Abstract
Students often ask me about one particular type of belief system that can pose significant challenges to cosmopolitanism: religion. Some years ago, a student came to me at the conclusion of a course titled “Conversations of the West” and asked how she might put cosmopolitanism into practice in her daily life. We spoke at first about embracing difference, putting oneself in a position where one might encounter new experiences, and trying to move beyond one’s comfort zone. It soon became clear to me, however, that she actually had a much more specific question that she wanted to pose. That question turned out to be, how do I square the conception of cosmopolitanism that we’ve been developing this term with my fundamentalist Christian upbringing? I had to tell her that, depending on the type of Christianity with which she grew up, it might not be possible.
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Notes
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© 2015 Cyrus R. K. Patell
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Patell, C.R.K. (2015). Religious Belief. In: Cosmopolitanism and the Literary Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137107770_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137107770_3
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