About This Project
This project began at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, in the winter of 2011. Students in two Religion Department classes, Encountering Islam: Dialogue and Difference and Modern Hinduism, began to do research on a number of current issues facing contemporary Muslim and Hindu communities within Minnesota. As an outgrowth of those projects, the Religion department decided to offer the course, Global Religions in Minnesota annually since 2011. These courses are connected to Carleton’s rich Academic Civic Engagement Program (ACE), which is committed to advancing learning that extends beyond the traditional classroom and works in partnership with local communities to make academic endeavors relevant, applicable and accessible to larger audiences in the practice of Public Scholarship. This current website is the outgrowth of the work conducted in these ACE-related courses, as well as completed and on-going research by Carleton College students and faculty.
Students in the course have been involved not simply in reading historical and theoretical scholarship about religious life in America and among transnational religious communities worldwide, but they engage in a broad and impressive array of fieldwork. These explorations provide a picture of the range of religious diversity in the state as they consider communities in rural, suburban, and urban contexts, as well as the religious lives of those who have resided in the state for over a century or under a year. Currently, this research is in its infancy. What is found here reflects, in most cases, only 10 weeks of research, and the project is indebted to the generosity of the religious leaders, communities, congregations and individuals who share their knowledge and time to make this project possible. Eventually, we hope to create a more in-depth dynamic site that can help to enrich public knowledge and literacy about the diverse Religious Worlds of MN.
* THIS SITE IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING EDITING AND CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE EXCUSE THE MESS.
This website is also connected to a larger initiative on religious diversity in Minnesota, started by Shana Sippy and Michael McNally.