As conflicts surrounding the global Muslim community and other religious divisions continue to capture the attention of the media and public audiences, scholars and community practitioners increasingly extol the benefits of interfaith dialogue and action for developing interfaith peace. Yet very little research has been done to understand and evaluate the successes and challenges of this work. As outlined in the Introduction, much remains to be done to examine the challenges in interfaith work, particularly that it is made all the more difficult by the reality that interfaith participants are comprised of much more than just religious identities. Race, ethnicity, gender, personal social networks these factors and others serve to further complicate the ability of persons to effectively come together in relationship. I examine these challenges in three papers through analyses of interview and survey data collected from interfaith organization participants, as well as interview and focus group data collected from research team members, ourselves an interfaith group. Building from Bronfenbrenners (1979) ecological systems theory, in Chapter II, I examine the ways in which a number of ecological factors influence the practice of research, broadening typically narrow views of researcher subjectivity to be more fully ecological. In Chapter III, I show how attention to a nonreligious identity such as gender may help us to better understand individuals experiences in interfaith spaces. In Chapter IV, I examine the mesosystemic factors impinging on the interfaith organizations that serve to both support and hinder the individual persons participation in interfaith work. In the concluding chapter, I propose some future directions and recommendations for interfaith work. These analyses make important contributions to the extant interfaith and socialpsychological literatures as well as to the work of interfaith practitioners and organizations seeking to make their work more adaptive and responsive to the needs of the particular persons and local contexts they serve.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07142015-085940 |
| Date | 14 July 2015 |
| Creators | McCormack, Mark Merritt |
| Contributors | Paul R. Dokecki, PhD, Douglas D. Perkins, PhD, Paul W. Speer, PhD, Graham B. Reside, PhD |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07142015-085940/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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