The Global Challenge of Dealing with Religious Diversity
Religious diversity is a global challenge with thematic links to conflict, social cohesion, integration, politics, migration, terrorism, human rights, law, fundamentalism, radicalism, misinformation, and many more areas.
In recent years especially the movement of religious people from a variety of faith traditions as well as secularisation and reorientation away from traditional religions among non-migrants, have increased religious diversity. Tolerance is an essential aspect of the debate with scholars on one side arguing that religion is intrinsically divisive and on the other side that religion is a cornerstone of tolerance with caring for mankind and respect being included in the key teachings of all major world religions.
The proposed project aims to further unravel this seemingly paradoxical relation between religion and tolerance. There are two main objectives: i. Exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge between UU-scholars, external scientific and academic experts; and ii. Exchange with the general public and important societal stakeholders, especially in the field of democracy and human rights education.
Planned activities are joint funding applications, scientific publications and other communications as well as the transformation of knowledge into evidence-based educational tools to increase religious tolerance in- and outside the classroom. A collaboration with the Democracy and Human Rights Education in Europe (DARE) Network and other societal stakeholders in the field of anti-radicalization and the prevention of terrorism directly involves educational practitioners into the project. Concrete products are a one-day conference with a scientific and a public component and a stakeholder conference to develop teaching tools for formal and non-formal education.