By Kate Eubanks
College students are preparing to enter workplaces, communities, and civic spaces where they will encounter people with different religious beliefs, practices, and ways of understanding the world. Developing the knowledge and skills to navigate those differences constructively is increasingly important, not only for understanding religious diversity, but for engaging across lines of difference more broadly.
A new project led by the Boniuk Institute is examining whether religious literacy can contribute to that development. Developing Character through Religious Literacy and Intercultural Engagement will explore how students' experiences with religious diversity and their understanding of religion shape the ways they engage with people whose beliefs and backgrounds differ from their own.
Religious literacy can provide an important foundation for navigating diverse educational, professional, and civic environments. By studying the relationship between religious literacy, intercultural engagement, and character development, the project aims to identify approaches that colleges and universities could use to help students develop the capacity to engage constructively across differences.
Led by Elaine Howard Ecklund (PI) and Kerby Goff (co-PI), the one-year project brings together researchers and educators from Rice University, Spelman College, and Harvard Divinity School. Cynthia Neil Spence of Spelman College and Marla Frederick of Harvard Divinity School are serving as institutional collaborators. The project is funded by the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University through support from the Lilly Endowment Inc. (Grant #2002 1790).
During the 2026-27 academic year, the research team will survey students at Rice and Spelman and conduct focus groups to better understand students' experiences with religious diversity and intercultural engagement. The findings will help inform the development of future character education initiatives that incorporate religious literacy.
In the spring of 2027, faculty and administrators from Rice, Spelman, and Harvard Divinity School will gather at Rice to use the research findings to collaboratively develop plans for a future character education program.
The project ultimately seeks to connect research with practice: to better understand how learning about religious difference might help students develop the knowledge, habits, and dispositions needed to live, work, and participate in communities alongside people who see the world differently.