This episode of ReligionWise features Vicki Garlock, Ph.D., the founder of World Religions for Kids. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, Dr. Garlock's longtime interest in religion and religious diversity has inspired her to produce children's books and train educators on the importance of religious literacy for even the youngest learners. Today's conversation considers the legal and pedagogical issues entailed with religious literacy for students and some of the practical concerns of such a curriculum.
Show Notes:
This episode of ReligionWise features Vicki Garlock, Ph.D., the founder of World Religions for Kids. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, Dr. Garlock's longtime interest in religion and religious diversity has inspired her to produce children's books and train educators on the importance of religious literacy for even the youngest learners. Today's conversation considers the legal and pedagogical issues entailed with religious literacy for students and some of the practical concerns of such a curriculum.
Show Notes:
Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host Chip Gruen. Today's episode goes back to a theme that we hit on relatively frequently. And that is education as an educator myself working at a institution of higher education. When we think about religion and public life and how we might make for a better conversation about religion and public life, it just seems to me maybe it's an occupational hazard, that education is key to that goal key to that endeavor. So today's guest is Dr. Vicki Garlock. She's trained as a cognitive psychologist. But after leaving her psychology position at a university, she started working on the question of religious literacy, in particular religious literacy for young children elementary age. And this work is informed by her academic discipline, by the way that we think the way that we develop as thinkers, from young children into adults, what is age appropriate, etc, her career takes a number of turns that are really interesting, and I'll leave it to her to talk about, but moving from an interfaith model that is religious in its origins to something that is more secular and more suited for consumption within the public sphere of public education. So you can see, if you follow the work of the Institute, and you follow the podcast, you can see why that's really interesting to me. The other thing about this conversation that I find really useful is that there are a number of other conversations that spring off of it, that we could dedicate whole episodes to, who owns whose stories? Where does authority for talking about religion lie? Does that authority sit with individuals within those communities alone? Or can you develop expertise on the outside? Again, obviously, my role in higher education as a professor of religious studies, you can see, you know why I feel like I have a horse in this game. But then also questions about the role of interfaith discourse, as I like to talk about it, that there is we'll talk about an interfaith movement. But again, is that the only way or the best way to expose children to the complexity of the human story, the complexity of human worldviews of belief and practice, understanding their their neighbors, one of the things I'm actually writing about right now I'm thinking a lot about are the values that are inherent in a literacy project versus the values that that might be in something that is more particularly geared towards interfaith cooperation. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Vicki Garlock. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. Vicki Garlock, thanks for coming on ReligionWise.
Vicki Garlock:Thanks for having me.
Chip Gruen:So before we start thinking about your work in the development of educational materials, that teach kids about religious literacy, I'd like to talk to you about how you got to this place, how has your professional training, or your experience led you into this work that you're doing now?
Vicki Garlock:Well, I sort of think about this as a combination of various things I've done over the course of my career. So originally, I went to graduate school, I have dual specialties in neuroscience, I studied rat brains for four years. And then I switched into cognitive development, my dissertation was on four to eight year olds. So I was a professor in the psychology department at a small liberal arts school, outside of Asheville, North Carolina, where I live. And I taught a range of courses, neuroscience courses and developmental courses. And after I had my second child, I decided that working 55 or 60 hours a week was not particularly sustainable. And so I left that position and took a job at a progressive type Christian church. And one of my major responsibilities there was to develop a multifaith curriculum for kids aged three through eighth grade. And so I did that for over a decade. And in fact I lost that job during the pandemic. It was a great job for me. And so during the pandemic, I decided to try to figure out how to write some kids books and take my cognitive development experience and training and my multifaith experience and training and put them together. Because I think I have some techniques for teaching kids about the world's religions that work. So here I am. Now I'm a book author and trying to figure out how to spread the word about how we can teach kids about the world's religions.
