Alternative Visions for Understanding Religions - Jessica Cooperman

This episode of ReligionWise features a slightly different format. Instead of an interview, Jessica Cooperman, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion Studies and Director of Jewish Studies at Muhlenberg College, and host Chip Gruen have a conversation that responds to a listener question about the methods of the Institute. We discuss the assumptions and implications of the dominant paradigm in public conversations of religion, "interfaith dialogue" and consider the possibilities for a less identity driven conversation that centers traditional educational methods and addresses religion as a part of human cultural production.

Transcript

Chip Gruen: 0:04

Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host Chip Gruen. So today we're going to do something a little different, we're going to break the format a little bit rather than me having a guest in which they are the only authority on the topic and we and I fire questions at them we're going to do something a little different. And it's actually in response to a listener question. You know, I'm always asking for your input, please, please reach out and let us know what you think. But one person who did that reached out and their question was about pluralistic approaches, versus what we might call interfaith dialogue. They use the words, bilateral versus multilateral. And where this is coming from is this is somebody who is familiar with the work of the Institute. And in the past, one of the MOs of the institute was to get groups of Christians and Jews together and have them talk to one another and look for similarities look for common ground look for shared values, in the context of living room, or over a meal or something along those lines. And this, you know, if you're familiar with these sorts of conversations at all, the idea of interfaith dialogue is something that will be familiar to you. And when the Institute changed its mission and developed a few years ago, we really moved away from that idea. And in fact, from the language of interfaith towards something that is more multilateral, something that is more what I like to call radically inclusive. So listening to this podcast or if you attend our WorldViews events, we will have not only Christian Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, Humanists, across the gamut, and moving away from a method that really highlights the identity of the individuals in the conversation, and instead wants to concentrate on thinking about religion as something that humans do. And so in that way, it is a much more higher ed, educational academic approach rather than something that is only concentrating on on this identity and interpersonal relationships and interpersonal connections. So in order to get at that and to talk about the rationale for that, I've invited Jessica Cooperman, who is not only a professor of religion studies here at Muhlenberg, but also one of the professors who sits on the advisory board of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding. And we have these good conversations about this all the time, but there's no microphone present. So we thought we would answer this question together and think a little bit about our rationale for what we do, how the public outreach of the Institute is connected to academic methods to what we do in the classroom. Welcome, Jessica Cooperman.

Jessica Cooperman: 3:08

Hi, thanks so much for having me. I think that's a great start to our conversation. I think the thing that jumped out to me first, and in thinking about, you know, what we were gonna talk about today, and then just listening to you speak now is the shift away. I mean, the your your listener, framed it bilateral dialogue to multilateral dialogue, but the shift away from centering the identity of the people in the conversation. And I think that's something that's really important to what we do in classrooms. And that maybe is different from the model of interfaith dialogue that had sort of described or characterized earlier incarnations of the Institute, that we've been trying to move away from the idea that people are talking about themselves to each other, right, and instead, as we do in the classroom, to think about how we can appreciate kind of the breadth of what humans do, right? How religion functions at a much broader level. Some of that may be about personal investment. But it doesn't have to be about personal investment. And I think that's a very different approach to studying religion, thinking about religion, where you're not sort of entering every conversation with your own religious identity at the forefront of what you're talking about. But instead, trying to be open to different ways that people as you said, do religion think about religion use religion as part of how they organize the world. It doesn't have to be about personal identity or personal commitments. And I think that's a I think that's a huge change. Right getting I know that's something we both work on with students, right trying to get them to think outside of themselves a little bit. And I think that's something that you've been working hard at at the Institute as well. Not every conversation is about one's personal identity, but about the ability to sort of listen and think more broadly. Does that resonate with you?

Chip Gruen: 5:17

Yeah. So and I think that there's kind of a practical concern here as well. One of the things that I've done I've had an intern at the Institute do is look at our source books that the College collects data about students over the course of the last, I mean, we have these available for the course last 50 years or so. And one of the metrics that is collected about students is I mean, you get the, you know, race, gender, ethnicity, but then religious identification as well. And charting over the last 50 years how students who are matriculating at Muhlenberg, um, it's just one example, although I think that this is going to be true across the country are identifying themselves, and you go, depending on how those categories are labeled, but you go from students not identifying any religious tradition, you know, 30 or 40 years ago as being 2%, or 3%. to Now that number ends up looking much more like 30, 40% or more. And so as an educational institution, if you have this huge body of students who aren't choosing to identify with a religious tradition, and obviously human stories are complicated and messy, and that might be for a lot of different ways. But if people don't say, Yes, religion is something that I do, then the way that the interfaith model has been designed looks foreignt looks like something that is not accessible is not available to them. Now, some people who, who do pursue that interfaith model will say, Ah, no, but they have their identity, their identity as being secular or being humanists or being, you know, something like that. I don't think that that's the way that those people who don't identify think about themselves, they think about religion as being an outside category that has nothing to do with them. So this idea that one comes at a body of material that is outside of oneself, reopens the study of religion to everybody, regardless of how you fill out that survey about your demographic and your religious identity.

