
sort of unpacked this thing andsaid, Yeah, but notice how this
is saying that this is valuablein all these other traditions,
because it's found inChristianity. So it's that thing
of regular, you know, sort ofnormalizing other beliefs by
finding commonality with thething that you're already a part
(13:19):
of, and that that's, that's sortof a questionable way to
approach religious difference.
And so I go in whole spiel, andsomebody afterwards comes up to
me, and he says, I really lovethat poster. Where can I get a
copy of it? I shared the posterwith him. It's not a, you know,
(13:40):
a useless thing, but I was like,oh, you weren't listening
really, right? So, so this canbe right when, when you're, when
you're sort of originalsoftware. Is to think about all
religion in terms of your ownthat can be a real challenge.
Christine Flicker (13:56):
You have argued that knowledge of world
religions from a nonconfessional perspective is not
a luxury, but a necessity for21st Century leaders, and that
the most important attributethat the academic study of
religion offers is the abilityto understand others. Can you
explain what you mean by a nonconfessional perspective? And
then, how does that claim aboutthe academic study of religion
(14:17):
affect the work of theInstitute?
Chip Gruen (14:20):
Yeah, so non confessional is just kind of a
fancy way of talking about, youknow, not from a religious
perspective, right? So in ourreligious studies classes, we
don't teach people how to be abetter Christian or a better Jew
or a better Hindu, right? It'snot, it's not seminary, it's not
theology. It is studyingreligion is a cultural product,
(14:41):
right? So the example Isometimes give is in a political
science department, youshouldn't, I don't know if this
is true of all political sciencedepartments, but you shouldn't
learn how to be a betterRepublican or how to be a better
Democrat, right? You learn aboutpolitical processes. You learn
about political systems. Youlearn about how they work,
right? Maybe you learn how to bean inside operative from that,
(15:05):
but it's not the fundamentalgoals. And so it is here, right?
So you learn how religionfunctions. Some of it is
history. Some it isphenomenological. Like, what is
it, you know? What is it like tostep into a cathedral, for
example, what are the ritualsthat you'll see? How do you
understand those? And you know,and maybe you know students,
(15:26):
using that example, Catholicstudents come learn about their
own tradition, and they arehappy with that and that that's
good, but that's not myfundamental goal. My fundamental
goal is to sort of offer up amore neutral view, non
confessional view of this thingas a thing that humans do,
religion as a thing that humansdo. And you know, my take on
(15:47):
this, I really, I'm biased, ofcourse, but I really think that
that we should be one of themost popular majors on campus,
because no matter what you do,you have to deal with people,
right? And or you get to dealwith people. I can be more
positive. You get to deal withpeople. So, you know, if you're
in pre med, like, what a greatsecond major, right to major.
(16:11):
And we have students who dothis, but how you understand
what it is to be human, how youunderstand what the relationship
is to the body, is to the self,what you think death means, what
you think birth means, what whatis like? All of those questions
that are dealt with fromreligious perspectives are front
and center in the doctor'soffice a lot. And so if you
(16:32):
haven't considered right thatyou know those more more
abstract, more cosmologicalquestions when you're talking to
a patient, you're really missingout, right? I like to tell my
pre med students that being adoctor is not like working on a
car, right, that there's, it'snot like you just take one part
out and put another in, likethere's a whole context there,
(16:54):
that if you're going to be agood doctor, right, you need to
pay attention to. And I thinkthat you could run down the
gamut of professions. I meanfrom, you know, business, if you
do, I mean not onlyinternational business, but
just, you know, businessgenerally, that you're going to
deal with people whofundamentally view the world
differently from the way thatyou do and and even if you don't
(17:15):
know all the ins and outs ofthat worldview that you're
encountering, that it is adifferent worldview would make
you so much better at whatyou're doing, or, like I said,
law, we do a lot with schoolteachers, right? That you know
that the religious diversity inyour classroom, how you how they
think about the world, and whattheir family background is, and
(17:37):
how that affects the way thatthey think again, of all of
these things, what it means tolive a good life, what is the
purpose of education? So many ofthose things are inflected by
religion. So yeah, so I thinkthat that's really that's why I
say it's not a luxury, but anecessity. If you're going to
deal in our smaller and smallerworld with lots of different
kinds of people like this is aleg up for you.