Chip Gruen:Yes, so I want to talk a little bit more actually about that cognitive psychology background. You know, and you talk about it on the one hand as a career break, right, going from a professor in that field, you know, to then working within that faith community. And then and then moving on, and we'll talk about the moving on in a minute to more towards religious literacy. But I want to think about the way I mean, how would you talk about that cognitive science background as being instrumental in your work now, I mean, you know, it's not what you studied, your epistemologies are very different from mine, for example, as a religious studies, somebody trained in religious studies, but obviously, right thinking about childhood development and age appropriateness, and all of that, like this all comes together. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Vicki Garlock:Sure. And in some ways, I think you don't always know what's going to be helpful when you're in the moment. I mean, at the time, I was just a graduate student, my dissertation was on early linguistic predictors of later reading achievement. So we were basically you know, giving kids age four to eight, these various listening tasks, memory tasks, vocabulary tasks, and then looking statistically, to see how it would predict later reading achievement, you know, so that's okay, great, and dissertation and published an article and got a job. But then the way my life played out, I really looked at the job at the church as an applied cognitive psychology job, right, I was in a position to be able to, to really take my knowledge about how four to eight year olds, and also, you know, four to 12 year olds or whatever, take my cognitive development knowledge and say, you know, how can I use this to teach kids about the world's religions? What can a four year old understand what can an eight year old understand what can a 12 year old understand? I also had my own children at the time, so some of it was just about, Gosh, why are there no resources out there for me to help my kids learn about the world's religions. So I also had, you know, sort of them as cognitive development subjects, so to speak, and I had my academic training. And it turned out that I felt like I really was capable of trying to put these things together. One of the things that's been unexpectedly interesting, as an author of a book is, there's now quite a bit of research out there to show that one of the ways that elementary school kids and even younger learn vocabulary words is by reading books, right? Books are a huge source of vocabulary words. And so I go all the way back to my dissertation. And it turns out that one of the ways I think one of the aspects of teaching kids about the world's religions that is important is just teaching them the vocabulary words, right, the vocabulary words that are used. And so these picture books are an amazing way to do it. And that's something that sort of came out of my dissertation that I never would have expected all those years ago.
Chip Gruen:That's really funny. I mean one of the central parts of my pedagogy, you know, teaching in higher ed and, and I never thought about it until I had outside observer come in and say, it's really interesting and important, how much vocabulary serves the purpose of of learning, you know, these diverse worldviews within your within your classes. And, you know, and after it was pointed out to me, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I am doing that. So it's nice to have confirmation, right, that that's, that that's a helpful pedagogical, you know, going all the way back to kindergarten or earlier. So I want to come back to other aspects of, of your biography, you know, particularly visa vie religious tradition in a minute. But before we do before we get too far in, I really love for you just to talk a little bit about the organization, you founded this World Religions for Kids. What does it do? What are the products? You know, how do you interact with, you know, we'll talk about the various publics right, whether those be religious or public schools, or what have you, but can you just talk about the work of World Religions for Kids?
Vicki Garlock:Sure. So I really consider the overall mission of it is to help people who are interested and it turns out lots of different types of people are interested to help people who are interested, learn about world religions. I do that actually by gearing my products to kids, but it turns out that adults like to read my books, too. I have all these people who say it well, I bought your book, and I was like, okay, you know, that's for like four to 12 year olds, and they're like, Oh, I know, but I learned so much from it. So I sometimes jokingly tell people that you couldn't pay me enough to work with grownups. I really love working with kids. I find them to be so easy to work with and really for. So anyways, so there are several different aspects to what I do. One is I write you know, published kids books so people can go on Amazon and order them and use them. Parents can you use them, teachers can use them in the classroom. It turns out grandparents are very interested in my work, because they're looking at their adult children who are often unaffiliated or the the so called "nones". And they're very concerned that their grandchildren don't know anything about the world's religions. And so grandparents are sort of a sub market for me. So that's one thing I do. Another thing I do is I do make presentations around the country. I'm currently kind of on the social studies teacher circuit. So I go to different state level social studies conferences, and talk to teachers about how to teach about the world's religions in schools. So I have a whole page about presentations that I've done. I also sometimes teachers want to, or parents or grandparents want to talk about world religions, not with one of my books, they just want to get a regular book. And those books tend to be siloed. Right, so Jewish traditions, Jewish holy days, Muslim holy days, Islamic holy days, Hindu holy days. And so I also have on my website, a list of recommended books. And by recommended, I mean, books that are not trying to convert you to that religion. And so that just sort of telling you about the holy day without trying to bring you into that particular flock so to speak. So that's on my website. And that's probably it. I'm also on Tik Tok. So I've started making Tik Tok videos, those actually are for adults. My handle on Tik Tok is @learnreligions. But the hashtag that I use is#religionminute. And the reason is because I think one minute is about all that people can take on a on a, you know, a couple times a week basis. And I just tried to teach people a little tidbit something interesting about the world's religions. So the Tik Tok videos that are on my website are just sort of to introduce my website, but I am actually on Tik Tok and I try to post a couple videos a week.
Chip Gruen:So I'm really interested in in in a number of aspects of your work. I mean, one that occurs to me is something that I've been trying to do with local school districts here, you know, in our neighborhood, Muhlenberg's neighborhood in the Lehigh Valley, and that's curate resources. So we're launching a program, actually, this fall, that is a curated list of resources that, as you indicate, are not about the diversity of world religions, but about one at a time. So you have to create a collection of a dozen or so to try to capture some of that. And it's a real challenge, because they might be a lot of them might be geared towards children within the religious community itself, for example, and the quality of them can be spotty, right? For particularly for an outside audience. So I'm, I'm really interested in that work as well. But for the work that you do, you describe the world religions for kids materials as Okay, use these three words, and I want to lay them all out there now and then we're gonna go through them one at a time. Non-devotional, age appropriate and constitutional. So let's start with non-devotional. And this sort of gets back to your biography a little bit, right, because you describe yourself got some of your bio information from LinkedIn, you describe yourself as year having years as a multifaith children's ministers, you talked about, in fact, when you first started this, it was called Faith Seeker Kids. And now you've moved to be, you know, you've renamed rebranded as World Religions for Kids, you seek to create non-devotional resources. Can you tell us about that development and how you got to this place?
