About The Religica Theolab
In 2018, the Religica Theolab originated in the beakers where religion and society meet within Dr. Michael Reid Trice’s — or the Religica Theolab. As a part of his faculty portfolio, he brought the lab series with him when he was tapped to serve as the Director of the Seattle University Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement.
The Religica Theolab is committed to helping leaders deepen their awareness of the wisdom they have and can share. Through every discipline, people are formed to be leaders within their communities every day. The Theolab is a place of experiment, committed to the greater good of education — in the community and the university.
Blogs, podcasts, and resources aim to form religious leaders, local communities, and students in university and society. The Theolab is an instrument for the wisdom of ecumenical partners, religious traditions, and spiritual pathways.
In all resources, the team of students, staff, pastors, imams, rabbis, venerables, and more, share images and stories that shape students and communities today, connected to the challenges of the world around us.
The Religica Theolab is a place for formation. We learn about how to address violence, about how religions have a role in caring for the planet, about how music across spiritual traditions is rooted in shared values, about how many of the leading voices in religious communities around the world are addressing the challenges around them, and so much more.
All of these leaders believe we share a role in drawing on the wisdom of ecumenical partners, religious traditions, and spiritual pathways today. We have much to learn from one another.
How We Are Formed as Leaders Today
We provide access for religious formation in local communities that instills confidence in spiritual and religious traditions as forces for good in the world.
Core Values: We believe formation of this kind should be a source of discovery, a place to be explored, a pilgrimage to be taken, a destination to be reached within one’s community or classroom. The Religica Theolab creates resources with this in mind.
Discovery – Insight and wisdom begin not in what we do but in what we have been given, and our willingness to share this with others.
Exploration – Insight and wisdom require us to explore ideas across religions, and by helping our communities to see one another as aspects of a deeper story that includes all of us.
Pilgrimage – Insight and wisdom require grit and good listening. We uphold local communities’ commitments to teaching from a core of all life as irreplaceable, essential, and a gift to respect and love.
Destination — We have multiple destinations for our lives and within the lives of others. Some of these are known to us. Others are not. We hope that the resources we offer assist all of us as we discover, explore and pilgrimage toward the destinations of our lives.
Just as our deepest discoveries in life are provided through the love and encouragement of others, the Religica site is not about what we do, but rather about what we’ve been given. We are committed to giving forward to assist the discoveries of others.
We are an internationally based team of colleagues and friends. We create podcasts, blogs, and additional resources. And, we create these resources to be free and without an online paywall. That means that every spoken and written word, every resource, is meant to be accessible to you, available to your community, and open to the world.
What we create is of three kinds: First, our podcasts are focused on the wisdom of our guests. Typically, these podcasts are short (not more than 15 minutes), packed with insight, and are used as prompts for deeper conversation. Second, we host bloggers who write on a rich array of subjects and across differences. We aim to find the unique point in each writer, even as we accentuate the shared quest for depth. Third, we create resources in our Religica Response series that are thematically specific (such as the Religica Response to a Changing Climate), available for use in local educational contexts, are hosted by Generation Z, and that provide the opportunity for engagement on each and every page.