Building Bridges, Not Barriers or Bombs

Last weekend, Sara and I attended the Interfaith Youth Core’s 6th Annual Conference at Northwestern University. The theme this year was Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World. Over 650 people were in attendance, most of them university students. They came from all over the country, with even a few coming from countries overseas like England, India and Afghanistan.

Eboo Patel, IFYC’s founder, gave the opening address focusing on 3 qualities of what he calls an “Interfaith Leader”. According to Patel, an “Interfaith Leader” is someone who changes conversations. They use new language to counter the dominant narratives in our societies, narratives that can use religion as a means to separate. Patel says if you hear someone make a comment about a group of people from one religious tradition and that same comment would make you uncomfortable if they were talking about someone’s sex, race or orientation, then they probably shouldn’t be saying it about someone’s religion. The point of the IFYC training is to lean how to not only stop harmful dialogue, but also how to re-direct conversations in more positive directions.

An Interfaith Leader starts projects. As Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners said during the opening plenary session, actions give faith meaning. The IFYC model is to bring religiously diverse young people together for service projects and that dialogue will come out of that relationship which is based on a shared experience. This is similar to what we do here at Intersections, bringing diverse people together for shared experiences and finding the common ground that emerges out of the connection.

At this conference, Intersections functioned as a leader, starting projects. In cooperation with IFYC and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, we convened a networking lunch to discuses the creation of a North American Youth Network that would support interfaith and intercultural dialogue among young people in North America. The lunch was attended by over 90 youth, all very interested in finding ways to connect with others across North America.

An Interfaith Leader alters environments to make interfaith cooperation the norm. Leaders are plugged into their communities and alter the environments around them and as Eboo says, “build bridges, not barriers or bombs.” This, Patel believes, is how we begin to see the effects of a movement.