Vicki Garlock:Yeah, so one of the things I didn't even when I was Faith Seeker Kids, my original idea, actually, was that I would market to other progressive Christian churches. And and really, when I started marketing, at that time, it was my interfaith peace curriculum was what I was trying to market. And it was, it was difficult to market, in part because it came out in 2018, and 2019. And then when everything shut down for the pandemic, churches weren't open, and they didn't have Sunday school. So it was that that that was one piece of the difficulty. But the other piece of the difficulty I realized was that even in progressive churches, what many ministers were telling me was, listen, we got these kids for one hour a week, and not even every week, because most people don't go to church every Sunday anymore. So you know, maybe a couple times a month, we have them for 45 minutes. And you know, we need to teach them about the Bible. We need to teach them about Christianity. And so that was so interesting for me. And then I also met my colleague, Tim Hall of Religion Matters. And he said to me, Look, you're not going to be able to do anything in public schools with a company that's called Faith Seeker Kids. Anything with faith in it is going to scare people away. And I also felt like I was doing too much. So I was trying to teach people about the world religions, and also offer that as a way to help children find their own faith path. And it was just too many things to ask people to do. You know, I had been steeped in it for so long, and I was working at a very successful very progressive type church. And I just realized it was just too much to do in sort of one lifetime. And so I rebranded to World Religions for Kids, and really started to focus on the non-devotional aspect of it, because all along, I was of the opinion that people need to find their own way, they need to find their own way of articulating the divine, they need to find their rituals that work for them. And so that is sort of non-devotional, but I became much more explicit about it and took the faith part out of the name of my company, essentially, to broaden my market. And I'm not sure if people even really understand what non-devotional means. But as you pointed out, these siloed books are often written for, you know, Sikh people, right for Sikh kids, and they're trying to teach them how to be a good Sikh. And the same thing in Judaism, the same thing in Islam, all of it. And so there are literally only a handful of kids books that look at various religious traditions in a single volume, with some sort of step back away from that devotional perspective, and, and look at it kind of a little bit more broadly, a little bit with a single eye on these various traditions. And it's just not easy to find those resources.
Chip Gruen:It's interesting, because what I always say about the religious studies discipline, right, in higher education and academia, is that the heart of it is comparative. Right? If you go back, you look, the heart of it is thinking about these big categories, like ritual and story and myth, narrative, whatever. And it is totally not the impulse, right to talk to kids in that in that vein, right, that it does sort of start off not only from a singular religion, but religious identity, right of the group, which, which I guess, in a lot of ways, in a lot of, for a lot of reasons makes sense. Right? If like your minister, you talked about right, we got to teach them about Christianity first, right? It makes sense. Okay, so let's move on to the age appropriate, right? Because this is another one that I've been thinking about. Because on the one hand, it seems like there is a developmental stage where, like, everybody's not like you. At another point, you know, there's a developmental stage where maybe basic religious literacy is important, right? And then you know, that we can imagine that this is something that would grow. So given the relatively broad age range you deal with, can you talk a little bit about what's age appropriate for when and how you deal with that issue?
