Over the past few months, the BILI (Building Interfaith Leadership Initiative) fellowship and my campus community at Tufts University have guided me to a new definition of interfaith work. I have learned that the richness of interfaith work emerges in connection, in the sharing of values, in joy and hurt. It is a discipline, one that requires a consistent showing up with care and openness; it demands a persistent belief in community and creation. Interfaith work yearns for vulnerability and witness. I would not have been able to deepen my understanding and definition of what it means to be an interfaith leader without the resources and community I found through this fellowship.
Within the framework of BILI, I was inspired to turn interfaith values into actionable steps. For example, as an interfaith leader at Tufts, generative group discussions turned into actionable items within my campus community: evaluating our school’s religious accommodations and multi-faith inclusivity, and planning community events. As part of my campus interfaith group, I have helped arranged public appearances, lectures, events, and community gatherings to promote religious literacy. One of these events I consider critical to my new understanding of interfaith work was the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Community Action, which resulted in over 10,000 packaged meals for the local community and 100 backpacks for recently incarcerated individuals. While budgets, spreadsheets, and similar logistical coordination were no doubt necessary for the success of this project, without interpersonal coordination and emotional investment, we would have not seen results. Together, we were able to build a space that ultimately honored each individual’s humanity and reflected the values of interfaith harmony. Events like this Day of Action are realized through the culmination of each individual’s care and intention.
Interfaith work is a special form of justice work. Unlike other forms of advocacy work I have engaged in, burnout and isolation have not defined my experience in the interfaith community. This work is sustaining because of its attention to people, not tasks. It yearns for vulnerability and witness, and our energy emerges through the momentum of community care.
The growth of my interfaith understanding did not only occur in interfaith spaces. In fact, I have also deepened my personal faith practices. The work from the interfaith fellowship has translated into parallel commitment and engagement with my own Protestant community. The reflection and attention to community values required in the interfaith spaces carry over to how I view my own religious background and dedication to my practices. Being a part of a diverse community like BILI has allowed me to observe the ways other people show up authentically to their own religious traditions. It has provided room for me to observe and explore what I value and what I hope to live out in every community I engage with.
Interfaith work is not simply a big goal of inclusion, mutual understanding, and coexistence. It is everyday interactions. It is a community imagining how to change their world together–and taking action. It believes in a future that takes action in resisting the Christian nationalism that aims to flatten and subdue it. The joy, grief, and imagination of interfaith work create points of focus for a path toward a more just world.
The BILI fellowship has solidified my individual responsibility as a contributor to this community. It has provided me with the resources and agency to sustainably take action, form relationships, and learn within interfaith work. These connections remind me of the force of being moved toward hope.
image:
Paul Klee — German (born Switzerland), Münchenbuchsee 1879–1940 Muralto-Locarno
Public domain scan of 20th century German drawing, free to use, no copyright restrictions image – Picryl descriptionlabel_outline
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