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Treat others as they wish to be treated.

The Platinum Rule

Representing Religion

Who We Are

Tanenbaum promotes justice and builds respect for religious differences through comprehensive training, thought leadership, and innovative solutions. We recognize the potential of storytelling to expand this work. With the support of leaders like The Walt Disney Company, we are championing authentic representation and building better practices for representing religious diversity on screen that translate to more peaceful and inclusive experiences in the world.

Our experience has allowed us to become a trusted global expert on combating religious prejudice, because we focus on solutions-based approaches where we advise on how to support managing the behaviors involving respect for religious difference, rather than beliefs. Part of what makes our approach so strong is that we choose to meet people where they are. It would be impossible to do this work today without considering the media landscape where so many learn, work, and connect.

Representing Religion is an answer to the question of where to find reliable, vetted, information on how religious and spiritual communities, and those who are not affiliated with a religious or faith tradition, want to be represented in media. The platform is designed to connect storytellers with information and individuals to support the creation of multidimensional characters of all spiritual beliefs. Representing Religion supports an ongoing effort by faith communities to see themselves represented on screen in honest and ethical ways.

Our Vision

Representing Religion utilizes collaboration and dialogue to encourage ethical storytelling.

Self-representation, not stereotypes, are the building blocks for representations of beliefs.

Religious diversity instills respect and curiosity—not fear—of the differences around us.

Sharing across cultures promotes justice, builds respect, and informs the creative process.

Ethical Representation

Our Approach

At Tanenbaum, we are guided by The Platinum Rule—to treat others as they wish to be treated. We approach media production with the same lens—represent communities as they wish to be represented. We believe the most ethical way to tell someone else’s story is to let them tell it themselves, but we also understand that is not always possible. While writers’ rooms, production teams, and editorial staff continue to diversify, we’ve built a digital bridge to help connect storytellers to the stories people have already shared, as well as a guide to help facilitate a creative collaboration in an intentionally ethical way.

Half of knowledge is knowing where to find it. Recognizing this, Representing Religion brings together resources produced by religious, spiritual, and faith-based communities into one centralized location, so media makers, storytellers, and creatives can access those perspectives and resources and spend more time engaging with and learning directly from these communities.

Ethical Representation
We define ethical representations as balanced, inclusive, transparent, and intentional approaches to representation in media and storytelling. This approach helps create more authentic connections off-screen. We created Best Practices for Ethical Representation as a guide to establishing this by centering collaboration, building rapport, and emphasizing reciprocity.

Self-Representational Criteria
Inspired by “Nothing About Us Without Us” approach to representation from disability rights movements in South Africa, and utilized by indigenous media, Representing Religion strongly emphasizes self-representational narratives.

By ‘self-representational’, we mean learning from stories and resources produced by the communities or individuals being represented, and those most directly affected by the representation.