IFSA Mission Statement To promote appropriate forms of religious engagement at BYU, the Interfaith Student Association seeks to build a community of religious pluralism. This includes striving to actively create a safe, compassionate environment for people of all faith traditions and belief identities in order to learn a more active, two-way engagement across identity divisions.
The aims of the BYU Interfaith Club include creating a sense of community among people of diverse belief systems and identities, allowing for a shared space to learn and foster respect for others of differing beliefs, and providing resources to learn to engage across identity divisions.
Our Story
Andrew C. Reed
In February 2018, 45 students gathered together to begin thinking about the possibility of greater interfaith engagement across campus. The meeting was the result of two concurrent movements – the desire for the BYU Office of Religious Outreach to bring students into the work of the Outreach Council and two highly motivated students who saw a need among their fellow students and desired to fill it. Maddie Blonquist and Savannah Clawson worked through their final semester here at BYU to found and accelerate the Interfaith Club from its inception to its very first events in that first semester. The Interfaith Club is geared to student learning and student engagement with core values of BYU including strengthening faith, increasing academic learning, and providing service. When Maddie Blonquist and Savannah Clawson hosted an interfaith panel including Cantor Wendy Bat-Sarah from Congregation Kol-Ami, Imam Muhammad Mehtar from Khadeeja Islamic Center, and myself that concluded Blonquist’s student project “Sacred Sounds: A Compassionate Listening Guide for Musical Worship” we also marked the Interfaith Club’s official recognition as a university academic club. That same evening, during the Inaugural Interfaith Harmony Week Lecture hosted by Dr. Grant Underwood (History and Richard L. Evans Chair), the club was officially recognized for its co-sponsorship of the event.
From the outset, the club leaders have sought out additional training and opportunities to engage with interfaith leaders from across the nation and world. This drive to better understand how and why we seek out these opportunities emerges from students’ individual recognition of the importance this work and from the club’s mission statement. At the core of our efforts to strengthen interfaith work on campus is the desire to foster a form of pluralism that allows for real commitment to religious traditions while also creating a community of common values.
In our effort to build a cadre of qualified students with the developed interfaith skills and leadership qualities, BYU Religious Education helped provide funding to four BYU students (Nick Hainsworth, Lauren Cranor, Haley Kendall, and Thomas Britt) to attend the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) Interfaith Leadership Institute (ILI) in Chicago, Illinois in August 2019. After Eboo Patel’s visit to Brigham Young University earlier this year, the club established a desire to participate in this training program and learn how to improve interfaith efforts on campus. While at ILI, students participated in small group learning cohorts to develop their interfaith skills, formulate programming to initiate at BYU upon their return. In addition to working with students from across the United States, BYU students engaged directly with students from Loyola Marymount University and Utah Valley University. Lauren Cranor, one of the BYU students who attended the ILI, reflected on the experience in this way:
There is nothing to lose and everything to gain from attending IFYC and/or the Interfaith Club at BYU. These two safe spaces are the most efficient and educating ways on how to recognize, relate to, and interact or learn to interact with people of different faiths. It is increasingly more difficult to learn these skills as we often choose to surround ourselves with people of our same faith, but it is a necessary skill to be able to socialize and work with people that are different from us. IFYC and the Interfaith Club are our best shot at becoming the people we need to become in order to help all of God’s children.1
One of the results of ILI for BYU students is the continuation of training in connection with Utah Valley University’s Interfaith Council and Reflection Center Staff. Together with Ellie Thompson (Reflection Center Coordinator) and Laura Guerrero (Philosophy, UVU), we brought students interested in further working on interfaith leadership skills and programming. In November, students from both campuses began planning a joint event for February 2020 as part of the IFYC Better Together Days 2020.
To date, the Interfaith Club has hosted various events and activities to bring the campus clubs and community members together. Recent events (held in the Fall 2019 semester) include, interfaith panel with students at BYU, a service activity with members of the BYU Newman Club and USGA joined us, that knitted hats and scarfs for the Provo refugee Center, a personal interfaith storytelling training, dialogue with Pastor Logan Wolf and local members (CrossPoint Church) where students and community members learned and then employed the club’s “rules” for good interfaith work. These rules for interfaith dialogue include:
Using “I” instead of “we” statements. (e.g., I believe that . . .)
Seek first to understand and to be understood
Seek appreciative knowledge
Assume the best of intentions in others
These rules allow members of the club to speak for themselves and their experience without assuming to speak for their community at large. Brady Early, who organized the dialogue with local members from CrossPoint Church sees his participation in the interfaith club as personally important for his own development. Early suggested, “Participating in the club helps me to find greater meaning and purpose in my own beliefs as I learn more about the beliefs of others. The activities remind me how others care just as deeply about their beliefs as I do about my own.”2
As students build a well of experience built along with practical skills that can be readily employed in their future careers, in community leadership, and in religious service. As life-long learners, these students leave BYU with the ability to work with those of other traditions while appreciating the uniqueness of their own experience and community.
These activities and dialogues provide students a unique opportunity to learn from others about their faith, their journey, their values and build relationships through deepened understanding and commitment to learning more. At the core, the club aims to strengthen spirituality across campus, provide significant academic enrichment, and build service as a central component of our engagement.
