The Politics of Religious Hybridity and Activism

This online synchronous course focuses on the ways that inter-spiritualities and religion inform and form social justice movements both historically and in our time. Religious hybridity has often been cast as an enterprise of luxury or excess. In this course, we will explore how communities have developed religiously plural models of organizing, political action and ritual based on necessity and for survival. We will examine the cases of California farmworkers under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, labor/immigration movements and organizations, and indigenous African and Native spiritual leaders in restorative justice spaces in California who are seeking to end mass incarceration. What does a political embodied religious pluralism look like, how does it function, how is this form of knowledge produced and passed on? Students will be asked to develop an intervention in a live social justice issue or context based on their choosing and integrate lessons from their study during the course of the semester into their final project.

Enrollment max: 15. Auditors are excluded.

Applies to Thresholds: 1. Life in Religious Community and Interfaith Engagement 2. Prophetic Witness and Work 7. Educating for Wholeness and Liberation 8. Embodied Wisdom and Beauty and MFC Competencies: 3. Spiritual Development for Self and Others 4. Social Justice in the Public Square 5. Administration

Faculty: Dr. Sabrina Dent