Vicki Garlock:Yeah, sure. So I think that I take a lot of my inspiration, really, from our cultural movements on other difficult topics, right. So of course, the easy thing to say is, well, we shouldn't talk about religion, because religion is complicated. Religion is fraught with difficulty. You know, we can blame religion for many wars over the millennia, etc, etc. But what what we learned, I think, from certain things, in particular, right now, I think conversations around racism is we have to look at the price we pay as a culture and as a species in not talking about those things. And I think what we've learned, I also sometimes mention the topic of death, right? So death is complicated. Most people are not sure what actually happens after you die. And yet kids are really curious about that. And they ask questions about it. And I think the same thing is true for religion. So number one, we have to think about where it's gotten us to not talk about religion with kids. And I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that we're not in a good place. And so my one of my ideas is we need to start with kids. But also, what we know from cognitive development is that, in general, kids prefer things that are concrete, right? So a lot of people say to me, Well, you can't talk about religion with kids because religions are abstract and kids can't do abstract thinking. This is kind of an old Piaget-ian type approach to cognitive development, which says that kids really don't do abstract thinking until the age of 10 or 12. And in general, there are certain aspects of cognitive thinking that that is true for. However, kids know what the word beauty means, right? Kids have a concept of the word fairness, right? Those are abstract concepts that kids so it's not that they can't do anything abstract. So I take sort of a two pronged approach. One is to focus on the more concrete aspects of religion, right things like the holy days, things like what people wear, what people eat. Those are things that kids can, you know, concrete that kids can sort of touch and see and smell right or taste, right. And so as it turns out, that is what adults like to learn about religions too. So I have had people say to me, Well, you're just sort of doing holidays, and religions are much more than holidays, I get that. And that's fine. And they can talk about belief systems or whatever they want. But for me, I find focusing on those concrete aspects is really interesting. It's interesting, and it's fun. And it's valuable for grownups too. By the same token, I don't eschew all abstract concepts, right. So the truth of the matter is, religion is largely about articulating something that we can't see articulating the divine and the divine presence and what that means and how we grab on to that. So I think if we look at things like beauty and fairness, I think there are some aspects of that the kids, even four year olds and five year olds, who are thinking about God asking questions about God, thinking about death, asking questions about death. And so my job really one of my job's is to say, you know, how far can I sort of push that? How much abstract stuff can I bring in. And I think that to introduce some of that those issues about God and the divine, when kids are four or five is quite doable. When kids get into middle school, then you can really start to compare and contrast, right? And you can start to think about the positive aspects of religion and the more negative aspects of religion, and certainly curriculum and resources available for teachers in middle school, middle school and high school do that. But what's happening now is that a middle school and high school, we're spending a lot of time just trying to get the vocabulary, right, just trying to get them to kids to make sure they know what the sacred space is called, what the sacred texts are called, when the religions were founded, that there's no time then in the school to actually really delve into some of the more interesting aspects of religion and how it plays out politically, culturally, ethnically, in terms of identity. So my idea is really, I pretty much run in a very narrow lane of just saying, hey, let's give the kids a little bit of vocabulary, a little bit of understanding, they may be driving by a synagogue or a mosque on their way to school, just look out the window, and you can see that religion is happening in our communities. How can we teach kids about that?
Chip Gruen:Yeah. And so you've mentioned in thinking about age appropriateness, a lot of that third word that we're going to talk about, which is constitutional, right. So if you're teaching within, within a faith community, for example, right, within a private organization, or what I like to call quasi public organization, it's not a big deal, right. But once you sort of step over into things that are associated with government and politics and school boards, and you know, public schools and public policy, right, then we're thinking about separation of church and state, we're thinking about the Constitution. And you and I are really on the same page here about how misunderstood that is, can you talk about that, and how the work you do does not run afoul of sort of our basic civic culture?
Vicki Garlock:I actually give presentations around the country about this, in particular, because I talk to social studies teachers in various states. So one of the things that people fail to understand is where separation of church and state actually came from, and what that actually means and how it got started with Thomas Jefferson. And so one of the things that happened is people took the concept of separation of church and state and kind of built a wall there. And so what I hear a lot of people say to me, both teachers and non teachers say, Well, you can't talk about religion in schools. And I'm like, Well, okay, that's not actually true. You can't promote a religion. You can't really you can't denigrate a religion, but you can talk about religion, right. So that's the phrase we always use, how do you talk about religion in schools? The other thing that's happened is that we've had a number of Supreme Court cases, in particular, since World War II, and these Supreme Court cases and the rulings that come down from them are very complicated. Some of them are corrections to previous rulings. Some of the rulings are really about very intricate and specific aspects of the law. And so they they loom large because news outlets report on these Supreme Court cases, right, so there's a football coach in Texas who's saying a prayer after the football game. Is that legal or illegal? And there are so many intricacies in those cases that we don't hear about. So I often tell teachers, and they always bristle at it, do not pay attention to Supreme Court cases and they really bristled at that. But my alternative that I offer them is there are plenty of resources and guidelines out there about how to teach about religion in public schools and to do it non-devotionally. And constitutionally. And those resources come from very reputable sources. And then a lot of times, teachers aren't even aware that these resources are available to them. And they're freely available, right? The Religion Matters has site has all the links. And so there are resources from the First Amendment Center. So these are people like lawyers who have studied this and figured out how you can teach about religions in public school, they write their guidelines out for teachers, the American Academy of Religion, in conjunction with Harvard Divinity School, right, they have guidelines, and also the National Council for Social Studies has guidelines, right? So a lot of teachers use what's called the C3 framework, they wrote very specifically, religion related guidelines for the C3 framework. So and what's fascinating about it is there's a fair amount of agreement about how to do this in public schools. So part of another piece of my job is just to let teachers know that this is available for them, and that they don't have to worry about the intricacies of Supreme Court decisions. And they, in fact, don't even have to worry about what Thomas Jefferson said in his letter to the Baptists in the late 1700s, they can just look at these modern day documents that have bullet points dot points about how we teach about religion in schools. And so that's the the constitutionality piece of it. The other thing I remind people of is that this idea of having separation of church and state, and a publicly funded public school system, these are relatively speaking new ideas in the course of human history. So we haven't got it all figured out. This is this has been since the nation was founded, it's been difficult to figure out how to make all this work, right. Do we fund parochial schools do we fund and it's still happening, there's a court case in Oklahoma right now. So so some of it is about kind of recognizing with a certain amount of perspective, that it's okay, that this is an issue. But also seeing that we do have resources and guidelines and some ways to see our way through it for people on the ground trying to make this work.