Jessica Cooperman: 7:21

I think that's a super good point, right? Because, absolutely, that's my experience with college students, you know, over my years here at the College, they do not all identify with a particular religious tradition, and even the ones that do don't necessarily have what we I don't know, might stereotypically think of as a religious education, right? They don't know, they may identify culturally or with a, you know, the traditions and communities that they grew up in. But that doesn't mean they come with a sort of fixed body of knowledge of, of texts, or practices or answers to questions, right. So to ask them to sort of enter into the study of religion by representing this tradition that they do or do not identify with may or may not know very much about? Yeah, I agree. I think that's a foreign conversation for them. And it does make religion then seem some seemed like something that's removed from their experience. And I think that part of what we want to do as educators is to broaden that conception outright, religion may not feel like it's part of their every day, right. But that doesn't mean it hasn't shaped the world that they live in, and shaped the historical context in which they exist. And so finding ways to, to show them how ideas about religion have really have shaped broader cultures, their own and other people's, I think does become an important mission. And one that, like you said, opens up the study of religion to people not because they have a personal investment or personal knowledge or an identity position that they're coming to nurture or defend. But because they are interested in thinking about human societies and how those societies have developed across space and across time, and and I think from that perspective, there's no way that you can avoid the, the importance of religion in understanding human societies and I think, you know, providing pathways into that conversation that aren't about an assumption of personal commitment or personal knowledge, I think is really important.

Chip Gruen: 9:42

This doesn't necessarily follow but I want to sort of, because there's something I feel a little bit I don't know. I feel like a little bit is a skeleton in the closet and I want you to help me understand it. And feel good about it again.

Jessica Cooperman: 9:56

Exciting skeletons in the closet.

Chip Gruen: 9:57

Yeah, one of the things that we are surrounded by in the academy is the history of ideas, the intellectual development of the postmodern turn. And it's everywhere, right? The idea that you can't ever quite get away from who you are, right? The idea that there is no place to stand outside of your own personal identity in which to think about, you know, human societies, human cultures, etc. I mean, so the the and the only place or one of the only places that doesn't totally escape this but but at least the discourse within the discipline wants to escape it is the idea of scientific, the natural sciences end up being a very modernist kind of a discipline, that who I am does not affect the way that I mix these chemicals, or I do this math equation or what have you. And so when we're thinking about studying humans and human communities, and human, social groups, etc. One of my inclinations is to try to sort of revert to that, what I think what we can now describe as a continental European idea of like the, you know, the, the science of the study of religion, and to sort of step away and say, Okay, this doesn't have anything to do with me, but I want to think about it as a from a third, dispassionate, third party perspective. And our friends, increasingly in anthropology and sociology, you know, other disciplines will say, No, that is a hopeless endeavor, you can't possibly do that. So, don't even try, right, you have to start with your identity, start with the identities of the students, which it seems like in some ways, we are sort of swimming against the tide of the history of ideas, as they developed in the academy, particularly late 20th century and now hung over into the early 21st century. Why am I not wrong? Right, tell me about this, because this is something that feels feels very foreign to other disciplines. I think here at the College.

Jessica Cooperman: 11:58

All right, clarify that a little bit for me. And I use your phrase, right, dispassionate, third person perspective in my classes all the time. So are you saying that the study of religion does or does not take that perspective?

Chip Gruen: 12:13

That the way that we teach it, it does, like what we've been describing, right

Jessica Cooperman: 12:17

Is to take that...

Chip Gruen: 12:18

Is to sort of say, Okay, this isn't about us right now. Right? We're not talking about ourselves necessarily, right. But we are taking that more for lack of a better term scientific approach of stepping back. And, you know, putting this religious belief, this religious practice on the lab table, right, and understanding it for what it is, apart from my own identity, my own sort of social cultural positioning. But that seems very different from a lot of what we get particularly like high impact pedagogy practices are very much interested in like starting, you know, starting with...

Jessica Cooperman: 12:58

Starting with the self.

Chip Gruen: 13:01

Yeah, with the self.

