God, Language, and Diversity

The use of language pervades every aspect of life within the Judeo-Christian faith traditions. The importance of language inreligion and ethics is well known, but the remarkable diversity of languages and types of speakers within religious communities has been overlooked. Such neglect undermines current understanding because linguistic diversity is at the heart of many religious practices (e.g., using multiple languages in worship, training participants to interpret texts in unusual ways, and violating norms of communication to speak with a transcendent God). Implicit with such practices is the intriguing idea that linguistic diversity increases our ability to speak faithfully to and about God and that a linguistically diverse community is more likely to be a spiritually flourishing community.

This project investigates the relationship between linguistic diversity, religious language, and human flourishing by bringing together ten theologians, psychologists, and cognitive scientists to run five distinct, but coordinated, research projects. The Cambridge arm of the grant will be focused on illuminating classical rabbinic forms of text-interpretation by comparison to language acquisition in child development and in neurodivergent individuals. In particular, we are exploring the rabbinic practice of uncovering multiple ‘creative’ readings of scriptural texts.

At the University of Cambridge, September 2024 to September 2026. The Cambridge arm of the project has Dr. Daniel Weiss and Prof. Napoleon Katsos as Co-PIs. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation.