Longwood University

Globalization and Religious Pluralism are interrelated and influential in shaping our changing world.  Students need to understand and act on the challenges and opportunities that are constantly being created as the world’s economies get integrated, as people travel across nations for business, work and pleasure, and as a technologically connected world responds to world events as local events or vice versa.

Globalization and Religious Pluralism Event Schedule - Click Here

Narrative

It is important to focus our attention on the “New” Pluralism in American.  According to a recent census, America is “Browning” and exhibiting growth in both ethnicity and new patterns of worship.  We need to be aware of and sensitive to the complex matrix of human relations.  Is America ready and willing to adapt to our new citizens without imposing new conditions for citizenship and community?

Ingrid Shafer writes:  “Religious Pluralism is the belief that no single religion should be privileged and that people of all faith communities should be respected and allowed to live by the principles of their traditions without interference as long as those principles do not call followers to harm others.”  This definition establishes a framework for any discussion of religious pluralism, democracy, and globalization.  We want to prepare our students to engage in dialogues in which they share and listen.

Globalization is a set of forces that have affected societies around the world and have created a global community that is changing fast and whose future is potentially exciting, fruitful or deadly.  There is debate involving the need to democratize nation states of the world and the resistance (or backlash) to the thrust of the U.S. policy of bringing democracy to non-democratic states.

Longwood University and Hampden Sydney College are preparing for the Jamestown Democracy Project.  This project will involve discussions and debate about the nature of democracy, the future of nation states, the challenges to a democratic world, and how can we educate the new generation about freedom, liberty, and democracy.  Our project will energize and prepare our students to participate fully in the January 2007 events.

PROJECT INFORMATION:
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