The below was written for the 2017-2018 cohort of the Boston Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI), in which Celine was a fellow. For more information about the program, please see the BILI website.
“What is Interfaith work?” Every time I’m confronted by this question, my answer seems to change.
I used to define interfaith work as working towards, building bridges and mending fences between religions, fighting against prejudice, and standing up for everyone’s right to believe. I had a good relationship with this definition. It helped me create a roadmap in my mind: the steps to take, the people to reach, the words to say, and which debates to engage. Interfaith work allowed me to hold hands in solidarity with those whose faiths had been picked apart, who had been insulted because of their beliefs, and who wanted to stand up to fight prejudice. Yet I knew the work wasn’t only limited to people who had been victims of prejudice. It was for anyone who wanted to create a better world and learn about other spiritual persuasions. Interfaith work was not a social justice crusade nor a political movement. It was about educating myself, talking about faith explicitly, and addressing the challenges that came with being a diverse society.
A priest once told me that in order to truly believe, I had to choose my religion. In order to do that, I had to understand my faith, question it, critique it, and explore others. As a young teen, I took this advice to heart and started doing “interfaith work.” Through interfaith work, I was able to rediscover my faith all while respecting, understanding, and appreciating the beauty and values of others. We talked about how faith impacted our daily lives, learned about other faiths, read different holy texts, and experienced different traditions and services. We brainstormed how to create safe spaces in schools and society for people of all spiritual backgrounds and to foster these kinds of discussions. I found that my spiritual journey was intertwined with the action of supporting the faiths and journeys of others: it was seeing that there isn’t one correct answer. It was about building bridges and different faiths working together to create more tolerable and safe communities.
In February 2018, I had the opportunity to attend the “Models of Interfaith Leadership in an Age of Polarization” talk presented by the Pluralism Project at Harvard University (which I highly recommend watching). One of the speakers, Eboo Patel, the Founder and President of the Interfaith Youth Core, said something that struck me. He told us about January 27th and how it was a historic day for Interfaith social justice work. He recounted how hundreds of people from different spiritual traditions began to gather at airports after the Trump administration’s Muslim ban and held signs welcoming strangers. Men and women from different faith communities were standing side by side, smiling. He then recounted another display of interfaith social work that had taken place that very same morning: The National Pro-Life March. Massive numbers of people of faith gathered, and they came together to cooperate for social justice. He closed his story by posing a question to all of us: “What is the nature of interfaith work?”
While participating in the Boston Interfaith Leadership Initiative and the Multi-Faith Council that year, I continued to question my definition of interfaith work and what it entailed. Though many discussions in these activities revolved around how faith impacts our decisions and daily lives, I found that interfaith work was possible without talking explicitly about faith. Interfaith work was present in social justice work, in political movements, and in almost everything else. People are often motivated by their values and spiritual beliefs. Hearing from a wide range of speakers, I’ve come to see that interfaith work is not only restricted to having discussions with other faith communities and working together. It is something much bigger than that. By interacting and cooperating with people of different backgrounds, we unknowingly do interfaith work. As a friend put it, “interfaith work is just like regular social work, but we are being mindful of our own spiritual beliefs and those of others.”
I am still not content with my definition of interfaith work or others I have heard. If you have any suggestions, please send them to me. But the reason there is no concrete definition is that it is impossible to have one. The field and study of interfaith is relatively new, and it is changing and evolving alongside our society. In a sense, interfaith work is what holds the fabric of a multi-religious, multi-cultural society together. It is our willingness to cooperate, communicate, and work with people different from ourselves and to embrace rather than hide our differences.