Emporia State University's Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion exists to promote communication, cooperation, and community among the diverse religious and spiritual groups and individuals of Emporia State University. ESU creates and supports transformative experiences of spiritual growth, ethical reflection, interfaith and intercultural dialogue, community service, and social action.

With our connection with the Interfaith Youth Core out of Chicago, IL, Emporia State University aligns itself with the ideals of pluralism. Pluralism is a social achievement! It’s the “energetic engagement of diversity toward a positive end” (Eck,2001) and it represents an ideal that people have worked towards since our country’s founding. As Emporia State University sees it, a religiously pluralistic society features three key things:

• Respect for Identities – where people have the right to form their own religious or non-religious worldviews, express them freely, and expect some reasonable accommodations to live out their convictions. To respect someone else’s worldview doesn’t require you to agree with it or to accept it.
• Mutually Inspiring Relationships – where there are conversations, activities, civic association, and friendly contact between people who orient around religion differently. Areas of both commonality and difference are recognized, but there is always some essential concern for the other’s wellbeing.
• Commitment to the Common Good – where different people share common values, even despite theological disagreements, that support principles and structures that a range of groups benefit from and people generally agree we have a collective interest to uphold. Think safe communities, good schools, defeating poverty, access to healthcare, and addressing climate change.