Christine Flicker (17:59):
Part of the Institute's mission emphasizes
learning how to examine, analyzeand publicly discuss religious
traditions productively andwithout judgment, and you've
written about the need for adispassionate third party
perspective when viewingreligious phenomena.
Understanding and analyzingwhile withholding judgment seems
central to academic religiousstudies, but as we discussed, it
(18:21):
can be really challenging forpublic audiences. How do you
help community members developthese analytical skills when
discussing traditions that mayconflict with what they hold as
deep beliefs?
Chip Gruen (18:35):
So I want to answer this by getting a little more
specific about the kinds ofprogramming we do. So if you're
a ReligionWise listener, youknow you can see that we really
run the gamut around differenttypes of not only religious
practice, but also ways in whichreligion affects public life in
a million different ways, likewe really want to be all
(18:57):
encompassing. And if you're nota ReligionWise listener,
regularly go back and listen toour back catalog, but one of the
other events that we do iscalled WorldViews. And
WorldViews happens live oncampus, although you can stream
that as well. Go toreligionandculture.com, and you
can find the links for the livestreaming, get on our mailing
(19:17):
list and all of that. But thatis different. It invites people
from religious communities totalk about their own worldviews,
their belief and practice, howtheir community interacts with
and is a part of the the localarea or the region. And you
know, you know, Christine, wehave these conversations all the
(19:38):
time because, on the one hand,they are a really interesting
primary source for ourconstituency, right to hear a,
you know, for example, we hadsomeone who was a certifying
Rabbi for kosher regulations ona couple of years ago, and to
hear him talk about kashrut,right, and to talk about the how
(20:00):
of that and some of the why. Itjust gives you a totally
different right perspective. Butlike I say, we are really
interested in casting a verywide net. And so we will have
people from Jewish communities,Christian communities, Hindu
communities, Muslim communities,and then also, you know, pagan
(20:22):
communities, or humanists. Wehad a humanist on before, or,
you know, we really try tospread that net out so that if
is, if it is something that youmight encounter within our own
landscape, you will encounter itin WorldViews. And you can
imagine, you know, that thatmight ruffle people's feathers,
(20:44):
and we've a great supporter ofthe Institute, comes up to me
sometimes to say, Well, this onewas a hard one for me. You know?
And it's like, yeah, that'sThat's right, right, that's
right. Because if we're onlyever surrounded by things that
we, you know, are verycomfortable with, we're not
growing, we're not learning,we're not sort of stretching
those muscles as to how to, youknow, how to encounter
(21:04):
difference. And, you know, andwe push that envelope. We had a
Raelian on last year onWorldViews, you know, which is
one of the UFO religions reallyinterested in Alien discourses.
And, you know, we got a commentonline. Somebody had responded
and said, Why do I need to payattention to this charlatan
(21:27):
religious practice, right? And,you know, clearly not the words
I would use. I think we need torespect, you know, particularly
our guests, but people in ourworld generally. It's like,
Yeah, but look at theopportunity for methodological
sophistication here, right?
Like, how can you practicetaking something seriously and
learning about it, understandingit when you have no regard for
(21:47):
it, right? So shelve thatjudgment, shelve that no regard
in order to strengthen thosemuscles, because you can learn
lessons. I mean, maybe you'llnever come into contact with a
Raelian again in your life. Butif you're strengthening those
muscles about how to deal withdifference, then you know, I
don't know, you grew up in aBaptist house, you go to a
Catholic wedding. Like you havethe tools then to understand and
(22:09):
unpack and to and to reallyappreciate something that is
different from what you mightyou might be used to. Another
thing that we have dealt with,and we've talked about this in
our WorldViews program as well,is that there are different ways
of talking about religion,obviously, so that our
(22:32):
WorldViews guests come asinsiders, right? And talking
about their deeply held beliefs,right? Talk about their own
communities, and I, as ascholar, some of my colleagues
in the audience of scholars.
Some of my students certainlywill be doing this dispassionate
perspective, trying tounderstand and trying to
analyze, and not every guest whocomes to talk about their
(22:56):
worldview is particularlyinterested in that. So we've
thought about doing a talkbacksession that is separate. You
know, like I say, we try to bevery respectful and empathetic
to our to our guests, but Ialways like to have my students
talk afterwards, like, what didyou notice? What met your
expectations? What didn't meetyour expectations? And so
(23:17):
there's a little bit of abifurcation there between what
happens in the session, and whatmight be the debriefing that
happens after. So to go back forjust to give an example of this,
talking about the kosherregulations like one of the
things that you notice if you'rethinking sociologically about
religious systems or religiouspractice, is that kosher
(23:37):
regulations just sociologicallyseparate people who follow
kosher from not, I mean, evensomething as simple as our
dining hall on campus, which hasgreat kosher offerings, but they
because of some of theseregulations, they are served on
paper rather than on ceramic.
And so there's something that isan immediate tell that you're
eating the kosher food, and it'slike, that's fine. I mean,
(23:59):
nobody's judging anybody aboutthat. It's a perfectly great
thing. The food is good. I eatat the Noshery myself, but it is
a visible recognition of aparticular kind of practice and
that that serves certainsociological goals, whether
they're intended or not. Well,that might be a weird thing to
talk about, right with thisperson who does the
(24:21):
certification, because I thinkhe would not imagine, or want to
imagine, these regulations assomething that separates people,
right? He would want to see itmore as something that binds the
community together. So, youknow, there is sensitivity here.
Christine Flicker (24:35):
So listening to you, it is clear that
emphasizing difference, ratherthan just focusing on similarity
as a key method for getting atthe religious literacy and
empathetic understanding. Do youever receive pushback on this
idea that calling out differenceis creating division? When what
we should be doing is bringingindividuals and communities
(24:56):
together?
Chip Gruen (24:58):
I think this is a great question. Actually it's,
it's one that was, was asked ofme at a at a conference on
thinking about religiousdiversity in public education.
We were doing a program there,and I'm sensitive to it, right?
In a world that is so polarizedand there's so much animosity,
(25:19):
right, even you know,politically, much less racially
or religiously or culturally,right? There's lots of
suspicion. That emphasizingsimilarity knee jerk reaction
seems like the thing that makesmost sense, right? Can't we all
just get along? Can't we allagree right on X or on Y, and I
(25:42):
think that I don't blame anybodyfor feeling that way. I think it
is, again, a good sort of firststep. But if you take that to
you think about the consequencesof that, I think it's in the
long term more dangerous andmore divisive than confronting
(26:02):
difference from the get go,because, and I think, you know,
I think we've seen this on ourown campus. You take something
like, you know, if you take anykind of religious conflict from
around the world, that, ifyou've been telling yourself
that there really are notfundamental differences in the
(26:23):
way that you view the world,that you really agree on the
most important things. And thenan event happens that splits the
community, and one group says,you know, understands it one
way, and another groupunderstands it another way, but
that if you haven't stopped toconsider why people might view
(26:48):
those events differently, right,you've convinced yourself that
we all really do just see theworld the same way. My code for
this is we're all pink on theinside, right? If you don't
think about the cultural andreligious difference that that
might lead people to understandor interpret or unpack events
differently. Then when somethinglike that happens, you're left
(27:10):
looking across the table andthinking, I don't know you. I
thought I did, but I don't,right. And so I think our
strategy here, and I say thisall the time, particularly in
those WorldViews sessions thatI've mentioned and some of our
other professional developmentprograms that we do, is that if
you have relatively low stakesconversations across difference,
(27:34):
then that can prepare you forwhen there is a high stakes
conversation across difference.