Jessica Cooperman: 13:02

Yeah, I agree. I think that's really a tricky question. Because on the one hand, I'm I am sympathetic to the claim that, you know, we're not brains in a vat, we're not disembodied thinkers, that we do come to whatever it is we study, and to our classrooms, and our workplaces, and our communities, with, with identities with, you know, things about ourselves, some of which are visible to others, some of which maybe we carry internally, and that we know about, but are less visible to others, but that we, we engage in any study in any conversation with those things, right. And so finding the space to acknowledge, and I think, to create a sense of compassion, respect, we've talked about empathy, right for the different identities that come into a classroom and not to assume that we're all speaking from the same perspective, I think that is tremendously important to what we do, you know, in our work with students and in our interaction with other people. And I think the, the, the challenge that you're identifying is how can we both enter into academic studies where we acknowledge identity, our own that of our students that of you know, other people on campus in our communities, but not have that be the only thing that we're talking about? And I agree, I think that that can be tricky to figure out. I do think our call colleagues in the sciences are trying to be more thoughtful about identity that, you know, even the study of chemistry, I think, is less, you know, disembodied scientists pouring chemicals, right? I think that that all fields of academia are at least trying to think about where identity does and does not play into the work that they do. But I agree it becomes, at least for me, I'm in I'm in the humanities right tricky to think about how do you talk about humans in a way that is that acknowledges my own identity position, right, the identities of my students, but doesn't limit our conversation, to just being about the things that we already are, we already know, and allows us to sort of open up to a respectful exploration of things that we are not and things that we don't know yet. That that is a challenge, I think, not just for us, I think across the Academy, I think that's a really challenging thing to do.

Chip Gruen: 15:47

All right. On that note, I want to shift gears just a little. So we've talked about, we've set up this basic framework, that there is this interfaith dialogue approach that I think that we can agree has been the dominant paradigm in public discourse in thinking about religion, if if you go into a public space, and you talk about discussions of religion, it will end up being modeled on that interfaith conversation. So you go at the federal level, at the local religious community level, when they're talking about religious differences, they're talking about interfaith so that it becomes synonymous with the idea of thinking about religions other than your own in public discourse. And as opposed to that, you know, this model that we're sort of hoping to, to think about with our students of one that is, again, more dispassionate, more interested in centering humans, human individuals and communities who are not ourselves, right, in order to understand them better. And I want to talk a little bit about the strengths and challenges of both approaches. Because I think that this is not about displacing one model in favor of the other, but instead is about thinking, okay, that interfaith, that traditional interfaith approach might get you, X, Y and Z, but it might cost you A, B and C. Right. And on the other hand, and vice versa, right, that our approach, there are things that one gains and things that one loses. So I want to talk a little bit about that, because it seems to me that the the primacy of place of interfaith dialogue and public discourse is such right now, that if one offers a critique of it, it is as I like to say, like criticizing mom and apple pie, right? That it is and not that critique is necessarily always critical, but that it is beyond analysis it is beyond reproach. And I want to talk a little bit about that and see, see what we gain and what we lose through these two, two different approaches. So let's start with that interfaith approach and assumptions that might be built into that, that are often invisible. So I will, I will start the ball rolling, and we can go from there. One that's interesting to me is the idea that the interfaith dialogue model hinges on the expectation that people from other religious communities want to engage with you in the conversation that you want to have, which limits the playing field of the types of communities you're you can talk to, right so that you might get a somebody from a sort of a progressive, liberal Presbyterian community who's very excited to talk to somebody from a liberal reformed Jewish group, and they might have a great coffee. Right. But once you start trying to have that conversation with someone from a group that is not as open to other ideas or other religious identities, and they might be very eager to evangelize to you, but are not interested, right, in that in that exchange, it seems like the field is limited on who can participate in these kinds of activities.

Jessica Cooperman: 19:04

I definitely think you're right that when we see religion enter into the public sphere, right? It tends to be that interfaith dialogue model, right. And like we were saying before, it tends to be people speaking from their own religious perspective about which for all the reasons we just said, I think are, you know, kind of limits what you can talk about, and I think you're right to say that it does also limit who can be part of the conversation. Right, you have to, like you said, you have to want to have that conversation. You have to want to be part of that discussion.

Chip Gruen: 19:46

You could do interfaith dialogue all day long and never encounter anybody from the Missouri Sydod Lutheran Church, because they're not interested in you and I think I mean, to their credit, they're open about that right?

Jessica Cooperman: 20:02

Right. Right.

Chip Gruen: 20:03

They're like, No, that's not our project. That's not what we're not interested in looking for common ground with you unless you're going to convert and be a part of us.

