Engaging the Borders: Empathy, Religious Studies, and Pre-Professional Fields

This article proposes that religious studies instructors can gain pedagogical insights regarding the value and teaching of empathy from pre-professional health care and counseling fields. I present research findings from these fields to support claims that empathic skills are teachable. I then show that empathy has been established within the field of religious studies as important in order to understand the beliefs of the religious other. I conclude that religious studies educators should be concerned about how to teach empathy, and suggest that pre-professional research findings point us in the direction of how to do this. Experiential exercises such as role-playing and other simulation exercises seem to be most effective in teaching empathic skills. I present examples that demonstrate how listening exercises and the role-playing of cases can be used in the religious studies classroom and can assist in the development of empathy for the religious other.