So one of my favorite programsthat we did is we had local some
members of local Muslimcommunity reached out about
World Hijab Day, that happens inFebruary. And so we had someone
leader, a female leader fromthat community, who came and
(27:56):
talked about wearing the hijab.
And you know, at least fromwhere I'm sitting, that feels
much lower stakes, right? Thenone of the local Imams always
says, I want to come and I wantto talk about Jihad and what
that means, and that's higherstakes, right? But you can
practice with thinking about,Okay, this community, or members
(28:18):
of this community, have a headcovering, and what does that
mean, and why is that importantto them, and how do they want to
be treated when they're wearingit, and what does it signal, and
all of those things like, youknow, no doubt that everybody
went home from that event andslept just fine that night, even
though we were talking aboutdifference, right? Even though
we were talking about somethingthat is a marker of cultural
(28:40):
difference, and we got into morecomplicated things there, right?
You can talk about gender andpower dynamics and leadership
and all of these sorts ofthings, but it was good
practice. And again, I mean, Ialways think about, like lifting
weights here, right? That youneed to sort of prepare your
your intellectual, you know,capabilities, the way that you
prepare your muscles, right? Youneed to test them and and those
(29:02):
are good tests. And then whensomething harder comes along,
well maybe you're betterprepared to deal with it. No, I
think if you go into a room, adiverse room, whether, again,
racially, culturally,religiously, gender, sexuality,
and you just convince yourselfthat everybody is really
fundamentally the same, you'regoing to have that erode really
(29:27):
quickly, and you're not going toknow how to deal with the
differences there. So my take onthis is to deal with difference
head on from the very beginning.
And this can be easy. I mean, wehave a program called
Understanding Our Neighbors,that is a book project for
elementary school libraries andclassrooms. And you know, this
can be as zero entry as you wantit to be, where the food that is
(29:52):
eaten in this community looksdifferent than the food that you
might be used to, right? Andthat's okay, yeah. Right? That
that that can be a conversationabout difference, you know, and
then you obviously can get moremore complicated from there.
Christine Flicker (30:07):
Yeah, I always think of it as, you know,
again, that muscle memory thatyou're building of practicing
that skill. And though our topicis about religion, over the
years that I've been workingwith you here at the Institute,
it's that skill is coming up injust conversations with people
where I where they'll saysomething, whether it's
political or whatever the casemay be. And I think, okay,
(30:29):
suspend my judgment. You know,think about the empathy of
trying to understand theirworldviews. Why might they be
thinking that way? What's Whatare they coming from that brings
that opinion to thiscircumstance? And you're right,
the more that you do that withlow, low impact, low risk, we
talk about that as we bring upour children, you know, in this
low risk, low consequenceenvironment, what can you learn
(30:51):
about interacting with otherpeople that you could then take
to the more difficultsituations?
Chip Gruen (30:58):
I mean, think about, you know, I've been thinking
more and more about about howthese muscles are good for other
things, other than understandingreligious diversity and again,
our political, you know,situation right now is just
really, really awful, right? Andthink about watching, I mean,
nobody watches the evening newsanymore, but Right? Think about
watching a film clip of peoplejust absolutely in one another's
faces, yelling at one another.
That's what we don't want,right?
Christine Flicker (31:22):
Right.
Chip Gruen (31:23):
And so you know, when next time you see that,
think about, all right, whatcould some empathy for somebody
who's very different from you?