Jessica Cooperman: 20:13

Well, I think in some ways that sort of that is the problem with thinking about religion in the United States through exclusively through this lens of Are you game for interfaith dialogue or not? Right, because it sets people outside of the conversation in ways that I think are not helpful. And I think it creates a an illusion that everybody who's engaging in those dialogues is doing so for the same reason, which I think is also false. Yeah, there is something kind of honest about saying, I'm coming into a conversation for my own reasons. And if those reasons aren't met, then I'm not interested in being part of the conversation that that is, I think, a realistic statement, if even if it sounds less heartwarming than some of the ways we tend to talk about interfaith dialogue. more broadly, I think people can enter into those conversations because they have goals. I guess, what I was thinking is that it seems like that model as much as it's maybe the dominant one in sort of public representations of religion is kind of fundamentally different from what we do, right, that. I mean, I know, in my own work, again, with an awareness that I come to my work with, you know, particular commitments, and you know, my own identity and my own interests. I'm less interested in trying to get to the heart of what is the shared interest in a conversation and more to think about, to think critically not to criticize, but to think critically about like, what is it that brings people to the table for these conversations? What are the multiple goals at work? When people enter into what they think of as interfaith dialogue? Why do people like what is the nature of the conversation they're having, I guess, to take that sort of dispassionate perspective? I know what you mean, right, that there are boundaries to what that conversation looks like? I guess, here's the question. It seems like you're shifting from talking about the academic study of to talking about, like, who can be part of an interfaith dialogue. But I don't think that you're interested in interfaith dialogue, I think you're interested in thinking about what religious perspectives are we willing to listen to? And that's a little bit different, right? If I come into a conversation, and my assumption is that we're going to have a dialogue across our different communities and traditions, with the assumption that we will come to a point of agreement at the end of it. Right, then I can only have conversations with people who also want to come to a point of agreement. And I think that what you've been trying to do is to take that preconceived goal, out of the picture, we don't have to come to a point of agreement, not right away, maybe never. Right, what we need to do is to listen, right, and to think about what each other are saying, to think about the perspectives that people are bringing to the table, right? So I can listen to and try to understand the perspective of somebody with whom I don't agree, somebody who has a very different understanding of the world very different cultural, social, political goals. And there is value in hearing that perspective, right, even if there is no obvious or immediate point of agreement at the end of

Chip Gruen: 23:47

And then there's the other side, right, that they're it. the people who don't want to participate in the conversation because it sort of violates their, their principles on some level. And then there's the idea that there are certain groups that you don't want to include, right, you don't want to participate because they take the air out of the room or they're, too, I mean, there is a place in one of Eboo Patel, something that he wrote, I was reading, I'd have to look up the reference, but it's like, yeah, the new movements, you've got to discourage them from participating, because there's so zealous about what that it just, it drives other people away. Right. So that there's and or, you know, not necessarily that violent groups who want to participate, but you don't, you know, you don't consider what they do religion, right, because we all know that definitions of religion preclude anybody who is a social or violent, you know, that that's irreligion or that's outside the pale or it's, you know, which is sort of limiting the field. So you have that people who exclude themselves and then people who are excluded. I mean, my my best story of this is talking to somebody from a local Pagan community who talked about doing a food drive, and then trying to donate it to ecumenical food bank and they wouldn't take it. Right? They wouldn't take the food because it was gathered by Pagans. And it's like, Okay, if that is the most sort of anti, you know, interfaith kind of a thing to do, because, well, that's not a faith. Right? That's not a legitimate religious tradition. We don't recognize you. Right. So when I talk about what are the assumptions that go into this? That's what I'm, I'm interested in that, that what happens before the conversation? Right?

Jessica Cooperman: 25:29

Well, I think we're our work kind of sometimes diverges, but I think complements each other is that you're looking at sort of contemporary dynamics on the ground, like, how are those conversations taking place or, or not taking place? Right. And I am interested in sort of the historical study of and thinking about the larger structures that are, or social forces that are making it desirable to enter into or not enter into at specific moments in time. And where I think that kind of complements the project that you're engaged in right now. Right, is I guess, pointing to the ways those structures have always been there. And they're not, like naturally occurring phenomena that they correspond to political goals, national goals, cultural shifts, they change over time, who is part of that conversation, who cannot be part of that conversation. Why do you enter into interfaith dialogue or resist entering into it? Right there. There's a bigger, historical, contextual story there that I find super, super fascinating. So it's surprising, I guess, today that you can't take food from Pagans for a food drive. Um, but there are certainly other historical moments where that would have made more sense and thinking about what, you know why now, why then, how did that all work? What are the dynamics within those communities that made that, made that makes sense?

Chip Gruen: 27:09

It's funny, actually, that, you know, I'm, I'm interested, you know, even though I study ancient stuff, primarily, you know, I'm interested in this idea of the ways that, because I have commitments to the theory and method for the Study of Religion, you know, the way that people interact with religious diversity, or religious pluralism, or the fact of multiple religions operating in contact with one another. And one of the places that this interest leads me is to one of these touchstones and if you don't know anything about this listeners go learn about it is in the early 1890s, there is simultaneously the Columbian exhibition, ie a World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, that brings together technology and culture and so forth in the ways that world fairs used to fascinating turn of events there, but in conjunction with that was the world Parliament of Religions, where you get people coming not only from, you know, every Christian denomination, a Jewish groups, Islamic leaders, but then you also start getting people from, you know, who hadn't really been encountered in the Americas before people from South Asian religious traditions from, you know, various sects of Hinduism and Buddhism and others. And it's held up as this sort of really interesting rah rah moment where people are sort of coming to grips with religious diversity. But when you see the organizing principles behind that move, you see things like it is our goal to unite all religion against all irreligion. And then you start sitting back from that and thinking, Alright, who's on which side of that line? You know, are you defining are people in the late in the 1890s? You know, defining religion as monotheism? Are they defining it as a belief in God? Right, are they how are they defining that? And so I think that as much as that is a progressive moment, for the late 19th century, it has the seeds of some of that those same colonial and Western biased assumptions about what counts and what doesn't about who we have responsibility to talking to and who of talking to and who we don't that sort of continues to germinate into the contemporary world about what counts as legitimate religious belief and practice and what doesn't.

