Education as Transformation:
Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and Higher Education

In September, as classes resumed in colleges and universities across the nation, an extraordinary event occurred in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Over eight hundred participants, including presidents, administrators, faculty, trustees, students, alumni, and religious life staff from 250 institutions of higher learning throughout the country gathered to explore:

• The impact of religious diversity on institutions of higher education and the potential of religious pluralism as a strategy to address the dramatic growth of religious diversity in America's colleges and universities
• The role of spirituality in the educational process, particularly its relationship to teaching and learning pedagogy, the cultivation of values, moral and ethical development, and the fostering of global learning communities and responsible global citizens

The national gathering was called Education as Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and Higher Education. Victor H. Kazanjian, Jr., dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at Wellesley College, a project advisor and key organizer of this three-year project, worked with multi-constituency teams from more than one hundred colleges and universities and enjoyed the support of education-related institutions, including the Boston Research Center, to help bring this project to fruition.

The conference was intended to stimulate dialogue among educational professionals about two interrelated topics: first, the ways in which diverse spiritual traditions can enrich the educational experience--can make it "transformative"--without binding that experience to any one tradition and, second, the ways in which these traditions (and their practitioners) can interact with and enrich each other, discovering common themes while retaining their own "prickly" particularity.

Parker Palmer, senior associate of the American Association of Higher Education, sounded some of the key themes of the event in his pre-conference remarks. The author of The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life elaborated on the absolute need for teachers to explore their own inner life, to grow spiritually as well as intellectually, and to engage with students' hearts, not just their minds.

In his opening plenary address, "A Vision of Education as Transformation," Dr. Palmer focused on a critique of objectivism, the philosophical stance that maintains "we can know the world only by distancing ourselves from it." This is a "morally deforming" view, said Palmer; it is also "an unfaithful rendition of how human beings know." He suggested that the world's great religions offer an alternative epistemology distinguished by four main ideas:

• Truth is not merely propositional; truth is personal.
• Truth is communal, not competitive.
• Truth is not inert; it is interactive.
• Truth is transformational.

Dozens of workshops were offered during the gathering, among them one cosponsored by the BRC, a presentation on Soka University of America (SUA), an independent, coeducational, comprehensive institution of higher learning currently under construction in Aliso Viejo, California. Founded on Buddhist principles, the university ultimately will serve 1,200 residential, undergraduate students. Its core curriculum will introduce perspectives on the self; the roles that science, myth, and religion play in formulating how we view the world; the complexities of human rights in a pluralistic society; and the issues of war, peace, and nonviolence. SUA will provide a unique student-centered experience in cross-cultural learning.

One of the most original and memorable events of the conference, a multi-faith celebration, took place in the Wellesley College chapel. Students from an astonishing array of traditions shared their faith through readings, songs, chants, skits, dance, and prayer. Each tradition maintained its individuality yet complemented the others, conveying the sense of a rich mosaic. This was an example of the pluralistic ideals of the conference in practice.

The second plenary session featured Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University and author of Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras. Eck traced the development of her own interest in the religious landscape of the United States. As a scholar of Indian religions and a Christian, Eck described her own educational mode as "neither objectivist nor subjectivist, but . . . dialogical": engaging with difference, trying to understand it, then constantly reflecting on what that difference taught her and how it could change her. The mutual, potentially transformative understanding that emerges from such engaged dialogue is the key feature of pluralism.

"The stories of how our move from diversity to pluralism may take place . . . in the United States . . . are still being written," Eck said. She called on all participants to "write" them well.

The final major event of the conference featured Vincent Harding, professor of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, who spoke about "Taking it Home." He began with music: Sweet Honey and the Rock's powerful, a capella rendition of "I Ain't Gonna Study War No More: Gonna lay down my sword and shield Down by the riverside. . . ."

Harding lauded the earlier interfaith service: "We paid a visit to the future, and the future visited us." We were all sisters and brothers, he said, from farther back than we remember, and will be, far into the future. He thanked Diana Eck for reminding him that "before we can celebrate diversity, we need to be sure to encounter it--not to run around it, but to engage it, to look it right in the eye." This can be difficult, he pointed out. We can miss "the deepest levels of our alikeness because we want to skip over the rough parts."

"Diversity," he said, "is the path of the universe itself, and I want to enter more deeply in every possible way into the path of the universe. And so I seek out my sisters and brothers because they will take me home."

--Richard Wilson