Twelve students are part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new Center for Religion and Global Citizenry. This center comes after the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions closed last year due to a lack of funding.
Ulrich Rosenhagen directs the new center, and he says it’s about learning and spreading religious literacy across campus.
“To grow together as a small group of students who understand how interreligious dialogue might work on a small level and then go out to translate that into the wider campus,” he said.
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Rosenhagen, a lecturer in religious studies at UW-Madison, said a public university like UW-Madison is the perfect place to house the new center.
The center brings 12 students of differing religious identities — like Hindu, Christian and secular humanities — together to learn. For Rosenhagen, it has a clear civic mission.
“We want to make sure that in this changing environment, in this increasingly pluralistic world, that students can figure out the space in between. Where they can be religious if they want to, but they don’t have to,” he said.
Rosenhagen was the associate director of the Lubar Institute prior to its closing. While this new center does focus on religion, it includes non-Abrahamic faiths, like Hinduism.
Maddie Loss, a sophomore at UW, is one of the 12 students that have been selected to study at the center. She’s Christian and said she’s considering a career ministry.
“With the current context that we’re living in here on campus with all of the different like graffiti at a synagogue and just microaggressions, I know that in order to better equip myself to lead different faith communities in the future, I needed to be learning about them now,” she said.
As a member of the center, Loss is looking forward to helping plan the center’s events. One event she’s particularly interested in is interfaith services.
“I will be thrilled if one or two students come up to me after an event that we host and say, ‘I learned so much, thank you for helping us experience these different faiths,’” Loss said.
Either way, Loss plans to take the knowledge she learns forward into her career.
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