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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Rosa Parks Internship

This is a piece written for the Elmhurst College student Newspaper, The Leader. It is about my experiences thus far this year as Rosa Parks Intern for Social Justice with the Niebuhr Center at Elmhurst College— a center at EC that “encourages social engagement among faith-motivated individuals from diverse religious backgrounds through a variety of programs and activities.”

Several years ago, the NAACP had a marketing campaign that included posters reading “Rosa Parks was nobody special…until she took a stand by keeping her seat.” Unpacking that, Rosa Parks knew of injustices happening around race, but she was a bystander, a normal, everyday person– until she decided not to be. Each year, the Niebuhr Center guides two students to work on our campus around Social Justice work- the students are supported as interns, one focusing on international issues (named the “Gandhi” intern) and one focusing on domestic issues (the “Rosa Parks” intern). In accepting the Rosa Parks Internship with the Niebuhr Center this past year, I had two goals: I wanted to learn more about violence in American Indian Communities and produce academic research around this topic so I can begin to take action around the issue, but I also wanted to make sure conversation and action around social justice issues continued to be in the fabric of our college culture. I wanted to help my peers understand that we are all “nobody special”…until we take a stand in something we believe in.

Yes, commitment to social justice and upholding of values is part of our college’s mission and values statements, as well as the strategic plan, but how are those values shown in the day-to-day of student life? I’ve noticed, in my 2.5 years at Elmhurst that there is a deep passion for truly making change in the world and defying the power structures that perpetuate injustice, but this passion only comes to the surface- to visible action in a small handful of students. I challenge you: what do you care about? What could you speak out about to make the world a more whole and just place?

Better Together Bash and Benefit!

RSVP Now! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=208385349188117

Women’s Panel Discussion on Faith

Yesterday evening, three Elmhurst alumnae who work in ministry—Sr. Lisa Polega ’91, Syeda Kamran ’01 and Rev. Kelly Stone ’03— spoke as a part of a panel exploring dimensions of interfaith cooperation in their work. This panel was a part of Women’s History Month goings on and the “Still Speaking: Conversations on Faith” series of the College, the conversation was moderated by Associate Chaplain Michelle Hughes.

Two attendees were kind enough to briefly reflect on the event

“As a passionate “lobbyist” for social and environmental issues, there is a lot of confusion and uncertainty as I am catapulted into the world. While I came here as a follower of Christ in true faith, I now live ambiguously in terms of spirituality. Hearing these three passionate women of different [faiths] talk about uncertain, but fulfilling paths is very encouraging. Passion leads where passion fits for each crazy individual, even if a specific faith in God doesn’t exist to cling to.” -Sara Schroeder (a leader of the campus Amnesty International chapter who has blogged previously for EC interfaith)

“It’s great to see that three powerful women from three different faith backgrounds can come together an talk about how their faith, as well as others, are important in their lives. Also, hearing that Elmhurst College was an inspiration for their desire to promote interfaith [cooperation], as it has been for me is awesome” -Emily Mohney (a photographer for the college newspaper The Leader, and the College)

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)

Essay Contest Announcement!

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.

Elmhurst on Being: Dr. Paul Parker

I was able to sit down with Dr. Paul Parker, chair of the Religion Department at Elmhurst, as part “Elmhurst on Being”, and talk about his faith identity and his views on religious pluralism and interfaith work. Dr. Parker’s area of specialization is Christian theological ethics, but he teaches broadly across the field of religious studies.

Elmhurst on Being is a new series of short video conversations with prominent members of the Elmhurst College community, in which they talk about their faith or philosophical identity and thoughts on religious pluralism and interfaith cooperation. If you have a suggestion about a member of our community you would like to see featured, please leave a comment below!

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.