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Religious Education

Moral Education Professorship

Interfaith at Faith-based Universities

Brigham Young University Religious Education and the Moral Education Professorship

Send submissions to Dr. Michael MacKay at michael_mackay@byu.edu

Call For Papers (Proposal Deadline 1 March 2025)

Religious Education and the Moral Education Professorship (2024-2026) at Brigham Young University are seeking to foster and develop more enriching interfaith relationships at faith-based universities through a conference, a publication, and a student interfaith workshop.

What problem are we trying to solve?

The Moral Education Professorship would like to highlight the importance of religious and faith-based colleges and universities and increase collaboration between them, boosting the need for interfaith dispositions from scholars, administrators, and students from each institution. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen have argued that religion has the “potential to enhance student learning and to improve higher education as a whole” marking faith-based institutions as crucial centers to lead out in higher education. Building upon the momentum of the American Council on Education and its new commission focusing on Faith-based Colleges and Universities, the Moral Education Professorship will highlight interreligious relationships in faith-based institutions by collaborating with scholars and educators from colleges and universities across the United States.

How will we begin to solve this problem?

BYU Religious Education, the BYU Moral Education Professor, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation will host a conference for leaders and administrators to highlight the value of faith-based colleges and universities to foster belief and intellectual expressions that can address economic, social, and political challenges we face now and in the future. This conference will be held at Brigham Young University in Fall 2025 (exact date will be announced soon). This will also be followed by a student interfaith workshop from students at BYU and other faith-based colleges and universities.

This call for papers invites submissions from faculty, administrators, and students from faith-based colleges and universities. Selected presenters will receive a $1,000 award to help offset the costs for attending the conference. This option would allow for those most interested in these efforts to submit and participate, gathering individuals who have already been working in this area.

Conference, Publication, and Workshop

Conference: Attendees will present papers at Brigham Young University.

Faculty, Staff, and Administrators deadline: Please provide a 350-word proposal by March 1. We will begin examining the proposals as soon as they arrive and will select 20 participants on a rolling basis. Completed papers will be turned in by 30 September 2025, before the conference. Each paper will be double-blind peer reviewed and considered for an anthology published through the Religious Studies Center, at Brigham Young University.

Student Interfaith Workshop: Coupled with the conference will also be a forum for interfaith education that will draw students from faith-based universities together to participate in a two-day course run by BYU faculty and the visiting scholars of the conference. Student fellows will also present their interfaith case studies or research with other students to highlight the importance of interfaith efforts at faith-based institutions.

Student deadline: Please provide a 150-word proposal for your research or case study by March 1, 2025. Final papers will be around 2,000 words and be turned in by 30 September 2025. Each paper will be double-blind peer reviewed and considered for an anthology published through the Religious Studies Center, at Brigham Young University.

Publications: Drawing from the lecture series and the conference, the Moral Education Professor and a student fellow will edit and publish a volume with the Religious Studies Center on Moral and Religious Education in Faith Based Universities. We will select from the faculty presentations and the student papers to create a compendium of work about interfaith efforts and faith-based colleges and universities.

Call for Papers:

The American Academy of Religions recently identified the need to develop the purpose of faith-based religious education approaches at colleges and universities. They wrote that “The faith-based approach advances understanding of a particular faith’s interpretations, justifications, and practices. It also responds to some students’ religious and spiritual needs. The faith-based approach may or may not incorporate critical analytical tools, such as cultural and historical context, to deepen a tradition's self-understanding by reflecting on its internal diversity.” As faith-based colleges and universities begin to work together they have developed the importance of interfaith or interreligious studies to be successful. The AAR explained, “This approach includes interfaith groups formed on college campuses, as well as national and international organizations. Interfaith dialogues and encounters can contribute to the academic study of religion when they contextualize immediate encounters and subject them to rigorous analysis.”

Broadly speaking we are calling for papers that address two topics:

1. Higher education at faith-based colleges and universities.

2. Interfaith and Interfaith education at faith-based colleges and universities.

If faith-based colleges and universities are going to work together more effectively in this space, it will be essential to develop broader and deeper interfaith relationships between administrators, faculty, and students at these institutions.

Suggested Topics:

  • Teaching religion at a faith-based college or university
  • Interfaith relationships to support the value of faith-based colleges and universities
  • Teaching world religions at seminaries, colleges, and universities
  • Interfaith or Interreligious Studies programs at faith-based colleges and universities
  • Replacing the world religion paradigm
  • Curating interfaith experiences
  • Spirituality at colleges and universities
  • What is interfaith?
  • What is Interreligious Studies?
  • Peace Studies and faith-based colleges and universities
  • Proposals between future collaborations
  • Working together as faith-based colleges and universities
  • Experiential learning and faith-based colleges and universities
  • Interreligious pedagogies and their relationships to student experience
  • Curriculum and Church
  • Who owns religion?
  • The role of the religious minority at faith-based colleges and universities
  • Religious freedom and faith-based universities
  • Confronting racism at faith-based universities
  • The role of secular curriculum and faith-based colleges and universities
  • Theologies of religious diversity and interfaith
  • Civic approaches to pedagogy
  • Historical accounts of interfaith at faith-based colleges and universities
  • What is role of faith-based universities in local government?