On this episode of Practicing the Art of Faithful Presence, Dr. Chris Seiple joins host David Wright to discuss his career, faith and religious studies. Chris Seiple, a former member of the Marine Corp, is Senior Fellow for Comparative Religion at the Jackson School of International Studies. 

The conversation begins with Chris sharing his background with the organization his parent’s founded, the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE). Chris served as the President of IGE from 2001 to 2015. During that time the IGE worked to remove Vietnam and Uzbekistan from the US State Department’s religious freedom’s violation list.

When he began travelling for IGE, Chris experienced a global God who was much bigger than what he’d been exposed to at his church on Sundays. God is using people in and out of the Christian faith for his purpose, and he needed the courage to work alongside them. This helped him transform from an ideology to an identity. Chris realized if he showed up and shut up God would give him the discernment to work with and love people where they’re at. He practices his faith and identity in Christ with morning prayer, sending his kids to Christian school, teaching Bible study, and learning to walk more closely with God.

 

Chris is deeply engaged in teaching cross cultural religious literacy. This is the theory of how you do engagement, there are three literacies that are constantly learning from each other.

Personal Literacy - what do my beliefs say about “the other?”

Comparative Literacy - what do my neighbors' beliefs say about me?

Cross Cultural Literacy - I don’t care what you believe as long as we’re working toward the good.

There’s you, the other, and what you do together. Evaluation, communication, and negotiation are the skills to be garnered from this cross-cultural literacy.

 

Learn more about Chris Seiple

Learn more about host, David Wright

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