Building Religious Pluralism: The Interfaith Youth Core Approach

We often begin our Interfaith Youth Core workshops by asking the college students we work with to think about the last time they have seen religion on television, the last time they have opened a newspaper or turned on the radio to a story about religion. We ask them to generalize: What are the dominant stories of the role of religion in the world? “Religion poisons everything,” the sharp subtitle of Hitchens’ God is Not Great inevitably comes up, as does Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” “Religion makes you judgmental;” “All Muslims are terrorists;” “Religion is opposed to science.” It is very easy to shout out the darker narratives. So, we ask: are there any positive stories that the students can think of? We will get some tentative thoughts about the possibility for religious groups to do good in the world, caring about things like AIDS or poverty or the environment, but these ideas are much less clear in their mind.