This project is grounded in the significance of the family for interactions and dialogue between Christianity and Islam.

To set the groundwork for a comparative study of notions of family expansion in Christianity and Islam from the 19th to 21st century.

Our research pays special attention to the reshaping of the family that occurred through the colonial encounter between Christianity and Islam. In exploring colonial legacies, we seek to discover how references to the Bible and the Qur’an played a role in re-imagining and reconstituting familial arrangements.

The ultimate aim is to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the legacies of the Bible and the Qur’an and to facilitate dialogue around family matters in our diverse contemporary society. We expect our research will benefit interreligious and intercultural dialogue and interest a range of community organizations dealing with the law, family, and immigration.

The potential contribution in advancing knowledge is related to intersectional analysis which exposes the complexities of family life in history related to overlapping factors of identity such as gender, race, class, age, etc. Intersecting perspectives will be applied to a comparative study of Christianity and Islam on notions of the expanded family rooted in sacred texts that challenge the dominant and widely accepted model of the nuclear family.

Adding colonial circumstances as a factor of identity and adopting a decolonizing perspective, we will evaluate ways in which Imperial Christianity influences our current understanding of the family and the consequences for civilization of centering one model of family life over others.

Stages of the SSHRC ID research grant

The research will involve three main stages. Our engagements with sacred texts are critical to how the family is interpreted, appropriated, and adapted in discourses for various audiences including the religious, political, legal, and social arenas.

stages of research grant project

Resources

Our research thus far has travelled through three intersecting topics: ancient definitions of family, how expansion of the family intersected with slavery, and ancient family dynamics as they relate to surrogacy.

Access current list of resources

Research project team

Our research team includes three investigators and two research assistants.

Meet the research team