It doesn't mean you agree withthem. It doesn't mean that you
think their ideas bear equalweight to yours, even, or that
they're legitimate, right? Butjust sort of thinking about why,
(31:43):
given who they are and theirworldview and where they're
coming from, maybe how they grewup, or what their community
looks like, just for 30 seconds,how can that help you interact
with them better, morefruitfully, not only for your
own good and your own sanity,but for theirs. But it's tough,
right? It's tough, particularlyas the conversations are more
(32:07):
heated and closer to the bone,right? You don't want to give
your opponent that much grace,right, or that much legitimacy.
But I would argue that that'sonly imagining them as humans,
right, who operate and humansare capable of bad things,
right? This should be a surpriseto no one. Humans are capable of
believing bad things, of actingbadly, of being intolerant. So
(32:31):
we're trying to provide a set oftools that allows us to think
about that difference, orperfectly fine people who the
Methodist next door. You canunderstand them too, right? Like
that there's like that this isjust a way of understanding
humanity.
Christine Flicker (32:52):
As we think about and what we've been
talking about a lot has beensort of our local community here
in the Lehigh Valley. But theInstitute also seeks to address
global religious diversity. Howdo you balance the needs of the
local community with thisbroader perspective? Do you find
that local audiences are morereceptive to certain types of
religious diversity than others,and how does this influence the
(33:13):
programming decisions?
Chip Gruen (33:15):
You know, I think we're we're in a really good
place to do the work that we'redoing. So, you know, we've
mentioned the Lehigh Valley,sort of mid Atlantic. We're
about an hour north of Philly,an hour and a half west of of
New York City. And this area,I've been in this area for about
20 years now, and even in thetime that I've been here, it's
(33:37):
gotten, I mean, the Sikhcommunity, actually, I was gonna
say it's gotten more and morediverse, right? I think we're
recognizing the diversity moreand more. Like the Sikh
community has been here waylonger, right, since the 80s.
The local, or the local Syriancommunity, that is some
Christian and some, you know,some Muslim, has been here. I
(33:57):
mean, the local Syrian Christiancommunity has been here 100
years. I mean, it's very old. Soit's not just a matter of
chronology, but, you know, ofthis area getting more diverse
over time, but, but I thinkdemographically, it is shifting
a little bit, right, even thoughthese communities have been,
have been here a while, so thatthere is more immigration to the
(34:19):
Lehigh Valley, we have a very wehave some industries that
attract people from particularkinds of communities, or that,
because there are oldcommunities, these seem like
safe or welcoming things for newimmigrant families to come here,
so that they grow so. So I thinkthat the local and the global
(34:40):
collapse a little bit when youcan find Islamic communities,
Hindu communities, Sikhcommunities, Jain communities.
You know, every variety ofChristianity and Judaism that
you can think of, pagancommunities. Like a lot of the
religious diversity that isglobal is here as well. Now,
obviously it's inflecteddifferently, right? That it, it
(35:01):
sort of manifests itselfdifferently in a 21st Century,
moderately urban environmentthan it would in South Asia or
in the Middle East, or whereverthose those religious systems or
the religious communitiesoriginated. So I don't think
we're having to make thatdistinction as much I mean, as
(35:24):
if we were in a more homogeneousarea. And for us, it's really
great too, because we have localinformants, right? We have
people, we have localcommunities that we can tap. So
one of the great joys of myposition is being able to make
relationships with the HinduTemple Society or the Islamic
Education Center ofPennsylvania, or the local
(35:48):
church of Jesus Christ, LatterDay Saints. We got a great, a
great informant from thatcommunity, you know, the local
there's a Lehigh Valley PaganPride organization making
connections with them. We wantto be involved, right with all
of that diversity, we want themto be a part of what we do and
to appreciate not only thatwe're trying to understand and
(36:08):
trying to bring greater literacyabout their communities, but
also that they have as muchresponsibility as anybody else
to understand communities thatare not there themselves either.
So makes me, you know,incredibly happy when you see
your friends from local Muslimcommunity who come for the event
that features Hinduism, forexample, right? Because we, you
(36:31):
know, this is a two way street.