Chip Gruen:Yeah, it's one of the things when I do presentations, professional development for local teachers, I go and, you know, call up state standards. And I think they're a lot of teachers, you know, they're very busy with lots of things they might not pour through the state standards as closely as, as they could. And it's like, look, you know, here it is, in the Pennsylvania state standards, I think these things are sometimes maybe wiser, right, and maybe, you know, at the policy level than we sometimes give them credit for, because it's the bullet point or the fight at school board meeting or the misunderstanding of the Supreme Court case that gets gets the attention.
Vicki Garlock:Well, the state standards, I'm glad you brought that up, because it addresses both the constitutionality and the age appropriateness. So I've I as well, have looked at lots of different state standards, those are also freely available. One of the things that Tim Hall and I hear regularly is, so we talk about why do you not want to teach about religion in schools, when you just can look out into your classroom, of course, you can't tell what religion a person is by looking at them. But sometimes you kind of can. And teachers in school districts know their community, they live in their community, they're part of their community. They know when they look out into their classroom and talk to these parents, at the parents nights, that everyone is not Christian, right. And yet, they don't know what to do about it. And they're nervous and afraid. And one of the things Tim and I routinely say is, go back to the standards, and it's not usually pushback from administrators. It's pushback from parents and pushback from sometimes other colleagues, other teachers in your school. And so the state standards are amazing. Again, like you say, very few teachers, especially at the K five level want to sit around and sift through the state standards. But what's fascinating about it, is I can look at the kindergarten standards for every state I've looked at so far. And there's something in there. Maybe it doesn't mention religion, per se. But there's something in there about recognizing that you're part of a community, recognizing that you and other members of the community are similar in some ways and different in some ways that is in kindergarten. So of course, you know, that builds throughout the years. And so it does go to the idea that recognizing that people in the community might be different from you, in some ways, similar in some ways different. That is something that shows up at the very, very beginning that educators have recognized as important. And religion is clearly part of identity. I'm just reading a study about how, you know, we all know people don't go to church all the time anymore. And we hear about churches closing down. In fact, in my, in my hometown, I grew up in the middle of the Midwest in a town that has about 30,000 people in it. There is an Islamic center there now. And they bought a church that shut down. And that's now where they meet as the Islamic center. Right. And so, I think that, you know, we're starting to realize that we have to be able to incorporate this stuff.
Chip Gruen:Yeah, absolutely. The careful listener noticed that we agree on a lot of things, that we are sort of singing from the same hymn book in a lot of ways. But I want to push a couple things in my research I've done and I just want to give you the opportunity to talk about them a little bit, things where I was like, hmm, okay, let's think about that one a little more. So, for example, on your website, you say faith traditions are fascinating, ancient, influential, unique and beautiful. And I say on a good day. Yeah, I would agree with most of that. But certainly right in the broad diversity of world religions, and over time, both abroad closer to home, religious traditions can be beautiful, and they can also be ugly, right, that they can be intolerant, right, that they can be violent, you know, the vast majority of human conflict in one way, shape, or form can be talked about in terms of religion, on some level. So let's talk about that. And maybe this gets back to the age appropriateness question? And I think it also has to do with what's included, when we're talking about curriculum like this?
Vicki Garlock:Yeah. Well, it was sort of interesting to me that you mentioned the word beautiful, because, you know, I'm always not always, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the concrete aspects of religion, right. So when I say beautiful, I'm thinking about, you know, sacred spaces and altars and icons, and the influence of religion on art, and literature and culture in general. And then when you think about beautiful, you sort of thought about it in the most abstract way, right like that. They are beautiful entities in our world. And we can argue with that. So I thought our take on the word beautiful, in fact, was sort of interesting. Our different takes on the word beautiful. So yeah, I do think that at some point, and certainly what cognitive theory would suggest is in middle school and high school, that this is the time when we sort of wrestle with those ideas, right? We we wrestle with the pros and cons of having a military we wrestle, we ask students to wrestle with the pros and cons of having a two party system in this country. And so I think there is certainly a place for that. Religion is I mean, I think, I don't know what people are waiting for. I think people are sort of looking at the"nones," and the unaffiliated's are saying, Oh, my gosh, maybe religion will just go away. And what I'm here to say, that is not going to happen anytime soon. Not in our lifetimes, you know, if there are 8 billion people on the planet estimates right now, or that over 5 billion of them identify with a particular religion. So so this is where we're at and I think then the question becomes, what do we do about that? And again, I think that talking about I think, certainly in middle school, and I think a lot of middle school standards allude to this, looking at religion, as it has influenced literature and arts and culture, I think is is important. And I would like I think it serves us all well, if kids have some idea about what different religions are and what some of the vocabulary is, before we get to that point. So that middle, by the time they're in middle school and high school, they can play around with some of these more complicated, more complex issues.
