Chesnavage, Charles

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Religious Education

Dr. Chesnavage brings a wealth of interreligious experience to HJI. He graduated from Fordham University Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. His dissertation was entitled, “Principles from Inculturation As A Key to Interreligious Prayer: Being Religiously Revelatory and Educative in a Diverse World.” For the past nineteen years he facilitated the Annual Interreligious Prayer Service for Peace and Justice Celebratory World Interfaith Harmony.

He has been an Adjunct Professor at Mercy University since 2018 teaching World Religions, as well as at HJI.

Dr. Chesnavage is President of the Westchester Coalition against Islamophobia, a grassroots association of concerned non-Muslim and Muslim individuals, committed to opposing bigotry and discrimination against Islam and Muslims and to defending civil rights of all. Furthermore, he belongs to two interreligious conversation groups, Courageous Conversations and Neighborhood Interfaith Conversation. 

He participated in the Building Abrahamic Partnerships Program out of Hartford Seminary, intensive immersion and education in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. He also participated in the Bearing Witness and Advanced Bearing Witness Programs sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League in promoting Jewish-Catholic Relations with Catholic educators he traveled to Israel/Palestine.

Dr. Chesnavage has over twenty years of teaching experience in a Roman Catholic high school and has authored two high school religion workbooks and teacher editions.

He is a member of the Religious Education Association where he has presented at the Annual Conference and has a book review published in the REA Journal.