Learning to Engage with Diverse Identities
Religious Literacy at Work
by Anneke Kat
When I interviewed for my current position with Interfaith Philadelphia, the search committee was curious to know how interfaith works fit into my professional path. Until that point my only interfaith experience had been personal, through participating in Interfaith Philadelphia’s Walking the Walk Youth Initiative. Although that experience happened many years before my interview, its impact permeated everything I had engaged in professionally up to this point.
I arrived at interfaith community work from a background in International Development (primarily in Sub Saharan Africa) and Community Development work with refugees arriving in the United States. In those experiences, I was often tasked with navigating how to connect individuals or communities from vastly different backgrounds. Just as with other aspects of identity, interreligious competencies and skills to navigate the impact of religious identity were essential. I came to understand religious identity and the influence religion has on societal norms as an essential part of executing international or community development work in a respectful and competent manner. I was able to weave the skills and knowledge I gained from my interfaith experiences as a teen into the start of my professional career. This is best exemplified by the following two stories.
Welcoming Migrants, Refugees, and Immigrants
Photo: Unsplash
During my time in Philadelphia, I worked closely with newly arrived refugee families from around the world during their first three months resettling in the city. HIAS, the agency where I worked, is a Jewish organization, originally founded to assist Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe. Now the organization works with refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants from all walks of life and background. Our offices were located in a building which housed many other Jewish organizations, and there were very visible Jewish expressions around the space. In contrast, the families I was serving primarily came from Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian backgrounds. From the moment they walked into the building, I could tell many of my clients had never met someone Jewish or knew anything about Judaism. I was also aware that if they did have some awareness, this interfaith “moment” might make them uncomfortable. It was important to be prepared to field questions of curiosity or concern right off the bat.
More importantly, I understood that honoring the religious identities of my clients was essential to a smooth transition to life in the United States. Understanding what religious and culturally appropriate clothes and household items to supply them upon their arrival was something I had not considered until I encountered moments where this fell short. The first meal and groceries we provided when families arrived needed to respect religious and cultural dietary needs.
Additionally, identifying resources like halal grocery stores, religious communities, and religiously competent social services offered important lenses as I connected these families to doctors, schools, and local resources in their neighborhoods. Often these wonderful families would invite me or my coworkers to celebrate holidays and festivals they had celebrated back home. I increased my own religious literacy while understanding how these celebrations created an important connection to their diasporic communities.
Preventing the Spread of Ebola in Liberia
Upon completing my graduate education, I worked for Women’s Campaign International, a small international nonprofit focused on empowering women and girls through civic and economic education and engagement. Our work was primarily located in Liberia, and as I began my position with the organization, Ebola was sweeping through the entire country. Together with my coworkers and trained women community mobilizers in rural Liberian communities, we began to devise a grassroots community health-education plan. Our aim was to quickly and effectively inform the most rural communities about health practices which could help prevent the spread of the disease.
Photo: UNMEER, C.c. 2.0 nd
During this process, I was able to lend my interfaith awareness and religious literacy to the discussion of our plans. Islam and Christianity are both practiced in Liberia, and there is a varying degree of cooperation or communication between them. I understood it was essential for our community mobilizers to gain the trust of local religious leaders from both communities. Additionally, we made it a point to account for helpful information which religious leaders could provide about how best to relay health information in a way that addressed the religious needs of their community members. Not everyone on our staff had a nuanced understanding of both traditions, and up until that point the organization had not focused much on this aspect of community life. The trust of key leadership and trust in religiously competent programming became essential in our approach to community health and Ebola prevention.
What I had learned as a teen in a Philadelphia interfaith youth program taught me that when you holistically honor someone’s identity, it lays the foundation for building a relationship of trust and mutual understanding. I also slowly came to realize that the combination of some basic religious literacy with the practiced skill of asking the right kind of curious and humble questions was the best way to do this. I encourage anyone who is working in a wider community context to include religious identity in discussions around diversity. Just as many organizations and community efforts are examining how racism, sexism, homophobia can appear in their work with diverse groups of people, the influence of religious identity should be included as part of an intersectional approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Header Photo: Aquinas Center