Chip Gruen:Yeah, so I want to kind of combine that conversation with the next one, which is the idea of inclusion of what's included, right? Because then it can get a little bit more sticky. We have a public discourse in our culture, where we like to talk about world religions, which has been famously, you know, a lot of ink has been spilled on the concept of world religions, because it what it leaves out, right, so it's Christianity and Judaism and Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism, right, like, people's numbers go from six to eight on what counts as a world religion. And so it mentions these big, you know, usually numerically significant that it becomes about sort of Western ideas of how one builds the category of religion, right, it gets really sticky really fast. And, you know, you have made attempts in some of the things that I've read, to sort of transcend that to some extent, but you in previous conversations, you've also told me that you've gotten a little bit of pushback on that as well. So you can can you talk a little bit about inclusions about the idea of world religion and about how this operates for an elementary school audience?
Vicki Garlock:So there's sort of three different, at least three different tracks we could take with this. So first I'll talk about which religions are included and which are not. So I'm all for I mean, it depending on how you count, right, there are 10s, of 1000s of different religions. And I would actually argue, and I have said before, that if there are 8 billion on the people on the planet, there are 8 billion different faith stories, right? So so when you really get right down to it, each person develops sort of their own religious path, in many ways. So where where does the line get drawn? And so for me, what has kind of evolved is some mix of professional and personal interests. So I do think that five or six is about as many as teachers can handle as many as parents can handle. I'm looking for at least some level of familiarity, right? So I often tell teachers that if you can, if you can do what I kind of call the Big Six, which is not a great term, but the three monotheistic religions, right, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, right. And the funny thing is, what people many people don't realize is how small of a religion Judaism is, right? It's tiny. It's so tiny on the world scale. And yet, it plays a huge role in our culture, right, which is, I mean, why I include it. And then on the other side, so to speak, as you talk about how we divide up the globe, right? Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism and Sikhism is really fascinating. Because again, it's the opp, on in some ways, the opposite of what happens with Judaism. By many counts, Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world. And many Americans don't even know what it is, right? They see someone in a turban, and they think they're Muslim. So that's kind of, if I have if I'm sort of pushed into giving people guidelines, that's what I often say. And honestly, if you can do just that, right, have some basic understanding of those six that will serve you well, right, you can use that knowledge base, then to study all sorts of, of other sects, factions, religions, right. But my personal I live in Asheville, North Carolina, which is a relatively small town, we have a very active Bahá'í community. And so I have a lot of connections in the Bahá'í community. And I know because of that I know something about the Bahá'í faith, I have people that I can ask questions. And so I often include the Bahá'í faith. And that's just almost sort of a personal thing, right? That just is sort of a happenstance, because of where I live in that we happen to have an active community. The same thing is true for Neo-Pagan or Wiccan, we have a very active Wiccan community here as well, I'm friends colleagues with our she calls herself our village witch. And so again, I often try to include that just because it's interesting to me, and I know a little bit about it. So that's one piece of it. The other piece of it, I think, is to what extent do we want to talk about beliefs. So I'm actually not a fan of talking about beliefs. Because I think that we don't know what people believe. And one of my mini goals in life is to get us to stop saying, Muslims believe, Buddhists believe, because I don't think we know. And I think for most of us, many of us are most familiar with Christianity. And so I often use that as an example, right? We know by being part of this culture, or being raised in perhaps being raised in a Christian tradition, that not all Christians believe the same thing. We know that not all Catholics believe the same thing, right? Most of us could probably name a Catholic who is not pro life, right? But we tend to gloss faith traditions that aren't familiar to us, right? That same thing holds for every religious tradition, right? There's a spectrum of beliefs that go from orthodox all the way to progressive and everything in between. So I tend not to focus so much on beliefs for that reason, not to mention the fact that beliefs are highly abstract. And so I do think that that's problematic on two levels in my work with kids. The other aspect is sort of other things like sort of on opposite ends of the spectrum, right. So one of them is new religious movements. So things that were things that came into being, let's say, in the last, we'll call 150 200 years, right? Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, right? All of that stuff is really interesting. Part of the reason why I find those more difficult to include in my work is that I'm trying to find concrete things to hang on to like holy days and sacred spaces and sacred texts. And also stories, I have found that more difficult to do with some of the new religious movements, right, again, not opposed to it. But I find it to be almost sort of too detailed for people. On the opposite side, is indigenous traditions, right? So those are very, very old. In my book, We All Have Sacred Spaces, I started with indigenous traditions, because their sacred spaces were in nature. And to a certain extent, all sacred spaces started. That's all we had. That's what we had was nature. And so everything started with that. And I thought that that was a necessary backdrop to then talk about the earliest built spaces, the earliest constructed spaces, which we begin to see in the Hindu traditions, right. And so that made sense. But one of the things that I've run into in terms of pushback, is indigenous people who have been very clear with me that these are not my stories to tell. So one of the things that I find lacking in the new religious movements is these ancient stories, these these stories that were originally told orally and eventually written down, right? Those stories like that are not as prevalent in the new religious movements, right? Those stories are very prevalent in indigenous traditions, tons of stories. And yet, it's been clear that those are not my stories to tell. So I end up now focusing in a particular historical range, right, let's say from three or 4000 BCE to 1850. Right? And that's an interesting question, who owns these stories? And who can tell these stories? And what responsibility do they have? So I've been told that, doing research, talking to indigenous people, and writing my own version of that story is not appropriate. And so I have moved away from that as well.
