Religion, Ethics, and Academic Community Engagement: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Abstract

This article introduces the issues, histories, and questions at stake in a special issue of Religion & Education on Religion, Ethics, and Academic Community Engagement. We begin by pointing to the absence of community engagement in the recent turn toward the ethics of higher education among religious ethicists. In response, we call for more robust interdisciplinary engagement between religious ethicists and academic community engagement scholars and practitioners. To lay the groundwork, we offer an account of the historical intersections between religion and academic community engagement in U.S. higher education. We then highlight pressing ethical questions emerging from this history related to the mission and purpose of higher education, the influence of neoliberalism, and underexamined biases in academic community engagement connected to white Christian hegemony. We touch on how each of these issues emerge from the history of religion and academic community engagement in the U.S., and detail how articles in this special issue respond to these challenges by drawing on a variety of religious traditions and resources.