Pluralism in Practice: Case Studies of Leadership in a Religiously Diverse America

Pluralism is an ethic for living together in a society as diverse as ours is today. This accessible collection of twelve case studies in pluralism in practice includes brief scenarios, framing questions, and updates on some of the key dilemmas and decisions we encounter in our multireligious encounters and lives. The book is an introduction to the case method created at Harvard University's The Pluralism Project, inviting close reading, reflection, and discussion into the dilemmas and disputes of our multireligious society for people who are professionally or passionately involved in developing and fostering our multireligious future.

Author: Elinor J. Pierce
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 09/15/2023
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.10w x 0.51d
ISBN13: 9781626985483
ISBN10: 1626985480
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Ethics

About the Author

Elinor (Ellie) Pierce is the research director and lead case writer for the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Ellie began working for the Pluralism Project as a student field researcher in San Francisco. She served as a section editor, researcher, photographer, and writer for the CD-ROM On Common Ground: World Religions in America (1997 and 2002; 2013 online) and helped launch and expand the Webby-award winning Pluralism Project website. Ellie co-edited World Religions in Boston: A Guide to Communities and Resources (1998), helped develop the film Acting on Faith: Women's New Religious Activism in America (2005), and co-produced and co-directed the documentary Fremont, U.S.A. (2009). Ellie wrote "What is at Stake? Exploring the Problems of Pluralism" for the Journal of Interreligious Studies (2015), contributed a chapter on the case method to Interreligious/Interfaith Studies: Defining a New Field (Beacon, 2018), and wrote the chapter "Toward Leadership, Listening, and Literacy: Making the 'Case' for Interreligious Studies," in the Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies (Georgetown, 2022).

In addition to her part-time role at the Pluralism Project, Ellie is actively engaged in varied consulting, writing, and filmmaking: she is the former Festival Director for Boston Jewish Film Festival's ReelAbilities; she is currently an advisor to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and is a teaching fellow for Lived Religion in a Digital Age. Ellie is now in production on A Bridge Over Hell Creek, a documentary chronicling the growth and development of the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska. She completed her B.A. in anthropology and international studies, with a core in religious studies, from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota; she earned her Master of Theological Studies degree from the Harvard Divinity School.

Diana L. Eck has taught at Harvard since 1976. She is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and Frederic Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. She serves in the Departments of Religion and South Asian Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and is also a member of Faculty of Divinity. For twenty years, Professor Eck was Faculty Dean of Lowell House, one of Harvard's twelve undergraduate residential Houses. She received her B.A from Smith College (1967) in Religion, her M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1968) in South Asian History, and her Ph.D. from Harvard University (1976) in the Comparative Study of Religion.

Professor Eck's work on India includes the books India: A Sacred Geography (Random House, Inc. 2012), and Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (Beacon

Press, 1993), which studies the question of religious difference in the context of Christian theology and the comparative study of religion. Encountering God won the 1995 Louisville Grawemeyer Book Award in Religion, given for work that reflects a significant breakthrough in our understanding of religion. Since 1991, Diana Eck has been heading a research team at Harvard University to explore the new religious diversity of the United States and its meaning for the American pluralist experiment involving students and professors at Harvard and in a dozen affiliate colleges and universities.