It's always got to be a two waystreet. You know, one of the
old, I think that this is aascribed to St Francis, but I
love it, so I'll give it to StFrancis again, who knows where
it originally came from, butit's "understand before seeking
to be understood." And I thinkif we all did that right, if we
all sort of, you know, ratherthan wanting to tell our story,
(36:54):
and maybe that's why it's takenfour years for me to want to
talk about on the podcast, youknow, like, what the
methodological rightunderpinnings are. We want to
share other people'sperspectives and stories first.
But if we seek to understandothers before we tell everybody
right or want to share our ownstories, then you know, we're
halfway home then.
Christine Flicker (37:18):
You have argued that contemporary
discourse too quickly dismissesreligious motivations as, quote,
unquote, really being aboutpolitics, power or class,
refusing to take religiousaspects seriously. Yet you also
note that religion is somethingwe are encouraged not to
discuss. What's your assessmentof the state of religion and
public discourse?
Chip Gruen (37:39):
I get frustrated a little bit when you have a world
event, or, you know, somethingin the news, or interaction with
the community that, on thesurface is looks religious
right, and you know, some ofsome other fields in academia
(38:03):
will look at that and say, Oh,well, religion is just a thin
veil for, you know, power orclass or politics or other
things. And so what you reallyneed to do is you need to
understand the politics, youneed to understand the
sociology. You need tounderstand, right, the history
of the region, whatever, tryingto regularize religion
(38:24):
underneath another kind of wayof knowing. Now I'm here to tell
you history and sociology andpolitics and political science,
and you know, some of thediscourses on power that we have
all great, super useful.
Absolutely, go study all thatstuff, but don't do it at the
expense of the motivations ofthe what the people say
(38:46):
themselves, right? If I say I'mdoing this as a religious
individual, maybe you need tounderstand their religion and
their religious community. Oneof the places, and this is equal
on the right and the left. Imean, you can probably guess my
I will never out myselfpolitically, but you can
probably guess my leanings. Buthere I will give you an
indictment of both the left andthe right when talking about
(39:11):
religion, that when somethingbad happens in the name of
religion, that you'll get apolitician or somebody in the
public square will stand up andsay, well, that's not legitimate
Christianity, or that's notlegitimate Judaism or legitimate
Islam or legitimate Hinduism.
This is the tradition has beenhijacked for their own nefarious
(39:35):
purposes. I don't I'm not in theI'm not in the business of
talking about what is real,authentic tradition and what is
not. I can talk about if I wereof x tradition, that is not the
way that I would want tointerpret it and understand it.
So much of what we do is stickyor difficult, right? But you get
somebody who bombs an abortionclinic or something like that,
(39:58):
horrible, heinous right? Right,really awful. But they say that
they do it because theirChristianity demands it, right,
that this is what Jesus wantsfor them to do. Not the way that
I would interpret the tradition,right, not the way that I would
sort of sign up to be Christian.
But I think that to dismiss thatis not a sincere motivation is
(40:22):
short circuiting your ability tounderstand why they do, why they
chose to do this thing, right?
And you know, you can thinkabout about any number of things
that people claim to do as apart of their religious
practice. And I think if we justdismiss religion as a motivating
(40:45):
factor, it doesn't get us closerto understanding. And if
understanding is the way ofcountering, deradicalizing, you
know, then, then I think, youknow, I think that the
understanding piece is moreimportant than the satisfaction
that we might get by sayingthat's not my religion, right?
(41:09):
My that there's no way that youcould come from, you know, the
Christian religious tradition,for example, and do that thing.
Well, there is a way, because wecan see that it happened, and it
happens in patterns, right? Somaybe we need to, you know, take
seriously these, these peopleand think about it, right? What
is the scriptural interpretationthat happens within that
(41:30):
community? How do theyunderstand history? How do they
understand community? How dothey understand the good life?
