The weekend of October 24-26, 2010, three Gustavus students, Claire Curran, Rebecca Rasp and Mayanthi Jayawardena, along with Chaplain Brian Johnson attended the Institute held in Washington, D.C.
The first annual Interfaith Leadership Institute was sponsored by the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC). All the workshops and events were held at Georgetown University and the White House.

Interfaith Youth Core sent applications nationwide to colleges of varying divisions. Students or faculty were able to apply either as individuals or as a delegation, a combination of students and faculty from one school. A total of 100 faculty members and 200 students were chosen nationwide to attend the institute.

Interfaith means the cooperative and positive interaction among people of different faith traditions and moral perspectives, religious and secular, at both the individual and institutional level. One main goal of interfaith dialogue is acknowledging shared values between religious and non-religious traditions.

At the Interfaith Leadership Institute, the focus was on encouraging students and faculty to make interfaith cooperation a priority on campus. The guests went through workshops and listened to speakers on how to start interfaith dialogue. Guests were able to listen to some of President Obama’s delegates, who helped to show that interfaith cooperation is being addressed at the national level. Interfaith cooperation itself contains three parts: respect for religious and non-religious identity, mutually inspiring relationships and common action for the common good.

“It was exciting to see Obama’s delegates. Hearing them speak was affirmative and shows interfaith cooperation is happening at the national level. It is not asking people to water down their faith, but promotes understanding between different traditions to increase understanding of others,” Claire Curran, a sophomore religion major, said.

The Interfaith Youth Core was founded by Eboo Patel in 1998. Patel is a Muslim who attended the University of Illinois. During his time in school, he saw this need in the world for citizens of various ideals and faiths to work together. The movement’s main focus targets young adults and encourages them to start interfaith dialogues. The movement is the group of people and organizations who look to empower young people with the hope to live in a world where diverse individuals of many cultures, religions and philosophies work to create understanding and collaboration through serving their communities together.

“IFYC is a great organization that is really driven by their passion for bringing people together. I wasn’t familiar with the organization before I went to the conference. The conference was really fantastic. I thought that their campaign to bring together people of different faith traditions to serve was a great idea. When we serve together, we can converse about what leads us to serve. These organic conversations will lead to a greater awareness of the common ground that we share with those around us. Serving together also puts a human face on faith traditions we may not have a lot of knowledge about,” Senior Management Major Rasp said.

Curran was fortunate enough to work this past summer in Chicago for IFYC alongside Patel. There she was given the position of development intern where her duties included writing grant reports and speaking about the IFYC’s goals to donors.

“My experience with IFYC has taught me so much. We don’t talk about religion on campus, and I feel we should create a space where people can feel open to talk about their faith and use the religious diversity on our campus as a unification, [we should] use it to serve our community and not just something that isn’t talked about. The whole point is to engage all faith and non-faith backgrounds,” Curran said.

Students on campus have begun work on bringing interfaith dialogue to campus. Mosaic is the new interfaith student group at Gustavus.

The goal of the organization is to bring students from different religious and nonreligious traditions together to help serve the community and the world. They plan to accomplish this by hosting interfaith dialogues and service events on campus. The group meets every Thursday at 7:00 p.m. in the CVR.