Jessica Cooperman: 29:41

Yeah, I think that's true. And I think that there's the assumption that you can use conversation between dialogue among people who you see as their opinion counting as a protective device against violence. So you were talking about 1893 And I was thinking about post World War II, the way that interreligious dialogue, particularly between Jews and Christians, but not exclusively, was seen as a way of holding off the forces of irreligion, right? The the forces in that case of in the p ost war world of communism, right that religion, or at least particular types of religion, particular types of communication between religious communities was seen as a way of protecting the world against war of protecting against conflict and of holding off the forces of communism of, you know, godlessness. And so I think it's hard to understand the discourse of interfaith without sort of understanding that those legacies right that there were choices made about who could be part of those conversations and an assumption about what was the goal of those conversations, and it wasn't just about community sitting down and understanding each other or sharing a meal, it was about protecting particular communities against forces of violence against godlessness or against war. And that's a lot to sort of lay on top of what seemed like, you know, friendly neighborhood conversations, right, but but to understand them as part of this much larger set of assumptions about what does religion do? How should it function? How does it how is it assumed to complement the goals of really liberal Western democracy I think. I'm fascinated by thinking about that history, and the assumptions that are embedded within it. Because you don't I mean, like, I think that I think there's two issues at play. One is about how religion is represented in, you know, public media, which is usually about, like you said, the liberal rabbi, and the, you know, the, whatever minister and the, and they all come together, and they say, we, as people of faith, say, blah. That's one thing. And then the other thing is about who you willing to be engaged in conversation with. And I kind of think those are different than on the one hand, that Institute is trying to, not challenge but to add more to the public perception of religion, right? That conversations about religion are only for people who already ascribe to a particular faith position and come to represent that position in the public sphere, they get interviewed on whatever it is in the Morning Call, right? And that there's more to say, and that even people who don't ascribe to that position have something to learn about to think about when it comes to the study of religion. And then I think the other issue is about opportunity, creating opportunities to learn about for individuals to learn about religion, without the assumption that it's going to be about like a bilateral conversation in which you come to sort of some sort of happy agreement.

Chip Gruen: 33:11

So it's interesting, what I see happening is that your work which we can talk about more on the inclusion of Jews into public life, including the military, and that there is, you know, particularly in World War I, which is the subject of your first book, the chaplaincy efforts there. And then growing up from from that to other cultural social institutions, is your perspective then is one in which there are there is a high level kind of governmental, structural organizational agenda. That is saying, Ah, here are the pieces that we have, how can we pull the strings in such a way in which to achieve sort of common goals, or to make a structure that is welcoming to people from different communities. But in the end, it's to make a good fighting force or to increase morale in the in the military or what have you? And my perspective is, I think one that is much more kind of a, a less realpolitik, right and more of a, how do these things happen on the ground? And so I'm really interested in thinking about If one says interfaith dialogue, what are the assumptions that are built into that? Right, and those assumptions might be what counts as a religious system? Who am I willing to sit down with? Who is not willing to sit down with me? What is the I mean, there might be an agenda there, but it might be a little simpler, simpler agenda, like, hey, we all believe that hungry people that that is a problem that we can solve together. So how can we go about solving that problem? So thinking much more, as you said earlier, I think grass roots about what is happening in those conversations. And not that any of that is negative or bad, but that just that it sections off a certain type of conversation about religion, that might be very different and might be, in some ways myopic of a larger field, or a larger universe of what counts is religious practice. And so I think that I don't know, I think we're a little bit talking across one another, because you're interested in that larger systemic thing. And I'm thinking, Okay, how is this happening? You know, from the bottom up?

Jessica Cooperman: 35:46

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

Chip Gruen: 35:48

Yeah, and let me just give a case in point. So we run a program through the Institute, called WorldViews. And we invite people from wide variety, as I say, radically inclusive set of communities in the in the local area in the region to come and talk about their, their own experiences and their own worldview, their own belief and practice. And one of the things that I've has always been the strategy of that is to not only allow these people to come and talk about, you know, about their communities, because we all need to have religious literacy, we need to know about these people who are in our in our world, but that by being exposed to the program as a whole, that those people would be interested in energize, not only to share about themselves, but to learn about other people. And the guests we've had have all been wonderful and nice and accommodating, and they've done a great job. But that second part of the equation has never happened, right? The idea that one wants to share about oneself, everybody is very happy to share about themselves, but then that reciprocal, and now it is my turn to learn to learn about other communities that have no connection to me. And I, you know, that that that goes unreciprocated. And I think part of the reason for that is that the expectation is that conversations about religion are ones in which we are exploring and thinking about our own identities. So to be the third party is a foreign concept. Like, why would I, as a fill in the blank religious identity, need to come and hear about the Tibetan Buddhist or the Pagan or the Ukrainian Orthodox or whatever, like that doesn't really have an effect on me in my life. Right? And my sort of root assumption is yes, it does. Because these are people who live in your community. So that's the kind of dynamic I think I'm, I'm really not only interested in but sensitive to, because of experiences of trying to get programming and see people expand their universe of what counts as religious and religious learning.

