Designing a multifaith activity for your campus
Interfaith Youth Core
Every campus has strengths and challenges to consider when designing a multifaith activity for your campus. For example, an activity that might be effective on campuses with rich histories of service may fall flat on campuses with few student groups; engaging religious diversity will look different for campuses with diverse student bodies compared to campuses with many students coming from similar religious backgrounds. As you consider how best to create opportunities for multifaith engagement, here are some key strategies to keep in mind:
1. Find ways to connect your campus with the broader community to identify opportunities for multifaith activities.
Finding opportunities for multifaith activities can be difficult for campuses where the student population comes from largely similar religious backgrounds or for campuses located in remote areas where religious diversity may not be apparent. Davidson College in North Carolina is a good example of a college that provides activities with more religious diversity. Their student body is largely Christian, so to further build interfaith relationships, they hosted the area’s Jewish community for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The activity was very successful with over 300 people participating. Community partnerships are meaningful ways to identify and build interfaith relationships.
2. Integrating multifaith work into existing programs can increase participation for students who cannot otherwise commit because of other responsibilities.
It can be difficult to help students prioritize multifaith activities with competing priorities of full course loads, work schedules, co-curricular activities, and other responsibilities. How do you help students prioritize multifaith cooperation?
Xavier University in Ohio aims to give every student an opportunity to think about the roles that religious and ethical worldviews play in public life at least once before graduating. To this end, they employ a range of strategies to support students’ interaction with people from faith traditions different from their own.High investment opportunities ask for daily or weekly involvement, while low investment activities invite students to engage in multifaith service without an ongoing commitment. High investment opportunities include summer internships and weekly service programs, while low investment opportunities include Alternative Breaks and Community Action Days. Taking it one step further, Xavier is experimenting with a co-curricular course required for all first-year students to help them learn about engaging across diversity. Students in this course will spend a week thinking about engaging religious diversity constructively.
3. Don’t assume religious diversity equals engagement. Make space for students to explore ways people from different religious traditions can work together for the common good.
It may be easy to assume that if religious diversity exists on campus then meaningful connections across that difference will happen naturally. However, without real intentionality, students can spend four years on campus without exploring the religious or ethical tradition that shapes their own worldviews, or creating relationships to learn about worldviews different than their own. This can even occur in programming that focuses on bringing diverse groups together but does not invite students to take the time to explore those differences. What strategies can help students engage the religious diversity that surrounds them?
Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon shares its campus with communities that have diverse histories and large refugee populations. In addition to the diversity of its community, Warner Pacific’s student body has grown more diverse over the past decade. Rather than housing multifaith engagement efforts in one office, multifaith action comes from student groups, first year learning experiences, pedagogical approaches in the religion department, and administrative priorities. Staff and faculty intentionally engage religious diversity to support students’ understanding of their own worldviews and that of others. Service opportunities also include moments to reflect on the religious or philosophical reasons that inspired people to serve; multifaith service is even a pillar in the institution’s service-learning strategic plan. Students also learn about the religious identities of the people they serve and find ways to improve their work with this knowledge. Courses about world religions are taught with a multifaith posture, inviting neighbors from the community into the classroom to share about the practice of their faith and how their faith plays a role in the way they engage the world.
Key takeaways:
- Community partnerships
- Integrate activities into existing programs
- Create space for interfaith collaboration
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