By Melissa Gerr, ICJS Marketing Manager
Colorful prayer rugs set in rows lined the floor of a small conference room transformed into a sacred space, resounding with the chant of the call to prayer. On the second evening of the ICJS Emerging Religious Leaders Intensive (ERLI), Muslim seminarians invited their Jewish and Christian colleagues to experience Maghrib, the Muslim sunset prayer.
ERLI’s curriculum provides each religious cohort opportunities to teach, learn, and most importantly, to inquire. For Maghrib, modest dress and head covering for women was suggested, in addition to everyone removing shoes before entering the prayer space—but none was mandatory.
Nigora Aminova, who designed the prayer experience with her fellow Muslim students, was surprised and also overcome with emotion from the curiosity, respect, and kindness demonstrated by her colleagues.
“I wasn’t expecting [observance] from everyone!” she said.
Originally from Tajikistan, Aminova lives in the U.S. and studies leadership development at Ribaat Academic Institute via distance learning. Immediately afterwards, she hurried to call her daughter to describe the impact her colleagues’ respect for observance had on her.
“We have to share it with our kids!” she said, bursting with excitement. “We have to teach them to respect other religions!”
For 14 years ICJS has hosted about two dozen seminarians over five full days designed with opportunities for dialogue, learning, inquiry, and plenty of space for informal conversations that percolate over meals and casual activities. Pearlstone Retreat Center in Reisterstown, Md., provided the scenic setting. The week is structured in three phases: orientation (learning about each faith), disorientation (challenging questions to each faith), and reorientation (acknowledging emerging new perspectives).
The ICJS interfaith immersion week for seminary students began in 2012 with the leadership of Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D., ICJS executive director. In the U.S., students seeking advanced degrees in theological education attend institutions primarily devoted to forming religious leaders in a single, particular faith tradition. But in our religiously diverse real world, being a faith leader oftentimes implies that you are also an interfaith leader. How are seminaries, theological institutes, and rabbinical schools preparing students for that reality?
Rubens thought that reading a book about another religious tradition, or attending a lecture by a guest professor, was not enough. So ICJS partnered with faculty from different schools to create a peer-to-peer learning opportunity, where Muslim seminarians, Christian seminarians, and Jewish rabbinical students learned together about the possibilities of interfaith leadership and the practices of interreligious dialogue.
“I want the religious leaders of America to be thinking about what it means to be an interfaith leader while they’re still in formation,” Rubens said, “and consider that interfaith leadership actually could be part of their ministry and their calling. And to do that discernment with their interfaith peers.”
Living One’s Faith Out Loud
Alexander Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in comparative theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, said he arrived at the retreat feeling tentative and even “a little bit of shame,” about how his fellow seminarians might respond to his Christian evangelical identity—an identity, he understands, often portrayed as extremist in political arenas and by the media. But by the end of the week, he was heartened by the atmosphere of curiosity and open inquiry that had diminished that stereotype.
“I’ve learned that I can and need to show up, in my full religious formation, that the world needs that,” he said. “We need people of faith to show up in the fullness of their faith … rather than the secular liberal modernism that … privatizes our religious identities.”
Tools for the Trade
Riv Thrope, a rabbinical student at Hebrew College, arrived with “few expectations” and an “open heart and curiosity.” He was genuinely surprised by the “full range of emotions” deeply experienced over the week that included joy in moments of laughter and silliness—then challenge and also heartbreak, he said.
Thrope said the tools they learned were extremely valuable and plans to incorporate them in his future work—like the daily co-religionist check-ins.
Those meetings not only provided a space to process and question among same-religion colleagues, he said, they also “helped me learn about the Jewish diversity in our group.”
Jaz Twersky, a rabbinical student at Hebrew College, had a similar experience.
“I expected to learn about other religions, but I was surprised to feel like I also learned things about my own religion,” in comparison.
Twersky also valued the sensitivity and attentiveness of ICJS staff and scholars.
“I felt that we were held with gentleness in what was a hard process, and I appreciated that as we went through many different kinds of intense experiences,” they said. “We also had built-in time with members of our own religions to think and process and really integrate it.”
Motivation for a New Path Forward
Arif Rahaman is keenly aware that his Islamic faith promotes engaging with Christians and Jews because they are people who share “a special bond, according to our tradition.” But he hasn’t witnessed it much in practice, he said. Operating in a bubble, as he called it, can sow fear and judgment of others. He wants to change that.
Rahaman is a graduate student at The Islamic Seminary of America (TISA) who is aiming toward a masters in divinity in Islamic theology. His experience with interreligious colleagues at ERLI fueled a new path for him.
“We have the same pain. We have a family to raise,” he said. “All the challenges we go through as the children of God,” we share that humanity. “I really wish that God gives me the power, gives me the energy and strength to share the similarities with my communities.”
– Media: Contact John Rivera, Institute for Islamic, Christian, Jewish Studies (ICJS) Communications, jrivera@icjs.org; info@icjs.org