Jessica Cooperman: 37:59

So that's really interesting. And I do think it gets to the heart of what's the difference between the kind of work we're trying to do in the academic study of religion and teaching our classes and this model of interfaith dialogue? Right. And so, you mentioned the work that I'm doing and I think the question that's animated a lot of my own research has been, why do people participate in projects that are labeled as interfaith, whether that's dialogue, or that's coming to speak to a group or sharing a meal or larger, more complicated projects? Why do they do that? And my assumption, and I think it's borne out in the research I've done is that people do always come into those conversations with an agenda, right not necessarily bad agenda. But it is not merely to learn about others, right, there is there is a goal beyond sharing a cup of coffee and coming to an agreement about or having a nice interaction. So you mentioned the research I had done on World War I and looking at military chaplains and the work of the Jewish Welfare Board in the World War I military. And it was clear in doing that project, that while they were very happy to speak the language of interfaith cooperation, that they also had goals about achieving greater acceptance for and protections for Jewish soldiers, Jewish citizens in the United States at a time where that wasn't obvious, right? So they, so interfaith became kind of a language that they spoke a discourse that they used in order to achieve a particular set of goals. And I, I tend to think that in the projects that, you know, take place both at the local level and at the national level that we label interfaith dialogue or interfaith cooperation, which, as you said, sounds as wholesome and unassailable, as you know, mom and apple pie, that actually there are agendas behind those things that maybe deserve attention, not again, not because I think that there's something inherently wrong with them, but because it helps us appreciate sort of what are the motivating factors that drive people to use that language of interfaith, and to what ends? So there's great scholarship, about the ways that Native Americans who didn't necessarily use the same terminology to think about what their spiritual practices were had to adopt the language of religion in order to have protections for their practices, their beliefs, their rituals, right, that wouldn't have existed in American law, if they didn't find that language to use. And I think that there are other examples of finding utility in the language of interfaith right of faith and interfaith, that explain why people are willing to come into those conversations. And so to your earlier point, there are people who won't use that language, and therefore don't come into the conversation, or it's not useful to them, so they don't enter into the conversation.

Chip Gruen: 41:26

You know, somebody who I would like to interview for ReligionWise. And I just need to do the groundwork is once upon a time I ran across a syllabus, and I did not save it for a class on religious diversity at like, one of the military academy, like West Point.

Jessica Cooperman: 41:40

Yeah.

Chip Gruen: 41:41

And it wasn't they weren't interested in learning about religions of the world, so that they could have kumbaya moments.

Jessica Cooperman: 41:48

No.

Chip Gruen: 41:48

Right? They were interested, because if you are in this theater, and these are the way that people think about the world, you need to be familiar with it, because it might save your life, right? To sort of understand why people are operating the way that they are, whether they be ally, or adversary. And so that's one of the things also that's really interesting to me about your work is there, such as sort of a utility to it, that makes you have to be clear eyed, like our lives are at stake.

Jessica Cooperman: 42:14

Right.

Chip Gruen: 42:15

Right. And I think that, that, that, that sort of puts everything in more stark contrast, right requires people to be in some ways, more rational actors with clearer ideas, then something that is sort of vague and at the edges and something you might do in your community, but there's not as much at stake.

Jessica Cooperman: 42:34

Well, I think it it shifts, I don't wanna say power dynamics. But yeah, it shifts shifts motivation, right, if you're a minority population in the United States, then you want people to understand who you are, what it is you do, as as a form of self protection, right, the understanding you hope will diminish prejudice or, you know, allow you to live more peaceably with your neighbors, or gain access to the culture in ways that that you want, or social networks, political networks, economic opportunities, and the majority culture doesn't necessarily need to feel that when they're the majority. Right. But that military example is a great one of saying, like, Hold on there, you're gonna go into a different place where you can't assume where it becomes obvious that you can't assume that everybody around you will think like you do behave as you do operate with the same sort of frame of reference. And so the, the urgency shifts, right, that perception shifts in a way that I think is really interesting. And that I I agree with you, I think it's probably harder to convince people of the value of when we're sort of sitting comfortably at home thinking, I know my place in the world.

Chip Gruen: 43:51

Right.

Jessica Cooperman: 43:51

It's, I think those moments where we are unsure of our place in the world, that person sort of alerted to, like, oh, maybe I gotta figure this situation out in a different way.

