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(RNS) — Diana Eck, for decades, has been the academician-activist who has delved into the world’s religions and encouraged others to discover and learn about the faiths of their neighbors.

Now, 49 years after she arrived as an instructor at Harvard University, the professor of comparative religion finds herself answering the same question she posed to her “Ritual and the Life Cycle” class on its last day in late April.

“What is the hardest thing that you’ve ever encountered and how did you face it?” Eck, 78, asked the class.

Weeks later, in an interview with Religion News Service, she realized it was a good question for her to answer as well.

“I think the hardest thing has been the realization that though we have — I have and my students have — been very involved in trying to lift up the ways in which people in our society are coming together — in interfaith initiatives, interfaith councils, interfaith projects, literally all across America,” she said, “but to realize that despite our vision of how important this is, there are many people today who are still very surprised that all of these strangers are here with us, and, basically, would like them all to go home.”

RELATED: Harvard religion professor Diana Eck on pluralism’s changes, challenges

After founding the Pluralism Project at Harvard University — through which Eck, her part-time staff and scores of student researchers mapped “the new religious landscape in America” — she realizes that “unfortunately, a lot of people are still waking up to this in some way.”

Professor Diana Eck, center, stands surrounded with students from one of her religion classes near the end of the spring 2024 semester. (Photo courtesy of Harvard Divinity School)

But she hasn’t given up and remains convinced that exploring and engaging across faith lines helps individuals, communities and democracy.

Since 1991, her project has moved from discovering religious communities, such as a Hindu temple meeting in a Friendly’s restaurant, to creating a CD-ROM used in school systems, to having a website whose home page links to information about 17 religious traditions — from Afro-Caribbean to Zoroastrian.

Eck, with dual expertise in Indian studies and comparative religion, invited students to visit the Boston-area temples, gurdwaras and mosques near Harvard but also those in their hometowns. At first, the terminology for those religious communities, many of them birthed in the wake of the 1965 Immigration Act, was little known.

Jonathan Ebel, who graduated in the ‘90s after attending Eck’s “World Religions in New England” class and is now a professor of religion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, embarked on a project in Chicago under her direction through a Pluralism Project grant.

“I was the one who had to open up the Yellow Pages and look under C for churches because it turned out that’s where almost all of these places were listed — Buddhist temples and Hindu temples and mosques and Sikh gurdwaras,” he recalled in an interview.

The Dalai Lama, from left, speaks with Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies, Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, and others inside Loeb House at Harvard University on Sept. 15, 2003, in Cambridge, Mass. (Staff Photo by Kris Snibbe/Harvard University News Office)

Current and former faculty, interfaith leaders and former students of Eck — via the classroom or through her books — speak of her work as changing the trajectory of their academic life or careers.

“Diana was superb at bringing her vision for a better comprehension of the vast religious diversity of the USA together with the diverse array of talent in our university students to build a long lasting research and idea base from which she could realize the project’s goals in very tangible ways,” said William Graham, a former graduate-student colleague who later was dean of Harvard Divinity School.

After studying practices used at Harvard Business School, Eck and her team built a case for the viability of religious pluralism — using the “case study” method, with examples that now fill the project’s website.

One of the first was what she considered a “failure,” where a Muslim organization’s attempt to buy a church that was for sale was met with negative reaction by hundreds of residents at a city council meeting in the Chicago suburb of Palos Heights. But a few years later, another initiative led to the building of an “Islamic house of prayer” in another suburb, Orland Park, with a unanimous council vote.

Emile Lester, author of books about teaching religions in public schools, said the project’s resources have been received well among possible critics. The University of Mary Washington political science professor cited a conservative evangelical teacher who, despite preconceptions, “thought that it was completely legitimate as a subject for public school.” 

Professor Diana Eck, far left, talks with panelists during an event. (Photo courtesy of Ellie Pierce)

Though much of her work is based on research, Eck, who also is a professor at Harvard Divinity School, also has taught and learned through relationships.

Eck invited women from a range of faiths to gather at Harvard in 1983 and again in 2003 for a conference with the theme “Women, Religion and Social Change.”

She also brought women leaders of U.S. religious communities to the Harvard Club in New York shortly after 9/11 to find solace and develop strategies together for re-creating their initiatives that were disrupted by the terrorist attack and the ensuing backlash against Muslims, Sikhs and other faiths with which many Americans were still unfamiliar.

“We can speak honestly about what it is that is happening in our own community,” said Eck of the post-9/11 gathering of women in New York. “That’s not something that scholars are going to be able to penetrate very immediately.”

As Eck, the longest-serving woman professor at Harvard, is retiring, she has witnessed one of the most religiously driven global conflicts playing out on campus that is threatening interfaith relations and pluralism in real time.

A supporter of the pro-Palestinian protests by Harvard students, she acknowledged the deaths of Israelis and Jews in the Israel-Hamas war but focused on the deaths of the thousands of children in Gaza.

