Interreligious Info Website
Interreligious Info was created in early 2021 for the purposes of providing information about the larger field of interreligious studies for scholars, practitioners and explorers of religious ideas. This includes a listing of journals, websites, books, institutions with centers and degree programs, as well as other resources relevant to the field. As the academic field of religion is vast and covers a great many ways to investigate and study religion, Interreligious Info has a specific focus, much of which can be gleaned from the History page on this site.
Creator
I’m Mark Banas, creator and host of the YouTube channel TenOnReligion. I developed Interreligious Info as a side project because I’m fascinated by the different models of interreligious understanding. The main question that I often grappled with as I matured in my education was not religion vs. non-religion, but which religion? How does a person from one religion view and understand another religion? I delved into the philosophical world of hermeneutics (which is the philosophy of interpretation and understanding) to better learn when and how interreligious understanding takes place and have loved every minute of it.
I have a Ph. D. in Religion from Claremont Graduate University and wrote my dissertation comparing the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer with the interreligious hermeneutics of Raimon Panikkar. With a difficult job market in 2008 when I graduated, I worked at community colleges part-time for a number of years before finally landing a full-time teaching position at Perimeter College in the Atlanta area. Georgia State University took over the college a few years later (which is a long story), and I had little interest for a variety of reasons in staying there. Most of it was I just didn’t like living in Georgia. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and lived for over a decade out west in either Arizona or California and Georgia just wasn’t my style I guess. In the summer of 2019, I left to pursue a Philosophy M. A. at Cal State LA. Over the winter break of 2020-2021 I taught myself HTML and CSS and created this website. I enjoy attending the American Academy of Religion annual meeting each year and have published a few journal articles. I currently reside in Southern California.
Feel free to contact me at webmaster@interreligiousinfo.com.