Lessons in Interreligious Leadership

A diverse group heads into a city

The following units are designed to teach groups and guide individuals through the principles and practices necessary to cultivate interreligious leadership in an interconnected world.

Each module encapsulates different aspects of the vital, challenging, and beautiful processes that occurs when people of different religious—and non-religious—backgrounds come together to learn from one another and collaborate in the creation of a pluralistic society. The units combine different pedagogies through a diverse set of media, resources, activities, and examples. While the lessons can be carried out in any order, we recommend the unit sequence provided in the curriculum.

This model of interreligious engagement was first designed for the Building Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI) created by the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning and Leadership of Hebrew College. Our hope is this website will inspire growth, learning, and conversation for your learning environment.

Units

What’s In a Name

Single stories are dangerous: what are the single stories we hear or tell about ourselves?

Read lesson

Head, Heart, Hands: Forms of Interreligious Engagement

An introduction to one tripartite division of interreligious dialogue, alongside critiques of the Christian framing of the division.

Read lesson

Community Building: Who Are Our Partners?

With integrity and dignity for all, how do I build a group out of people from diverse backgrounds?

Read lesson

Program Planning

Event planning is essential to interreligious engagement. This unit focuses on the “higher-order concerns” related to effective interreligious event program planning.

Read lesson

Cultivating Your Voice: Public Narratives

How do we use our stories? What do I have to say about the world? How do I write an op-ed?

Read lesson

Cultivating Your Voice: Artistic Practice

Is there a relationship between art and activism? If so, what is it? How can art, in all its many forms, and artists serve to disseminate a message? How do we effectively wield art as a tool for political purposes?

Read lesson

Appreciating the Other: An Ethic of Love

How do we approach interpersonal relationships in interreligious contexts What do we see in the faces of others? What may be obscured?

Read lesson

Watch for more lessons

BILI Online will feature a total of 12 curricular modules and dozens of individual multimedia resources which utilize music, poetry, scriptural text, and visual art, cover an array of topics related to interreligious engagement and leadership, including history, theology, psychology, and more.


This site was adapted from and expands the curriculum of the Miller Center’s Building Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI) Launchpad Fellowship. We would like to thank Hebrew College rabbinical student Rafi Ellenson and Boston University School of Theology student Joshua Polanski for adapting, expanding, and creating this curriculum. The Brazilian based artist Endriu (James Andrew Gilbert) also provided many wonderful illustrations that are made use of throughout BILI Online.