A student protester against the war in Gaza walks past tents and banners in an encampment in Harvard Yard, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

“When I look at the tents that have been in Harvard Yard, I think the most dramatic part of it —and the part that I believe the students care most about — is a long canvas that stretches basically from the gate of the university all the way to the administration building, on which students have written over the last months, the names and ages of the people who have been killed in Gaza,” she said.

And as a longtime member of the United Methodist Church, she celebrated as its General Conference made numerous historic steps for full inclusion of LGBTQ people in early May.

“It’s about time,” said Eck, a lesbian who married her wife, minister and psychologist Dorothy Austin, in 2004 in Harvard’s Memorial Church. “Thanks be to God. It was great to see that happen.”

Eck has modeled how a person can be a member of one faith but be supportive of people of other faiths, in and outside their houses of worship.

Her longtime friend and former student Ali Asani, whose Kenyan Muslim parents Eck once joined in prayer, called on his colleague to join him on a new task force at Harvard he is co-chairing that seeks to combat anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias.

Despite her plan to officially retire as of July 1, he said she has held listening sessions and he expects her to have a role in pending recommendations.

“I said: ‘You’re still part of the university; we’re not going to let you go,’” recalled Asani, a professor of Islamic religion and cultures. “We need you. We need you now more than ever.”

Eck, who noted that Harvard also created a task force on antisemitism earlier this year, also has encouraged people beyond the campus as they sought new ways to foster interreligious understanding.

Among her progeny are Eboo Patel, who once sat on her patio to discuss what would become Interfaith Youth Core, known for engaging college students in interfaith service projects, and is now Interfaith America, distributing grants to other cross-faith initiatives. Another is Simran Jeet Singh, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Religion and Society Program. Both contributed to “Pilgrimage, Place, and Pluralism,” a volume published earlier this year to pay tribute to Eck, with Patel describing his mentor as “perhaps the single most influential figure in American interfaith work in the 1990s.”

Paul Raushenbush, from left, then editor for the Huffington Post, Professor Diana Eck and Simran Jeet Singh stand together for a portrait, circa 2018. (Photo courtesy of Simran Jeet Singh)

“Professor Eck’s sustained efforts demonstrate how academics can utilize their expertise — from a place of care and compassion — to help make our world a better place,” said Singh, who is a columnist for RNS.

Eck said she hopes the Pluralism Project, which has been a model for affiliates and organizations across the country, will continue to foster dialogue and engagement, even as she hopes to spend more time at home and pursue writing projects.

“I think we’ve kind of got the ball rolling, and we will try to keep what is on our website up to date,” she said. “People can use it, utilize it, build on it, teach from it, and all that stuff until we become that utopian pluralist culture.”

RELATED: White House’s Melissa Rogers affirms religious diversity as interfaith group expands

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Entertainment

Gillian Anderson warns UK homelessness ‘will only get worse’

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Gillian Anderson warns UK homelessness 'will only get worse'

Gillian Anderson has warned homelessness is a growing problem in the UK – one that will only get worse if we enter a recession.

The award-winning actress, who is playing a woman facing homelessness along with her husband in her latest film, The Salt Path, told Sky News: “It’s interesting because I feel like it’s even changed in the UK in the last little while.”

Born in Chicago, and now living in London, she explained: “I’m used to seeing it so much in Vancouver and California and other areas that I spent time. You don’t often see it as much in the UK.”

Her co-star in the film, White Lotus actor Jason Isaacs, chips in: “You do now.”

“It’s now becoming more and more prevalent since COVID,” said Anderson, “and the current financial situation in the country and around the world.

“It’s a topic that I think will be more and more in the forefront of people’s minds, particularly if we end up going into a recession.”

Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in The Salt Path. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear

The film is based on Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir, which depicts her and her husband’s 630-mile trek along the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coastline, walking from Minehead, Somerset to Land’s End.

Written from her notes on the journey, The Salt Path went on to sell over a million copies worldwide and spent nearly two years in The Sunday Times bestseller list. Winn’s since written two more memoirs.

Isaacs, who plays her husband Moth Winn in the movie, told Sky News that Winn told him she “hopes [the film] makes people look at homeless people when they walk by in a different light, give them a second look and maybe talk to them”.

With record levels of homelessness in the UK, with a recent Financial Times analysis showing one in every 200 households in the UK is experiencing homelessness, the cost of living crisis is worsening an already serious problem.

Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear

The film sees Ray and Winn let down by the system, first by the court which evicts them from their home, then by the council which tells them despite a terminal diagnosis they don’t qualify for emergency housing.

Following the loss of their family farm shortly after Moth’s shock terminal diagnosis with rare neurological condition Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), the couple find solace in nature.

They set off with just a tent and two backpacks to walk the coastal path.

Isaacs says living in a transient way comes naturally to actors, admitting like his character, he too “lives out of a suitcase” and is “away on jobs often”.

Read more:
Is this every actor’s bucket list job?

Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear

Shot in 2023 across Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Wales, Anderson says as a city-dweller, the locations had an impact on her.

Anderson reveals: “As I’ve gotten older, I have become more aware of nature than […] when I was younger, and certainly in filming this film and being outside and so much of nature being a third character, it did shift my thinking around it.”

