I view the words interfaith and interreligious as any interactions between those of different faith traditions aimed at finding solutions for difficulties between their communities and within their own religious communities. This can look like anything from sharing your own spiritual journey, sharing difficulties that your religious community may have and looking for advice or thoughts from others, expressing thoughts on spirituality, or discussing and learning about other people’s faith traditions and their experiences with spirituality.
Prior to the Boston Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI), my interfaith experiences were mainly conversations with friends and a program I completed at Brandeis University in my freshman year called “Conversations That Matter.” In this program, people of various religious and ethnic backgrounds came together to talk about topics ranging from vulnerability and conflicts in the world to questions of nationality, identity and religious life on campus. Like in BILI, we would meet over a meal and get to know our group of around fifteen people while we tackled some of the big questions about life.
However, participating in BILI has altered my understanding of the meaning of interfaith spaces in a few different ways.
1. Creating the space matters
First off, I am used to being in interfaith spaces that focus primarily on sharing your religious beliefs on deeply spiritual topics, but BILI has created a space where we are all able to bring our religious and spiritual beliefs into conversations about community, our personal lives, and physical, spiritual, and mental health. Even over Zoom, I feel that we have created a very genuine space where we are all allowed to share openly about our lives, and we are never disrespected for our values. I also loved the opportunity to hear from multiple religious leaders in one conversation, which I haven’t experienced in an interfaith space before. Having a leader from each of the Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu communities, people who dedicate their lives to spiritual work, was incredible, especially since they would build off of each other and still were able to express their own personal views. In this group, I have met wonderful people from all kinds of spiritual backgrounds, and it has given me a glimpse of a completely new dimension of interfaith work that I haven’t experienced before.
2. I only represent myself
As the only member of the Baha’i faith in many spaces, I often feel like a representative, and when people have questions that I cannot answer, I feel as though I don’t have enough knowledge of my own faith tradition. However, in this group I have found many people who feel the same way in their own communities at school who have made me feel like I am not alone in this and that even though we are from different religions, this is one of the many things that we have in common. I consider this side of interfaith and interreligious dialogue to be potentially the most interesting side, as many of us struggle with the same things in our communities regardless of the religions with which we affiliate.
3. Move beyond comparison
Most importantly, at BILI we can come together to have healthy, productive, and respectful conversations to build solutions and voice our opinions. BILI has really made a point to emphasize the importance of setting group ground rules when we have interfaith conversations, and I have come to understand the all-important need for a “pass” option that participants can utilize if they feel uncomfortable sharing and would rather not speak. What surprised me about our interfaith conversations at BILI was how little we actually talk about our personal religious beliefs. The idea of divorcing religious beliefs from interreligious and interfaith conversations is foreign to me, but I have found it very effective. We are able to have conversations about the issues within our own communities and converse with religious leaders from different faith traditions without focusing on the differences between our beliefs. I believe we have been able to achieve this in our group environment because we have found common ground—we focus on our shared concerns. We also know that the space we have created is one where we can disagree with one another without insulting anyone’s beliefs and where everyone can feel comfortable expressing their thoughts.
Somehow, by bringing interfaith conversations out of the realm of simply pitting our beliefs and values against each other, we have created conversation about spirituality, connection, and friendship. It has truly elevated all of the conversations that we have. I look forward to the next semester of learning with BILI.