![\"url-3\"](\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/126\/2014\/02\/url-3.jpeg?w=300\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The first week in February was the United Nation’s\u00a0“Interfaith Harmony Week”<\/a>.\u00a0While Smith will be commemorating this week later on in the semester, this is a good time to begin to talk about the what and why of \u201cInterfaith Harmony.\u201d Three Smith students, board members of the\u00a0\u00a0Smith\u00a0Spirituality In Action\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0Group have just returned from Atlanta where they attended the leadership institute of the Interfaith Youth Corps<\/a>.\u00a0The IFYC\u2019s mission is to build religious pluralism, which they define as as\u00a0respect for\u00a0\u00a0peoples\u2019 religious and non-religious identities which elicits mutually inspiring relationships and common action for the common good<\/i>.<\/p>\n Eboo Patel, the organization\u2019s founder says:<\/p>\n We live at a time when people of different faith backgrounds are interacting with greater frequency than ever before. We hear the stories of people who seek to make faith a barrier of division or a bomb of destruction all too often. Instead, we view religious and philosophical traditions as bridges of cooperation.\u00a0We believe that American college students, supported by their campuses, can be the interfaith leaders needed to make religion a bridge and not a barrier.<\/i><\/p>\n Patel talks about his own journey in college and how eye opening it was for him when, after considering his ethnic, cultural, and social location, as well as his gender identity and sexual orientation; he was made aware of the\u00a0\u00a0often hidden importance of\u00a0religious i<\/i>dentity. He notes a time when his father said to him, \u201care you reading the papers? You talk about race, class, and gender diversity, but you don\u2019t talk about the kind that\u2019s blowing the world up, religious<\/strong> diversity.<\/i><\/p>\n [youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=j11F3_nb_Sg?list=PLDBC530C625EBC0BE]<\/p>\n This point \u00a0speaks to the urgency of bringing the subject of religion out of the shadows of taboo, in order to reach towards deeper understanding and in light of global ills such as climate change, the\u00a0necessity<\/i>\u00a0of working toward the common good across intra- and inter-religious lives.<\/p>\n The work the Smith\u2019s Interfaith Council has been doing inspires and supports the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life (CRSL)’s\u00a0expanding mission,\u00a0which is to encourage all forms of spiritual query and expression, not just those located when the confines of organized religion.\u00a0After\u00a0 participating in the IFYC leadership institute, the student board members \u00a0have expanded\u00a0vision and honed skills which will inform spring events at the CRSL.<\/p>\n One\u00a0of the most important goals of the Group for this semester is to reach out to what we at the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life call\u00a0SWANS,\u00a0<\/b>students wary and\/or neutral on the subject of religion (a term coined by<\/i>\u00a0\u00c1ine\u00a0Sweetnam, 2013).<\/i><\/p>\n Why do we use this term, rather than atheist, or agnostic, or just spiritual?<\/p>\n Two reasons: first, I think that designating\u00a0a larger category, which includes many of us, much of the time, even those of us who locate ourselves inside the boundaries of an organized religion\u2014makes room for more of the intersectionality which is the reality of religious identity . Second, to rely on a category of \u201cspiritual but not religious<\/em>\u201d leaves out the fact that whether we like it or not, and whether we are affiliated in any way with a religious organization, we all have\u00a0a relationship\u00a0<\/i>to religion.<\/p>\n Part of the mission of the center for religious and spiritual life is to \u201clive and work in a world where religion matters.\u201d\u00a0Thus whether or not we are religious, we have a relationship with religion—even if the relationship is a sense of\u00a0vague distaste, dramatic marginalization, or even personal hurt. Religion, like race, class, and gender, is part of the world we live in. It is multifaceted and contains profound\u00a0divergences along lines of culture, belief, class, ethnicity, ideology and countless other categories of difference, which at times seem impenetrable. This sense of diversity is so great that even within <\/i>distinct religious denominations multiplicity is an important descriptor \u2013 perhaps we should be thinking in terms of Judisaims<\/i>, or Christianities<\/i>, or Islams,<\/i>\u00a0for example. At the same time, it cannot be denied there are some unifying factors between religions.. There are openings\u00a0\u00a0for comparison, dialogue and cross fertilization. Some say religion is like a language\u2014which implies that there are some common human experiences that are articulated by all faiths.<\/p>\n The students who attended the Interfaith Youth Corps Leadership Institute talked with, partnered, planned with students convinced about the importance of interfaith work. The notion of ‘interfaith’ often claims the interest of those who have been strongly identified with religion or those who feel their own identities are \u201cmixed faith.\u201d However, the students attending the Interfaith Youth Institute were pushed to expand\u00a0the idea of interfaith work to include communication not just across lines of religious affiliations, but outside of religious affiliation, as well.<\/p>\n I think that\u00a0this is of profound importance, for if we look back in history we see that social\u00a0movements only flourished when people with different\u00a0 social identities and different levels of social-political power joined forces. Moreover, as Martin Luther King said \u201cWe are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.\u201d \u00a0<\/i>In the ongoing struggle for racial equality, to site an example, we do not move forward except when those in the dominant group,\u00a0have<\/em> a racial identity. By the same token, religion is deep in the heart of civilization, and whether or not we are religious, it is a pervasive phenomenon that has reverberations everywhere.<\/p>\n Interfaith work is for everyone. Even-or maybe especially-waterfowl with long necks and a reputation for beauty, mystery, and loyalty.<\/p>\n Unwearied still, lover by lover, -WB Yeats, The Wild SWANS\u00a0\u00a0at Coole<\/i><\/p>\n The first week in February was the United Nation’s\u00a0“Interfaith Harmony Week”.\u00a0While Smith will be commemorating this week later on in the semester, this is a good time to begin to talk about the what and why of \u201cInterfaith Harmony.\u201d Three … Continue reading
\nThey paddle in the cold
\nCompanionable streams or climb the air;
\nTheir hearts have not grown old;
\nPassion or conquest, wander where they will,
\nAttend upon them still\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/h1>\n
![\"Magness](\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/126\/2014\/02\/magness-lake-swans-015.jpeg?w=300\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"