How do they understand eternallife? How do they understand,
you know, death and so forth.
It's not going to get youfurther away from understanding
what they've done, right and whythey might have done it. Doesn't
mean you have to condone it.
Doesn't mean that you have toaccept it as a legitimate form
(41:52):
of activity or a legitimate kindof discursive way of
understanding. But it's there,right? And I think hiding our
heads in the sand doesn't help.
Doesn't help at all.
Christine Flicker (42:04):
I always think of it as kind of like
you're trying to understandsomething without seeing all the
data. That all of those thingsweigh into the end result. So
let's switch gears a bit andthink about the Institute
operating within a liberal artscollege. How does the context of
Muhlenberg College affect thework of the institute? What
(42:26):
advantages does it offer andwhat challenges do you face in
maintaining community engagementwhile serving an academic
institution?
Chip Gruen (42:34):
Yeah, it's, you know, I've always said that
being in a liberal artsenvironment, being in a small
college like Muhlenberg is greatfor what I do, that I know
colleagues and some of thoseother disciplines we've just
mentioned right in history andsociology and anthropology and
philosophy and so forth, and sowe have this really great
opportunity to think aboutshared phenomena, right, history
(43:00):
or culture or whatever, from afrom a variety of different
perspectives, and that's reallygreat. And you know, in the
context here in particular, youknow, we have great support from
our administration right thatreally sees what we do as
valuable. And some of that istied to the Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America, the Lutheranheritage of the of the college.
(43:22):
So we celebrate, for example,Raoul Wallenberg mentioned the
Wallenberg event earlier,courageous moral action on
behalf of others. Right that?
The idea is that on behalf ofothers has roots right in in the
tradition in some places and andso while we don't practice
Lutheranism like I wouldn't saywhat we do is particularly
(43:43):
Lutheran it certainly hasoverlaps. It has overlays that
really make it a part of thehistory and heritage of college.
And I think that's great Thechallenges. I mean, we could
talk about the challenges facinghigher education generally right
now, and those are stiff, right?
Those are very stiff. I thinkone of the challenges is because
(44:06):
of the financial commitment thatis higher education. Parents,
for reasons I don't blame themfor, are really interested in
the what the business communityused to only be the business
community would call ROI. Nowit's everybody talks about ROI
return on investment. You know,what skills are you going to get
from that major, that education,that class, that justify you
(44:30):
spending the time and money todo it. And so those skills are,
very often you dual columnaccounting or computer
programming, or, you know,whatever, statistics, right?
Those things are really easilyquantifiable skills that might
be useful in the workplace,although I think even that is
starting to be challenged alittle bit with the rise of of
(44:50):
AI and computer technologygenerally, depending on the
field that you're looking at.
Humanities disciplines like ourshave long sort of we've had
always bad language and talkingabout the soft skills, or the
transferable skills, being ableto think critically or write
cogently or whatever, right? Theyeah, we'll take that, right? We
(45:10):
teach all that that's good. WhatI would really like people to
recognize, though, is what wetalked about earlier, like
understanding humans isimportant to living in the
world, and I think we do thatright? And I think that's our
challenge, is it's hard to getpeople to see and take seriously
that, right? I think the otherthing we joke about is, if you
(45:33):
declared your major when youwere 70 years old, religion
studies would be the biggestmajor on campus, right? Because
people start to think about, youknow, those big questions,
right, questions of meaning andvalue. I mean, not that 20 year
olds never think about them, butthe proportion of your thinking
gets bigger and bigger as as youmove on in your in your life.
(45:55):
And so, you know, convincing a20 year old that you know this
is not only useful, but this ispart of the good life, is
thinking about these bigquestions and learning how to
operate and understand your ownworld like is deeply meaningful
in itself and will help younavigate our world better. And
(46:17):
that's that's our challenge isto be promoters of what we do as
not just this fun thing on theside or this thing that some
people are interested in, butsomething that is essential for
navigating the world as best asyou can.
