ABSTRACT
Religious literacy for contemporary higher education must be conceived in relation to the global nature of the university and the global challenges to which it responds. A reduction to the local is found in both practical institutional arrangements and in the dominant conceptual approaches to religion in modern academia, a consequence of broader secular assumptions in the pursuit of knowledge. This chapter reframes religious literacy from this global perspective and sets out an approach related to the three personal attributes of empathy, imagination, and humility. In so doing, religious literacy is reconceived as more than merely the addition to the curriculum of a body of knowledge essential for global citizenship; it is accorded a central role in the formation of mature character that should be at the heart of the university experience.