Chip Gruen:Yeah, and that is a topic for another day in another episode. But you know, so what's difficult about that is, then the result is that the story ends up not being included and not being told, right, which is a sort of a poverty for the students reading your books, right?
Vicki Garlock:Yeah, I think a poverty, a poverty for the culture as well, right? Because I know because I sit in my office alone and create these products, and there's only so much that one person can do. And there's only so much that a small group of people can do, or in this case, a tribal culture can do. And so my fear is actually that these stories will be lost. Because they can't we can't get them recorded fast enough. We can get them written down and published and put out there and marketed. It's not just about publishing it, it's about marketing it. And we can't do that fast enough. And my fear is that the stories will be lost because of that. And again, that is not my decision to make either I don't think, although I have had storytellers tell me, Hey, if you do your research and you want to write it, you should do that. And I've made the decision, at least in this moment not to do that. And is that a right decision or a wrong decision? I have no idea. I do think that in this whole conversation, I think is maybe important to note that I'm not sure I have the answers, right? I'm just one person trying to sort of make my way trying to at least let people know that there is a way to teach kids about the world's religions. This is one way to do it. I'm not sure it's the right way, quote, unquote, right way. I'm not sure it's the best way. It's a way and hopefully I can be I am part of the conversation of how we should do this, how best to do this. Probably at this point, we just need to do it more. Right? There's just so little out there. And so a lot of people in in both in the interfaith world and in the religious literacy world, like to argue about these sorts of details. And I get that and it's important for us to be reflective and to think about it, but there's so much to be done. And there's so little out there, that at this point, I'm kind of like, hey, let's all put stuff out there. I mean, this is what we did with climate change, right? I mean, as I often tell people, Rachel Carson's book was written when in 1962, Silent Spring. And it's taken us, you know, 60 years to get to a point where this is a regular everyday discussion, right? And we're nowhere near that when it comes to interfaith work or religious literacy work. So, you know, I'm just one person trying to put some stuff out there. And I don't want to overstate my certainty in, in my approach, or my ideas about it.
Chip Gruen:Well said, right, that we're at the beginning of this, right, that the materials, sometimes the materials that are out there are not great, but sometimes there's just a huge lacuna, right, there's a huge gap in what's available. So, you know, you get the 100 million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation, right to fix this problem, right, you have the opportunity to work to write the books to, you know, hire the staff to develop new curricula to develop new projects. What do you think the next, you know, 50 years look like? What are the things that need to be done? Where do we go from here?