Christine Flicker (46:32):
Okay, so the question that you like to ask
all of our ReligionWise guests,I will now ask you, what have we
not talked about? What would besomething that you would want to
make sure to talk about beforewe end today?
Chip Gruen (46:45):
I think I would answer this question you know
asked me on 10 different days, Iwould probably have 10 different
answers. But one of the thingsthat you know, here we are
sitting in August. We're gettingready to at the end of the month
go back and meet a new group ofstudents that I'm teaching. And
the thing that I think on thefirst day of class, that I
emphasize more and more and moreand more, is engagement. It is
(47:08):
really easy to operate inautopilot through this world we
live in. It is really easy toscroll through one's phone,
right? Let AI do the heavylifting for you, to check out of
what's really important in ourworld. Don't do that, right?
That that is not what it meansto be human. We are inquisitive
(47:33):
by nature, as Clifford Geertz,the anthropologist, says, we are
meaning seeking animals. And Ithink to neglect that aspect of
who we are and what it means tobe human will not only lead to a
more impoverished life,spiritually, mentally,
emotionally, but also a lesssuccessful one. And so choose to
(47:57):
engage and here I'll give thepitch for what we do be engaged
with us, right? Unfortunately,our listenership is highly
dependent on if people like orsubscribe or comment on
episodes, but if you think whatyou've heard is useful on
ReligionWise, do all of thosethings so that you can help
(48:19):
somebody else the algorithms tofind other people, right? We can
use these tools. We can use thesort of strangely dystopian
electronic world we live in totalk about the meaning and value
and the things that are soimportant that help us connect
with other people. If you'rereally super interested, come to
Muhlenberg College and you know,some Tuesday evenings and during
(48:42):
the academic year and come to aa WorldViews session, or reach
out to us for an invitation tothe Wallenberg Lecture. You may
quibble with how we do thingsright, and you may have
disagreements with our methodsand how we operate, and I'm
totally fine with that. That'sgreat. I'd love to have that
conversation, but we really forno ulterior motives, try to
(49:07):
address these problems that areso pressing. And we need
conversation partners. We needpeople to help us on that
journey. So be engaged with us.
And if you're a part of areligious community that you
feel has not been adequatelyrepresented in our programming,
reach out to us. We are happy totake suggestions. Or if you're a
(49:28):
lawyer or a doctor or a teacheror a EMT or you know, a business
person you know who likes tothink about the intersections of
your field and religion. Youknow, that's a great
ReligionWise episode, one of theones I'll just give a pitch
about how this may not alwaysseem again, part of our native
(49:49):
programming, but one of myfavorite episodes we've done on
here, I encourage you to go backand look was Dustin Grim, who is
a funeral director. And think,thinking about, how does
thinking about religion affectthe way that you deal with end
of life issues as a funeraldirector, like that's
fascinating. That's interesting.
And I think that that is one ofhundreds of places where
(50:12):
religion interacts with ourprofessional lives or our
cultural lives. You don't haveto be a priest or a rabbi or a
pastor to have interactions withreligion. So that's what we try
to do. So be engaged with us.
You know, we're always happy tohave the conversation. And I
just want to give a shout out toChristine, who has hosted this
episode. She does not like to bebehind the mic. She likes to be
(50:38):
behind the scenes a little bitmore, so I really appreciate her
crossing over and joining me inthis episode. So thank you very
much.
Christine Flicker (50:48):
Thanks, Chip.
This has been fun.
Chip Gruen (50:52):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. ReligionWiseis produced and directed by
Christine Flicker. For moreinformation about additional
programming or to make aninquiry about a speaking
engagement, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com There,you'll find our contact
(51:12):
information, links to otherprogramming and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. Please
subscribe to ReligionWisewherever you get your podcasts,
We look forward to seeing younext time.
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