Inter-religious education is often equated to interfaith dialogue as a process of learning non-Christian religions by crossing the boundaries of Christian understanding. The supposed benefit of inter-religious studies is to help refine or redefine Christian identity and, hopefully, understand the other. In today’s multicultural and secular society, however, teaching and learning religions is much more complex than negotiating or affirming Christian faith and identities. There is, of course, the desire for wisdom and knowledge given by religion and spirituality , including a transcendental level of transformation. Students are also interested in how religions, as sources of wisdom, can provide critical perspectives for understanding social phenomena and the relationship to the students’ lives as well as how they can provide appropriate tools to address problems of the world in terms of social justice and peace. Additionally, scholars and educators must acknowledge the diverse and intersectional realities that the students, or all of us, experience.

Judith Berling’s engaging mutual teaching and learning model is most celebrated for its focus on and effectiveness in boundary-crossing. Crossing boundaries actually occurs at all levels of Berling’s personal and professional life. The crossing is manifest through her noting that she wanted to learn about the Chinese culture as well as learn from the Chinese culture.¹ When she moved from Indiana University in 1987 to serve as the Academic Dean of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, her boundary-crossing pedagogy became a signature model for the many scholars trained at the school. More specifically, her seminars on interdisciplinarity and course design became the seminal courses through which she guided doctoral students’ interdisciplinary understanding of boundary-crossings, developing their scholarly adventures. She has also taught and advised students from a wide range of ethnic, cultural, disciplinary, and professional backgrounds and has transmitted a deep sense of bliss with regard to learning with and from her students.

This book originated from a conference held in Berkeley, California, in 2016 that honored Berling’s influential work in teaching and pedagogy. Her colleagues, friends, and former students gathered from all over the world to share their thoughts, discussing critical elements of boundary-crossing in Judith Berling’s inter-religious and engaging philosophy. The conference participants committed to continuing the conversations and elaborating on the various applications of Berling’s approach. Throughout the process, chapter authors of this collection participated in dialogue with one another as well as with Judith Berling herself. We experienced a transformation and extension of our understanding following her cooperative learning model.

All chapters in this book are firmly grounded in and inspired by Judith Berling’s pedagogy. Somewhat serendipitously, chapter authors all pay tribute to Berling’s seminal work, Understanding Other Religious Worlds : A Guide for Interreligious Education.² In other words, the book, fondly referred to by Berling’s students and colleagues as “The Purple Book ” (due to its purple book cover), functions as the main framework in this edited volume.

In Understanding Other Religious Worlds , Berling identifies five threads in inter-religious teaching and learning: (1) encountering difference or entering other worlds; (2) responding from one’s own location; (3) conducting conversation and dialogue; (4) developing relationships; and (5) internalizing the process.³ The five threads include and emphasize the value of mutual respect and conversation. In practice, Berling engages in dialogue with various feminist educators and inspirational thinkers such as Maxine Greene and bell hook, as well as with her colleagues, parishioners, and students. Berling further elaborates that the consequences of the five threads are situated between two poles: “(1) understanding the other religion faithfully and (2) re-appropriating Christian tradition in light of new understandings and relationships.”⁴ In this way, learners can extend and deepen their understanding across boundaries as they allow themselves to engage and transform.

Furthermore, Berling explicitly identifies six principles of boundary-crossing learning: “(1) building on the diversity of learners’ experiences; (2) empowering learners through developing their voice and agency; (3) [imaginatively] entering other worlds through arts, text, or narrative ; (4) engaging, understanding, and interpreting the distinctive ways in which religions represent themselves; (5) developing [mediating or translating] linguistic flexibility through mutually critical conversations; and (6) establishing mutually respectful relationships, learning to stand with others.”⁵

These principles address the need to recognize the role of imagination and interpretation that are involved in the learning process , regardless of context or discipline. Additionally, embedded in these principles is a social justice imperative to understand one’s own position with its privileges and restrictions. In her pedagogy, the core value of border-crossing, which emphasizes the notion of “right relationship,” unfolds to the extent that the subject becomes the object or the subject takes a position of the “other .”

If we only consider the academic framework only, our understanding of Berling’s pedagogy would be too narrow and limited. To understand her pedagogy, which aims for spiritual transformation, it is essential to pay attention to the concept of friendship and hospitality. Regarding this aspect, Berling’s A Pilgrim in Chinese Culture: Negotiating Religious Diversity can be a guide.⁶ In this book, Berling investigates how to create a safe space for searching for the truth, which we assume that engaging the other entails. Genuine respect and humility, which often is attuned to attentive listening, can be keys for learners to encounter other religions and experience transformation.

Since all the chapter authors were Berling’s students and advisees, her pedagogical theories are recognized and advanced in every chapter. Staying consistent to Berling’s usual interactive and responsive scholarship, Berling herself responds in the concluding chapter.

Taking the lead is Jung Eun Sophia Park’s chapter, which explores the characteristics of Nones —those who are not affiliated with any institutionalized religion yet who desire spiritual growth or a more spiritual feeling—through an analysis of literature on Nones. Park demonstrates three models of epistemology of other religions, paying attention to postcolonial theory as well as Jacques Lacan’s concept of gaze for Nones. For these Nones, Park suggests an inverted process of teaching that is structured on students’ own interests and questions. The author emphasizes the flexibility of teachers to change curriculum by paying attention to the learning process of the students rather than simply adhering to their fixed teaching plans. This chapter strongly argues that Berling’s model should be utilized and revisited as a new way of education for Nones .

In Chapter 3, Ofelia O. Villero narrates her personal story of how Judith Berling’s model of teaching and learning helped her cross disciplines from religious studies to health sciences in a time when the humanities , and religious studies in particular, are under siege. In this way, her personal narrative intersects with her professional one. Villero also elaborates on how Berling’s notion of the learning process of religion can be applied to a non-religious context through the author’s qualitative participatory action research project. As a venue for “right relationship” between researcher and informants, Villero emphasizes the notion of race and gender in designing research. The author, as a community-based participatory health researcher, emphasizes that Berling’s mentorship and articulation of the learning process made it possible for her to enter other worlds through engaging and crossing boundaries of significant difference and, along the way, develop her own voice and those of others.

Emily S. Wu demonstrates in Chapter 4 that, building upon Berling’s model of teaching and learning, cultural boundaries can be effectively crossed through narratives . More specifically, when people are provided with a safe space to retell their life experiences in their own voices, not only are the storytellers empowered to teach about their lives, but learners are also empowered to participate in the process of knowledge production by documenting the stories. With this framing, Wu’s undergraduate students who take her service-learning courses use oral history collection as the platform to actively engage with Asian American elders in the community , as well as to practice the principles of accompaniment and cultural humility .

Courtney Bruntz provides in Chapter 5 strategies for educating students on how they can become active learners in the classroom, adapting Judith Berling’s method for inter-religious education to the millennial generation . Bruntz introduces her teaching method, which she has found successful for creating environments of active learning within and outside the classroom space as well as for expanding students’ understanding of other religions beyond stereotypical knowledge. Emphasizing the notion of “encounter” in her class, students enter other religious worlds through art, texts, and narratives and then continue their i...