Vicki Garlock:Well, I think, again, if we, if we look at some other topics, right, like the discussion about race in America, and the discussion about climate change, what we see is that the way you make real change is to have lots of people who are interested in the movement, right? And so and so for me, you know, I don't know what I do with $100 million. But if I had $10 million, right, I would, I would start I would start writing books. And I would give those books away, right? So that every school had, not only did they have my book, We All Have Sacred Spaces, right? But they had other things like, we all love lights, right? We all celebrate holy days, we all eat special foods, right? There's a whole series that could be done with that, right? The same thing with my embracing peace stories from the world's religions, right. One of the things that I like to look at are themes. If you look really, really closely at these, you know, quote, unquote, top six religious traditions, or within a religious tradition, right? Everything gets so specific, and everything is different from everything else. And it's just detail after detail. But if you step back just a little bit, and look at some of the overarching themes, what religion is often trying to do for a culture or for people, is to help them, you know, not kill each other, right? Live in peace, right? Live with compassion, take care of the people and the animals and the beings and the plants around them. And so if we back up just a little bit, so Embracing Peace, where I took peace related stories from across the world religions, well, you could do that with compassion. One of the units that I did at the church was embracing the darkness, right? Religions are often trying to help people deal with those human emotions that we often call negative, like greed or pride, right? So there's like five or six books that could be written about that. And so and then there's also sort of fiction books that might be written. So I would just, you know, hire staff and write all these books that really look at a variety of religious traditions in a single volume, from a relatively objective standpoint, right, so that kids can sort of get this reasonably objective overview, right. And I would give them all away, I would just put them in schools, I would give them to teachers. And I would spend all my time, you know, presenting to teachers, to grandparents to parents, and saying, Look, this is one way to do this. We can do it. Kids are capable of this, and and get the conversation going. And what we see with what we saw with climate change, is you had schools getting on board, right? You had nonprofit organizations, developing lesson plans and putting those out there free resources, then you had churches, right? Faith, faith communities for climate change, right. So there's green Islam, there's green Judaism, there's green Christianity, right. And so that's what ultimately, you know, having a number of different organizations, right, having government organizations having nonprofit organizations, and in some respects, having if we could ever get religious organizations who were actually interested in doing this, which I think is not going to happen in my lifetime. But yeah, I'm all about just giving the information away. Right and encouraging and inspiring people. That's what I would do with the money.
Chip Gruen:So we're about out of time, but where I think, and maybe I'm opening a can of worms here but you talk about getting people involved with the movement. Right? And I would dare to say from my experience, I don't see that there's a religious literacy movement yet. If we have any movement at all, there's an interfaith movement that people sometimes trace back to like the World Parliament of Religions in the 1893. And you know, and that that is really inspired kind of a particular way of thinking about religious diversity. Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between that interfaith movement that some most people I think might if at least heard of, and why that is different or distinct from, you know, the values or the things that you're talking about when you're talking about religious literacy?
Vicki Garlock:Yeah, so I'm not sure I'm not again, I'm not sure I'm right about this either. But I spent many years in the interfaith movement. That's really where I started out when my company was called Faith Seeker Kids. And I was hoping to market to progressive type Christian churches. So I did spend a fair bit of time in the interfaith movement. And and there were a lot of that work. Yeah, you can talk about the Parliament of World Religions in the late 1800s. But really, a lot of that work started after 9/11. Right. And many interfaith organizations that I interviewed, I wrote about 40 articles for an online publication at the time called The Interfaith Observer. And a lot of people that I talked to when I interviewed them for that article, those articles they had started after 9/11. Right. So one of the things that I see has happened in the interfaith movement is that it tends to actually not talk about people's faith very much and not talk about people's religion very much. It tends to center on I think, social justice causes and transcending your faith and your religion, right to find some sort of common element. And I think Eboo Patel of Interfaith America, formerly of Interfaith Youth Core, has specifically said this, right, is that what you really need to do is you need to move past religion transcend religion, and realize that we have these common causes that we're working on, you know, like climate change, or racial justice, or gender equality. And so and so that again, that's all good. And that's fine. And I have no, I think there's a place for that. I agree with you that the religious literacy sphere is not a movement, it's not a movement at all right? It's, it's a bunch of, of kind of well, meaning do gooder individuals who are kind of putting their stuff out there. But and I just, you know, I do it, because I believe there's a there's a place for that approach in our culture. And I think that's becoming even more clear, with these conversations around intersectionalities. Right? So this idea that religion is part of your identity, right? Is is important. And as we continue to talk about what makes us who we are, religious identity is important. I kind of didn't finish my thought before, but there's been some research. We know people don't go to church every Sunday, we see various houses of worship shutting down. But when you ask people, you know about their religious identity, even if they never go to church, they haven't been to church, since they were 15 years old. They will tell you, Oh, my identity is Christian. That's the that's the religious language I speak. Those are the rituals that make sense to me, right? Or I'm Jewish, right? And we talk about being ethnically Jewish. And like, that's a thing, and it is a thing. But you can also be ethnically Christian or ethnically Hindu or any of those things. So I think that this that just sort of trying to transcend our religious identity is not the full answer. We can't we're not going to get where we need to be as a as a culture or as a species by just doing that. I think we have to acknowledge the importance of religion, on literature on culture and on our own individual identities and on the diversity we see within America, because that is not going away anytime soon.
Chip Gruen:All right. Well, I think that seems like a great place to stop the conversation. It's a really nice bow on the whole thing. So Vicki Garlock, thank you very much for appearing on ReligionWise This has been really great.
Vicki Garlock:Thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation.
Chip Gruen:This has been ReligionWise a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. ReligionWise is produced and directed by Christine Flicker. For more information about additional programming, or to make an inquiry about a speaking engagement. Please visit our website at religionandculture.com. There you'll find our contact information, links to other programming and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.