Chip Gruen: 44:04

But it's interesting. I mean, there's kind of middle ground too so if one of the examples I always like to site is you walk through Arlington National Cemetery of sorts, of course, you'll see crosses, and you'll see Orthodox crosses, right, you'll see stars of David, you'll see crescent and and the star, none of this is sort of surprising. And then all of a sudden, you'll see, you know, a Pagan symbol, you know, like a pentagram, and that decision to make that an acceptable part of the iconography of Arlington National Cemetery was not done out of touchy feely reasons of inclusivity. It was done for all of the things we talked about morale, and there's a utility to it. And, and again, that's vociferous in my praise for the military, but things like that are interesting in that they are so sort of directed and strategic, and they come up with a way of operating that is the same one that we would come up with, you know, when we're thinking about inclusivity. And a more, you know, from our educational, humanitarian kind of perspective.

Jessica Cooperman: 45:11

Yeah. And I'm sure there is lobbying behind that. I'm sure there's somebody advocating for the I know that there are people who advocate for those changes. Right. And you're right, that the military is making strategic decisions. And there's also the effect of the law, right, like, once you have law that says, or law and policy, right, and maybe not rising to the level of, you know, national law, but but policy that says, you know, we're going to recognize an Orthodox cross, well, then what becomes your justification for not recognizing other types of religious symbols, and the that was very much the basis on which people advocated for those symbols. If you recognize them, you have to recognize me and each time, right, and the law then protects that right to public expression of religious identity. I mean, in the saddest of all possible ways in a military cemetery, but still thinking about how that changes our perception of religion, how that forces that recognition of interfaith existence, even in the absence of, you know, like you said, the touchy feely, right conversation, the reality becomes sort of much more starkly represented there. And military is a super interesting institution for that reason, and lots of others as well.

Chip Gruen: 46:33

So let's think about it this way, too, because I think that we I mean, I'm from a religious studies program, you're from a history program, you deal with the modern world, I, you know, I'm coming at this from a perspective, primarily in antiquity, although I've been, you know, more interested in contemporary conversations, because of my interest in theory and method as well. But then I also study the tradition, that is, if there is a dominant tradition in our world, it is it and you deal with, with communities that have been historically marginalized. And I wonder if that affects the way, all of those things affect the way that we come at this question. So some of the groups that you've encountered who have spearheaded these conversations, like the YMCA, for example, are imagining this interfaith conversation to be natural and logical and beyond question. Whereas the groups that are coming from other

Jessica Cooperman: 47:36

Right. communities will look at the language look at framing, and maybe have to swallow hard and say, All right, well, if this is the game we're playing, we need to learn to play this game so that our, you know, to further our own interests. Right.

Chip Gruen: 47:57

Right?

Jessica Cooperman: 47:58

Right.

Chip Gruen: 47:58

And it seems like depending on who you're studying, right, the assumptions about what that conversation looks like, and what seems natural and logical versus what is has utility.

Jessica Cooperman: 48:16

Right.

Chip Gruen: 48:16

Right, like it's very different depending on the communities you're coming from.

Jessica Cooperman: 48:20

Yeah, I think that's true. I think that thinking about which, again, is an area where I feel like, you know, taking an academic approach to the study of religion does add something really meaningful to the conversation because it reinserts questions about power into how we think about interfaith dialogue. So an example that I came across in my research, fairly recently, was of the US military, as part of their post World War II reconstruction efforts in Germany, decided to promote Jewish Christian dialogue between Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and German Christians who wish to participate in this conversation. And this was, you know, just a couple of years after the end of the war, I have to imagine that for German Jews trying to reconstruct their lives in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the first thought on their mind wasn't like, Hey, I'd love to get a cup of coffee with you and think about where we can find common ground. I have to imagine that there was a sense of utility, right? What will I be able to accomplish in terms of funding or, you know, reestablishing my community or getting other types of aid if I am willing to participate in these conversations in these projects. I don't think that that was a natural desire. I think that it was utilitarian right that there was a goal in mind there, and possibly for German Christians as well, they had other concerns that they were facing in the, you know, aftermath of the war, I don't know that their first concern was about having a nice cup of coffee and coming to a point of common understanding, right, and so appreciating that there were different goals that may have brought those people into the conversation, and then appreciating that all of them were probably participating in that conversation because of US military occupation, and that the American government had goals as well. And so having that, that sense of what are the multi layered factors that bring people to the table, rather than just assuming? Well, this is a kind of natural and, and I was gonna say, like, you know, a above critique, right, sort of phenomenon among humans, I think is really important. And I do think that becomes perhaps more visible when you look at people who are in less of a position of power, and have more interest in thinking about what can I gain by virtue of being in being part of this conversation, rather than being shut out of this conversation? But then to your earlier point, thinking about how does that connect to then having people wanting to listen to others? It's not always apparent if I've come into a conversation because I am looking to defend my own community for whatever reasons I have, right? Do I then feel a sense of oh, well, let me listen to the next community so that I can understand them better and form some sort of an alliance? Or do I come into that conversation with a particular goal and then I exit that conversation if I've achieved it? I think that becomes really fascinating to consider both historically, which is what I'm primarily interested in. And in thinking about how those conversations take place in the in the public sphere in the United States today as well.

