Coming Together 7, an interfaith conference I attended this past weekend
at Yale with my friends Hopey and Bassam, was altogether a remarkable experience.
And I am grateful for that.
The conference attracted leaders of interfaith communities from 21
colleges all over the United States. We marveled at the extensive religious
facilities available at Yale. We attended a Shabbat service and ate dinner at a
four-story building dedicated to Yale’s Jewish students. I couldn’t help but
compare this space to the Makom Prayer Room that the Jewish students at our
campus share with the Hindu Student Association.
While I was amazed at the luxurious prayer
spaces around the Yale campus (and heard about the spaces available at other
universities), I also noticed that such physical separation between religious
communities correlated with intergroup separation. I heard students describe
their various religious student associations as “cliques” that stay out of each
other’s way, posing a challenge to interfaith dialogue. Since religion at these campuses was more of a
private matter, students reveled at the chance to engage with difference at
this interfaith conference.
Suddenly, the regularity of
interfaith dialogue at our campus overwhelmed my jealousy for Yale’s large
buildings. Yes, I enjoyed talking to people of other faiths who were equally
interested in religion: it never gets old. But at Georgetown, interreligious
interaction is so casual; Catholic students attend Hindu puja not because a
program requires them to do so, but because they want to see their friends.
It becomes easy to think that Georgetown would
be such a better place if only we had a larger endowment and more space. It
becomes easy to remove yourself from the “money isn’t everything” platitude and
covet another campus’ greener grass. But while I’m in no position to state that
Georgetown touts a greater religious atmosphere than Yale, I will say that
interfaith dialogue is built into Georgetown’s DNA, distinguishing it from the
more secular universities.
