ABSTRACT
This chapter engages the strengths, opportunities, and challenges of cross-cultural religious literacy (CCRL) in the field of social services in the United States, with a focus on faith-based social services organizations. CCRL competencies can be brought to life and holistically integrated into every area of a human services provider’s organizational life: In organizational practices, in public policy, and in public positioning. Religious freedom is a prerequisite for living out CCRL toward a vision of covenantal pluralism. For social services providers and professionals, religious freedom ought to be reimagined to go beyond understanding and protecting one’s own ability to seek the sacred in everything, to encompassing the freedom of diverse clients and organizations with their own distinct religious/ethical beliefs to fully practice them, unhindered by legal or cultural barriers. In this way, CCRL equips social services providers to practice a kind of public, institutional love of our different civic neighbors, through our individual and organizational practices, through public policy, and through our public witness.
