Religious Diversity and Cooperation on Campus
Eboo Patel2008, Journal of College and Character
This article addresses the issue of religious diversity and cooperation on college campuses. Nowhere is America's religious diversity more apparent than on college campuses. College campuses have done much to engage issues of race, gender, and other important markers of identity. Religion has typically been left out of this conversation. It is a critical time for higher education to engage religious diversity seriously. The American campus is a unique space which encourages both identity commitment and pluralist community; it values both individual freedom and contribution to the common good. Successfully promoting pluralism and inter-religious engagement on college campuses could impact not only individual campuses, and the broader system of higher education, but even the country in which we live, and perhaps the world. The Interfaith Youth Core employs a unique methodology which combines service learning and interfaith dialogue. IFYC provides young people and the institutions that support them with leadership training, project resources, and a connection to a broader movement of interfaith cooperation. ______________________________________________________________________________ hen my friend Cassie was a teenager, she devoted her life to Christ. She started going to a conservative Evangelical church outside of Seattle, where she was raised. She lost herself in praise songs, learned about the importance of saving people, went on church retreats, and spent as much of her free time as possible with the other kids in the youth group. When she graduated from high school, Cassie went to a liberal arts college in Wisconsin. There were only enough Christians there to form a single student group. It included mainline Protestants and Evangelicals, people who were accustomed to smells and bells rituals and speaking in tongues. It also included Catholics. This was something of a challenge for Cassie. Where she came from, Catholics were not Christian. Soon, Catholics became the least of Cassie's theological worries. During her time as an undergraduate, Cassie became friends with Ahmed, a young Muslim from Bangladesh. She found him to be righteous, pious, and kind, many of the qualities that she had at one point associated only with Evangelical Christians. As she watched him slip away from social occasions to perform one of his five daily prayers, she even began admiring his discipline and focus on God. Moreover, Cassie realized that just as Ahmed presented her with the challenge of engaging with and relating to somebody from a different religion, she represented the same for Ahmed. One evening, he asked Cassie if he could interview her. Cassie said sure, and asked why. Ahmed was doing a project for an anthropology class, he told her. He had seen Cassie's Bible and cross, had observed her Wednesday night prayer song circle, had 1 Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core. He is the author of Acts of Faith. Eboo holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied with a Rhodes scholarship.
