Another year done!

This is my last post on this blog as Interfaith Youth Core Fellow, next year, I will continue coordinating the blog however, as Secretary of the Spiritual Life Council. Next year, this blog will be again tracking the work of the Better Together Campaign and will also be a face of the Spiritual Life Council. We will be hosting guest blogs from Spiritual Life Council members, members of next year’s B2G steering committee, and EC Community members to continue working to make interfaith cooperation the social norm at Elmhurst as the college moves into a theme year focusing on Democracy and Civic Engagement. If you are interested in becoming a guest contributor or working on the campaign or with SLC, let me know!

Rachel (“Rae”) Nelson is a junior at Elmhurst College, pursuing a major in Political-Religious Justice Studies. You can follow Rae on Twitter at (@PhosphrescntRae) where she posts about faith, gender and sexuality, and American Indian issues in addition to interfaith matters. To see more of Rae, please visit the Elmhurst College Interfaith blog at ecinterfaith.wordpress.com.

I have been honored to work with IFYC at Elmhurst this year, organizing my peers and community to make a difference in the world using our shared faith and philosophical values, beyond doing physical service work at the People’s Resource Center throughout the spring semester’s Better Together Campaign, we also built relationships through conversation about and exploration of one another’s values and faith and philosophical traditions at the What If…? Speak In last fall. I especially loved that, this year, my college was able to interact with the larger Elmhurst Community around faith and interfaith issues through the Still Speaking: Conversations on Faith lecture series of the College.

The year has been full of social events, like Western Night, during Orientation, and the Bon Fire in October, events around education, like Got Faith? Week, many SLC meetings, and the What If…? Speak In. The fall of 2010 was all about asking questions, while the spring was focused on service and action work, like Dr. Ray suggested to us at the opening SLC meeting of the school year.

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In America, We are Better Together

If you are a regular attendee of Spiritual Life Council (5pm Wednesdays in the Blume Board Room!), you may remember that last fall, in solidarity with the Cordoba Center/Park 51, we made posters that read “In America, We are Better Together” and other similar slogans to post around campus.

If you’re active in the Interfaith world, you probably heard about the nasty protests of ICNA in Orange County last month (if you didn’t, it’s on the blog). So obviously the world hasn’t gotten the message that we are better together yet.

This Wednesday at 4:30 before SLC (which is 5pm Wednesday in the Blume Board Room!) we are writing letters of support for some of those pained by the OC protests, letters of rebuke to those politicians who spoke at the protests, letters to our local politicians asking them to support the richness of a religiously diverse society when the opportunities come up with regard to faith based and neighborhood partnerships and anti-hate crime legislation.  There will also be opportunities to encourage our own community to support interfaith work and multi-faith education by signing onto letters to members of the Education Department among other departments that can encourage diversity education.

I encourage you to come and reiterate your dedication to building a more whole community, not just here at EC, but in our larger community.

(Following the 4:30 letter writing, at 5pm, we will be meeting with Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, of the World Council of Churches)

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A message from Chaplain H Scott Matheney

This is an open letter from our chaplain that is appearing in several forms to our campus community in the coming days. You can email Rev. Matheney at hscottm[at]elmhurst[dot]edu.

Today at Spiritual Life Council, we discussed similar issues as Scott references in this post (with regard to Islamophobia and religiously-based hate). Next week we will be writing letters to the politicians involved in the protest, as well as in support of several select Muslim communities. This is the first of several actions around these issues, as part of a national movement spurred by the urgency brought forward by the Orange County protests (as mentioned in my last post)

To our Elmhurst College community,

Today, March 10^th, our House of Representatives in Wash. D.C. will open hearing on home land security,  home-grown terrorist activity and Islam.

The implications for this review are far-reaching and have attracted international media coverage. As a college community rooted deeply in core values that inform our life as an academic institution, I raise this moment as one that needs your attention intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. We are not naive to the climate of fear and hate that permeates our society coupled with so much misinformation. This college has committed itself to a different course of actions then stigmatizing a particular people or religion, and so, as these hearing shall commence this day, we are each responsible to listen and speak with a degree of civility born of wisdom, not ignorance. I am especially concerned for my Muslim brothers and sisters who shall bear this scrutiny. There will be many big questions asked of all of us in these hearings and it is imperative that this college of learners and scholars find moments to reflect with the critical rigor that demands our best now. Indeed, the times that these hearings begin serve as a spring board for our critical reflections and sustained actions.

Help! My campus isn’t multi-faith!

Elmhurst College Chapel

Things I didn’t think about when applying to colleges: the party atmosphere, proximity to grocery stores, the importance of a fabulous library, whether the sidewalks are heated (Elmhurst’s are!), and a plethora of other things…including the religious make up of the campus. I didn’t know, coming to college, I would expand so far beyond my 17 year-old Lutheran-youth-group-church-nerd-self in acting on my beliefs and convictions regarding social change and faith-based organizing; I didn’t consider that I might want to attend a college with more religious diversity (or heck, diversity in general). I don’t know that I even thought about religious diversity in much earnest until, in my first week of college, someone invited me to Spiritual Life Council and I went because they did service work.

