February 24, 2025 Book Launch & Workshop: Seeing the Sacred through Interfaith Lenses

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Join us on Monday, February 24, 2025 at 7 p.m. when Hebrew College’s Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership hosts “Seeing the Sacred through Interfaith Lenses ” with Interfaith PhotoVoice. Meet Interfaith Photovoice founder Roman Williams as he introduces his new book Sacred Snaps: Photovoice for Interfaith Engagement. His book is an invitation to see and engage religion, diversity, and inclusion through the lens of the mobile phone camera. Experience this  interactive book launch event where you won’t just hear about a new tool for interreligious and intercultural engagement, but also experience it. 

Interfaith Photovoice

Many embrace the wisdom that our workplaces, schools, and communities are enhanced when people can bring their whole selves into every aspect of their daily lives. But religion and spirituality are not gaining the same ground as other aspects of diversity such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ability. To be more fully included in the cultural conversation about human flourishing, religion needs to be seen and heard in new ways. The old paradigm of interreligious dialogue is no longer adequate. A new paradigm focused on building relationships at the grass roots of daily life is emerging.

Interfaith Photovoice employs a tried-and-true technique called photovoice, which combines amateur photography and structured dialogue, to help individuals, organizations, and communities to see deeply, bridge divides, and instigate change. Photovoice has been around since the 1990s. The process uses photographs to give voice to people and their concerns: participants identify needs, raise awareness, and pursue change. Our process invites people to use their smartphone cameras to compose photos of their everyday lives and then to share their stories with people from different religious, spiritual, and secular backgrounds. Through this process participants develop relationships across difference, religious literacy, empathy, and a common vision for the common good.

About Roman WIlliams

Roman Williams is the founder of Interfaith Photovoice, an organization that combines photography and sociology for intergroup and interfaith engagement. He holds a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion from Boston University and a Th.M. focused on global religions from Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Roman was a tenured associate professor of sociology at Calvin University (2012–2020) and served as the executive officer of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2016–2021). His new book, Sacred Snaps: Photovoice for Interfaith Engagement (co-authored with Cathy Holtmann and Bill Sachs), invites others into this work.