Religious Worlds of New York: The Everyday Life of American Religious Diversity

FAIN: ES-50507-13

Interfaith Center of New York (New York, NY 10115-0081)
Henry Goldschmidt (Project Director: March 2013 to April 2016)

A three-week summer institute for twenty-five middle and high school teachers on the religious diversity of America, exemplified in six religious traditions.

This three week institute will offer school teachers an advanced introduction to the religious diversity of the United States, through a classroom engagement with religious studies scholarship, and an ethnographic engagement with the religious life of New York City. Participants will explore six major religious traditions. They will discuss the constitutional and pedagogic issues surrounding the study of religion in public and private schools, and receive practical training to help them facilitate classroom discussions of religion. And they will work together to map the religious life of a New York neighborhood. The institute will thus give them the pedagogic tools they need to teach their students about “lived religion,” in addition to the conventional “world religions” curriculum -- that is, to teach young people about the everyday lives of their fellow Americans from diverse religious traditions, rather than simply the doctrines, rituals, and texts of these traditions.

Media Coverage

Taking (Public School) Teachers to Church, and the Mosque, and the Temple… (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Lisa Webster
Publication: Religion Dispatches
Date: 8/4/2014
URL: http://religiondispatches.org/taking-public-school-teachers-to-church-and-the-mosque-and-the-temple/