Elmhurst is 42% Roman Catholic and 21% Protestant, with 29% of our student body “Other, not affiliated, not reporting”, we have all of five active student organizations centered around a religious identity (out of more than 100 clubs and organizations), and yes, sometimes that makes interfaith cooperation an up-hill battle-

Reflections on the journey of a (F)a(i)theist: CRU and SSA

Mr. Stedman speaking with students following the lecture

Elmhurst College is in the middle of a year focused on building interfaith cooperation, hosting speakers and events around the theme of “Still Speaking: Conversations on Faith“. Last week the Spiritual Life Council, a student interfaith group, and the Better Together Campaign brought Mr. Chris Stedman, Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and blogger at NonProphet Status. Mr. Stedman met with small groups throughout the day, exploring the role of the non-religious in the collegiate institution; in the evening, Mr. Stedman presented the lecture “(F)a(i)theist: How One Atheist Learned to Stop Hating Religion and Became an Interfaith Activist” . He shared his journey of coming to identify as a Secular Humanist and his engagement in the interfaith movement. In this blog, leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ and Secular Students Association reflect on what they heard in Mr. Stedman’s address- these students are participating with the Better Together Campaign at Elmhurst College, working to affect hunger and poverty in DuPage County by working on projects with the People’s Resource Center.

On an Identity

This blog was written by Mark Wolfe, IFYC Fellow at the University of Indianapolis. You may read Mark’s blog at uindyinterfaithforum.wordpress.com and follow Mark on Twitter @InterfaithWolfe.

When the comedian Brian O’Sullivan visited the University of Indianapolis, one of the greatest musical hits that he played during the night was called “I’m a WASP,” a parody of the famous Black Eyed Peas song called “Imma Be.”  Throughout the entirety of the song, O’Sullivan listed many of the stereotypes involving WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), the most populous group in the United States.  While the majority of Americans are still WASPs, there is an increasing diversity, both racial and religious, that one cannot ignore.  When 48% of Los Angeles County is Hispanic and millions of Muslims inhabit this country, WASPs are not alone anymore.

I am a male WASP. From prior understandings of power in America, I would be at the plateau.  While gender equality is slowly becoming a reality, the pay scale between men and women continues in inequality.  While racial equality is slowly becoming a reality, prejudice and stereotypes continue to cause discrimination.  While I rarely contemplate the nature of my privileges, I will not deny the fact that some of my success may be attributed to my status as a male WASP.  Frankly, I have never known the sting of discrimination based on my identity.

Welcome Back!

WELCOME BACK ELMHURST!

From a long J-term away from campus programming, I hope you are revived and ready to show ourselves and the world that we are Better Together.

In the next few days I will be making sure this website is up to date for spring semester, including updating pages, adding links, and starting to post blogs that were written over break and J-term.

I have started posting more videos on the EC Interfaith youtube site, including the first in a series of interviews titled “Elmhurst on Being”. If you are interested in being interviewed for this series, let me know! Email me at nelsonr1128[at]net[dot]elmhurst[dot]edu or leave a comment below!

Remember, Elmhurst Interfaith is all over the web, not just here, but on:
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ECInterfaith
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Elmhurst-College-Interfaith/161391713877881
this Blog: ecinterfaith.wordpress.com
and you can follow me, Rae, on Twitter at @PhosphrescntRae where I tweet about interfaith and social justice matters (as well as the odd goofy thing from the internet)

So, get ready, this is going to be a great semester of helping the hungry and exploring faith!

-Rae

Reflection on Chicago Interfaith Leaders Prayer Breakfast

Veronica Coriano is a senior at Elmhurst, she is an RA involved with intercultural studies and affairs on campus. She writes here her reflections on the 47th Annual Chicago Leadership Prayer Breakfast attended by a group of eight staff and students went to this event and were able to meet and engage with interfaith leaders of Chicagoland, as well has be present for a fabulous keynote address by Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy among other presenters.

The interfaith focus of this year’s prayer breakfast was impressive. It is rare that I attend an eventthat not only acknowledges diversity, but embraces it as well.

The keynote address by Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, was both sincere and uplifting. Noting the most recent backlash against Muslim’s in the United States, and comparing it to the resistance against other groups in our past, sheds light on the ways in which we are still struggling to overcome our prejudices. However, the spirit in the room was one of hope, encouragement, and purpose. As Dr. Gaddy stated, “it is not despite our differences, but because of them” that we gather not only to pray, but to fostercooperation, understanding, and appreciation of the beauty and knowledge that comes from difference.