Chip Gruen: 52:07

I mean, it seems to me that there is, you know, if we're thinking about that argument from utility, right, that there are discrete goals that one wants to accomplish, that there are real reasons to enter into and leave those conversations strategically, in order to achieve those goals. And I will not say that the work of the Institute is absent of value, right? Like, we have values that we want to encourage, like everybody, sort of understanding one another, knowing a little bit about one another, valuing both similarity and difference between kinds of communities so that we can live in a peaceful verdant world, I mean, that that's not, you know, that's not always on the forefront of the way that we talked about what we want to do. But, you know, I think education is, is good for us as a society as for a community, and that lies at the heart of it. But it's the, the utility is not as discrete, right, that the idea, I think, is if we live in an inclusive world that is inclusive, based on race or ethnicity, disability, religious affiliation, etc. Then, regardless of the type of category, you're a part of, like, that's good for you. Right, like that there is, you know, if you look at hate groups, they're not just highlighting one kind of difference that they are intolerant of. Right, but that they tend they tend to travel in, in in packs of identities that are that are hated, right. And so sort of working against antisemitism is also working against anti Black racism, for example, right like that there is that there is an attitude that is sort of deeper than then identities in question, that if we can help that attitude, that is encourage people to imagine that we live in a diverse world where difference is real and that we can that the more we learn about it and understand difference that that's good across those categories, which is again, very different from I belong to X category that has been historically marginalized, and I need to work to fix that problem.

Jessica Cooperman: 54:29

Right. That was exactly what I was going to say. Right? That that is a fundamentally different or potentially broader project. Right then I think, that traditional model of interfaith, right, where I speak from an identity position, and I try to explain it to one other person. So I've been studying Passover Seders, right in the history of Passover Seders in the United States and I'm super interested in the phenomenon of both interfaith Seders and Christian celebration terms of Passover, both how they came about historically and how they've changed. But when I've spoken to rabbis who have led predominantly Christian Seders, right, sometimes billed as interfaith, but where the rabbi is the only Jewish person in the room, right, they've been very clear that they are engaging in that project in order to fight antisemitism. Right, they're not there. I mean, I don't want to I was gonna say it's not a religious practice for them. But I think, you know, fighting against prejudice may indeed be, you know, something they see as essential to their calling. But they're not doing the same thing as the people in that congregation are doing right. The people in the congregation may be trying to learn about Jews may be trying to learn about the history of Judaism in order to connect them to their own Christianity in a new way. Right. And that is fine, but different than the rabbi who comes in and says, I'm going to try to educate these people so that perhaps they will not hate my community, or not as much. And so thinking about like, I guess I am interested in thinking about what are the different goals that have historically brought people into those settings and into those conversations. And I think that the work the Institute is doing is really trying to break open and break away from that model, where everybody is coming with a particular agenda. Right, and instead to advance the perspective that perhaps just by learning and listening, we reach some sort of better shared understanding. Does that seem, does that jive with your your vision?

Chip Gruen: 56:54

Yeah, no, I think that that I think that that makes sense. But I think that it is a, a tall task.

Jessica Cooperman: 57:02

Yeah.

Chip Gruen: 57:02

Because we are trained to, and rightly so trained by experience to think about what is good for our community. Right. And that the idea of sort of a broader altruism based in education is not something that looks like it has immediate results. Right.

Jessica Cooperman: 57:24

But it is, I think, the goal of a lot of what we do in higher education. You know, if we think about you were talking earlier about debates in higher education, one of the ones that I think we're deeply involved in right now is sort of what is what is the point of going to college? What is the point of higher education, and there is certainly a perspective that says, well, it's about acquiring marketable skills. And I think we're all committed to our students acquiring skills that allow them to go and, you know, have financially successful lives. But I think that particularly for those of us who study the humanities, right, we are also committed to the idea that by virtue of learning about how humans have made meaning in their lives, organize their communities, over the course of human history that we will become, we will have greater empathy for other humans, we will be able to be people who are more accepting of able to tolerate the reality that people are different from ourselves, we will be people who are better positioned to, to think about the creation of a more tolerant and accepting and respectful world. So I see that that mission of thinking about the broad diversity of human engagement with religion as perfectly in line with our broader educational mission.

Chip Gruen: 58:47

All right, well, that seems like a good place to stop. We've left a lot of questions on the table unanswered and I've always said we need to write together sometime, so maybe we will do that and we will figure all this out. But thank you Jessica Cooperman for coming on talking with me about all of these things. Looking forward to further conversations.

Jessica Cooperman: 59:06

Thanks so much for having me.

Chip Gruen: 59:10

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.