Raymond Habbaz - My First Interfaith Experience

For the first 19 years of my life, my interfaith interaction had been kept to a minimum. I grew up in a largely insular religious Jewish community, kept dialogue to only those who accept most of the same principles of faith as I do, and pursued service with only those of the same belief system as my own.

It was with this background that I decided to take advantage of the open atmosphere of college to expose myself to something completely new – a class on Interfaith Dialogue and Action. While service has definitely been an important part of my life, the real push for me to take this class was the discussions and relationships I hoped to build with members of Penn’s interfaith community, centered around our shared desire for dialogue and action.

Lili - McKinley - Discovering New Philosophies in the Class I Did Not Drop - Lili McKinley

Five months ago, I walked into the Greenfield Intercultural Center not really knowing what to expect when I interviewed for the iBelieve Interfaith Action class. Originally I became interested in the class because I thought that part of it was going on a spring break trip to San Diego. As I walked along Chestnut Street, I was surprised by the fact that the building where I was being interviewed was a house and even more surprised that I could take a class in such a cozy atmosphere. I walked to the back of the GIC to the small library and met Steve and Fatima, who were interviewing me. As I spoke to the both of them about the class, I was really impressed by the premise of the class: combining students’ own religious experiences with an academic study of religion in society. Although I soon realized that the class did not actually go to San Diego, I thought that the class sounded pretty cool and it did not hurt to take the class during the add/drop period.

My plans of dropping the class started to wither away after the first couple of class meetings. At the first class, I was yet again impressed.

Sean Massa - How Atheism Strengthened My Christianity

Having gone to a private Christian school for the past 8 years of my life, I can honestly say that my views were fairly sheltered. Christianity seemed to be the norm and every other belief was alien. It was with this same background mindset that I was confronted with the week on atheism in my interfaith course, a week that would be ironically pleasant.

In my high school I knew that a good majority of the public was considered atheist, but my school-bred knowledge of atheism did not go much deeper than that. There was the addition that it was something that was frowned upon in our school, and with these simple premises I had concluded my own views.

The challenge came when our required reading for the week was “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, a title that initially sent shivers down my spine.

Lisa Doi-Lessons Learned

When I enrolled in iBelieve, I was not sure what I was going to get from the class. I went to high school in the suburbs of Chicago and in my senior year I got to hear Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, speak at an event. It was too late for me to get involved in IFYC programs in Chicago, but it sparked an interest in interfaith communities and interfaith service. This was a community and experience that I looked for, and found, at Penn.

I grew up attending a Jodo-Shinshu Buddhist Temple on Chicago’s north side. It was a very small congregation in a very small denomination of Japanese-American Buddhism. It is a religion closely linked to an ethnic community, but it is an ethnic community that is really facing its declining size and relevance. I knew, coming to Penn, that I would not be able to find a religious community similar to the one I was raised in. Instead of looking for a Buddhist community that might be the closest thing to my own, I wanted to satisfy my spirituality with something completely different, so I looked at interfaith communities.

Kerubo Mokaya - Playing Nice

It’s hard to believe that a whole semester has gone by. I vividly recall the first day; how afraid I was that three hours of class on a Tuesday afternoon would probably be more than I could take. The introductory spectrum exercise in the basement is also still vivid in my mind: and so is the awkwardness, confusion and vulnerability that followed having to answer personal questions in the presence of strangers and acquaintances. Before I knew it, however, I was looking forward to class every Tuesday and engaged in the conversations.

Ben Schneider: How I Learned to Love Interfaith Interaction

I was at an advisory board meeting for the Greenfield Intercultural Center when I decided to participate in iBelieve: Interfaith Service in Action, an Academically Based Community Service course. I first became involved with interfaith dialogue and intercultural interaction at Penn when, on a whim, I decided in my freshman year to participate in Alliance and Understanding—a spring break trip to the American south to learn about Black and Jewish collaboration during the Civil Rights movement. At that time, neither Judaism nor intercultural dialogue were major parts of my life. I’m now a junior, and a lot has changed in my life since that first interfaith experience here. I’ve drifted from Reform to Orthodox on the Jewish observance spectrum, and my friends and my extracurricular commitments have changed as a result. Something that has always stayed constant, both here and before college, was my involvement with community service, and I took this class partially as a way of exploring that commitment.
 
My previous experience with interfaith work has not been very inspiring.