Cynthia L. Cameron is the Patrick and Barbara Keenan Chair of Religious Education and Assistant Professor of Religious Education at the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology. She completed a BA at Denison University, an MAR at Yale Divinity School, an MA at Catholic University of America, and a PhD in theology and education at Boston College. Her research focuses on adolescents, particularly female adolescents, in developmental psychology, Catholic theological anthropology, and practices of Catholic schooling. Among her recent work is Nobody’s Perfect: Adolescents, Mistake-Making, and Christian Religious Education, co-edited with Lakisha Lockhart-Rusch and Emily Peck (Fortress Press, 2025). Prior to coming to Regis St. Michael’s in 2021, she taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the United States and had a nearly 20-year career as a teacher and administrator in Catholic high schools.
Reid B. Locklin is Associate Professor of Christianity & Culture at the University of Toronto, a joint appointment with St Michael’s College and the Department for the Study of Religion. His research focuses on Comparative Theology and Hindu-Christian Studies, particularly the engagement between Christian thought and the Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta. His most recent book is Hindu Mission, Christian Mission: Soundings in Comparative Theology (SUNY, 2024). Dr. Locklin grew up in Athens, Georgia, completed a BA in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, an MTS from Boston University, and a PhD in Theology from Boston College in 2003. He has taught at the University of Toronto since 2004.
This coming January, the Alway Symposium at the University of St. Michael’s College will host a major academic conference on interreligious teaching and learning. The “Bridges and Boundaries: Religious Diversities in the Twenty-First Century Classroom” symposium, cohosted by Emmanuel College, will be held on January 12-14, 2025, in person at St. Michael’s and Victoria University. We are warmly accepting proposals for papers, workshops or posters—and the deadline has just been extended by one week, to October 7.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. It is important, first, to recognize that the University of St Michael’s College has a long tradition of honouring faith—not only the Catholic faith that remains as its root and foundation, but also the rich diversity of faiths that increasingly define life in Toronto and at St. Mike’s. One member of its faculty, Gregory Baum (1923-2017), served as a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and led the worldwide Catholic Church to embrace ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Beginning in 1968, Professor Joseph O’Connell (1940-2012) taught St. Mike’s students about Hinduism and charted new approaches to the study of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. Through our Continuing Education division, we offer an innovative Diploma Program in Interfaith Dialogue. Finally, in 2001, the University launched the first event of what would become the Alway Symposium in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Dialogue.
The topic of that event was “Christians and Jews: Where are We Now?” and the keynote speaker was Cardinal Edward Cassidy, in his final year as president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. The event was so successful that it was followed in 2002 by a similar lecture by John Esposito, followed by a day-long symposium on the topic, “Understanding Islam.” Then, in 2004, the first multi-faith, Jewish, Christian and Muslim lecture and symposium was held, focusing on “Creation in the Three Abrahamic Traditions.” This was followed by lectures and symposia on the figure of Abraham in the three traditions in 2007, on music and musical performance in 2008, on “The Promise and Perils of Interreligious Education” in 2009, on mutual perceptions and misperceptions in 2012, and on the wider phenomenon of “Religions and Social Innovation” in 2013. Meanwhile, upon his retirement as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St. Michael’s College, Richard M. Alway created a new endowment to support the symposium, and it received his name.
The most recent symposium, originally scheduled for 2020, focused on medieval manuscript production across the three traditions, from the words and illumination that graced such manuscripts’ pages to the needles, sinews and other materials used in book binding. The title of that 2023 symposium, co-sponsored with the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies and the University of Toronto Centre for Jewish Studies, was “Sacred Book and Sacred Page.”
This academic year, building on this history of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim dialogue, the Alway Symposium is honoured to partner with our next-door neighbour, Emmanuel College, the theological faculty within Victoria University, to cohost a more ambitious interfaith and interdisciplinary event. Emmanuel College is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Multi-Faith Programs, which welcome scholars and students from Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions to study together in an interfaith community. Emmanuel College is the only theological college in the Toronto School of Theology, and indeed in Canada, that has such a multifaith identity. The students and faculty drawn to Emmanuel College and, through it, to the Toronto School of Theology, deeply enrich the conversations and experiences of the entire community. To celebrate this milestone, Emmanuel College and Victoria University will explore, with the University of St. Michael’s College’s Alway Symposium, the complexities and opportunities that are to be found in interreligious teaching and learning.
This year’s symposium, “Bridges and Boundaries: Religious Diversities in the Twenty-First Century Classroom,” will explore the interreligious teaching and learning that is already happening in classrooms and other learning spaces at St. Michael’s College, at Victoria University, and across the higher education and community-based landscape. Key questions driving this event are: What wise practices for bridging different identities and contexts emerge in interreligious contexts? What boundaries remain important to observe and what boundaries can be redefined? How do we practise interreligious teaching and learning in ways that promote social justice?
The symposium will feature Marianne Moyaert, Professor of Comparative Theology and the Study of Interreligious Relations at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium, who will offer a keynote address: “Nostra Aetate: What Has It Taught and Mistaught Us about Interreligious Dialogue?” Additional sessions will feature the work of scholars and students of interreligious pedagogy as well as activists and educators doing the day-to-day work of facilitating interreligious teaching and learning in local contexts. These sessions will explore questions of interreligious pedagogy informed by, for example, trauma-informed, anti-racist, and decolonial pedagogies, and questions of secularism, particularity of tradition, and power and privilege. The planning team welcomes proposals for papers and panels, for collaborative sessions, and for posters exploring these and other questions related to interreligious pedagogy—and, again, the deadline for submission has just been extended to Monday, October 7, 2024. Please consider joining us at this event!
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