Meanwhile, Isaacs says he discovered a “third character” leading the film just the day before our interview, when speaking to Winn on the phone.

Isaacs says the author told him: “I feel like there’s three characters in the film,” going on, “I thought she was going to say nature, but she said, ‘No, that path'”.

Isaacs elaborates: “Not just nature, but that path where the various biblical landscapes you get and the animals, they matter.

“The things that happen on that path were a huge part of their own personal story and hopefully the audience’s journey as well.”

The Salt Path comes to UK cinemas on Friday 30 May.

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Politics

PM could lift controversial benefit cap in budget – as Farage makes two big election promises

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PM could lift controversial benefit cap in budget - as Farage makes two big election promises

Sir Keir Starmer could decide to lift the two-child benefit cap in the autumn budget, amid further pressure from Nigel Farage to appeal to traditional Labour voters.

The Reform leader will use a speech this week to commit his party to scrapping the two-child cap, as well as reinstating winter fuel payments in full.

The prime minister – who took Westminster by surprise at PMQs by revealing his intention to row back on the winter fuel cut – has previously said he would like to lift the two-child cap if the government could afford it.

There are now mounting suggestions an easing of the controversial benefit restriction may be unveiled when the chancellor delivers the budget later this year.

According to The Observer, Sir Keir told cabinet ministers he wanted to axe the measure – and asked the Treasury to look for ways to fund the move.

It comes after the government delayed the release of its child poverty strategy, which is expected to recommend the divisive cap – introduced by former Tory chancellor George Osborne – is scrapped.

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Why did Labour delay their child poverty strategy?

Ministers have already said any changes to winter fuel payments, triggered by mounting political pressure, would only be made when the government’s next fiscal event rolls round.

The Financial Times reported it may be done by restoring the benefit to all pensioners, with the cash needed being clawed back from the wealthy through the tax system.

The payment was taken from more than 10 million pensioners this winter after it became means-tested, and its unpopularity was a big factor in Labour’s battering at recent elections.

Before Wednesday’s PMQs, the prime minister and chancellor had insisted there would be no U-turn.

More from Sky News:
PM’s winter fuel claim ‘not credible’
Starmer vs Reeves – the ‘rift’ in Downing Street

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Will winter fuel U-turn happen?

Many Labour MPs have called for the government to do more to help the poorest in society, amid mounting concern over the impact of wider benefit reforms.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown this week told Sky News the two-child cap was “pretty discriminatory” and could be scrapped by raising money through a tax on the gambling industry.

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Brown questioned over winter fuel U-turn

Mr Farage, who believes Reform UK can win the next election, will this week accuse Sir Keir of being “out of touch with working people”.

In a speech first reported by The Sunday Telegraph, he is expected to say: “It’s going to be these very same working people that will vote Reform at the next election and kick Labour out of government.”

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Politics

Sir Alan Bates attacks ‘kangaroo court’ Post Office scheme after ‘take it or leave it’ offer

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Sir Alan Bates attacks 'kangaroo court' Post Office scheme after 'take it or leave it' offer

Sir Alan Bates has accused the government of presiding over a “quasi kangaroo court” for Post Office compensation.

Writing in The Sunday Times, the campaigner, who led a years-long effort for justice for sub-postmasters, revealed he had been given a “take it or leave it” offer that was less than half of his original claim.

“The sub-postmaster compensation schemes have been turned into quasi-kangaroo courts in which the Department for Business and Trade sits in judgement of the claims and alters the goal posts as and when it chooses,” he said.

“Claims are, and have been, knocked back on the basis that legally you would not be able to make them, or that the parameters of the scheme do not extend to certain items.”

More than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as if money was missing from their accounts.

Many are still waiting for compensation despite the previous government saying those who had their convictions quashed were eligible for £600,000 payouts.

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‘It still gives me nightmares’

After the Post Office terminated his contract over a false shortfall in 2003, Sir Alan began seeking out other sub-postmasters and eventually took the Post Office to court.

More on Post Office Scandal

A group litigation order (GLO) scheme was set up to achieve redress for 555 claimants who took the Post Office to the High Court between 2017 and 2019.

Sir Alan, who was portrayed by actor Toby Jones in ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, has called for an independent body to be created to deliver compensation.

He added that promises the compensation schemes would be “non-legalistic” had turned out to be “worthless”.

It is understood around 80% of postmasters in Sir Alan’s group have accepted a full and final redress, or been paid most of their offer.

Read more:
Post Office scandal explained

Who are the key figures in the scandal?

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‘Lives were destroyed’

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson told Sky News: “We pay tribute to all the postmasters who’ve suffered from this scandal, including Sir Alan for his tireless campaign for justice, and we have quadrupled the total amount paid to postmasters since entering government.

“We recognise there will be an absence of evidence given the length of time which has passed, and we therefore aim to give the benefit of the doubt to postmasters as far as possible.

“Anyone unhappy with their offer can have their case reviewed by a panel of experts, which is independent of the government.”

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