By Courtney Tipton (UT Better Together)
When asked about his thoughts on interfaith cooperation, Reverend Russel Meyer, the executive director of the Florida Council of Churches, said, “Interfaith should be much like a braid, a braid where everyone is their own strand, and when put together cannot easily be broken.”
On Wednesday, October 12, the University of Tampa had its first interfaith event. The event was an interfaith pledge for peace consisting of guest speakers and a silent candlelight walk around campus speaking out about interfaith cooperation. It was an amazing success, not only in numbers, but in the impact of the words shared by the guest speakers.
There were eight different guest speakers that represented different cultures, beliefs, backgrounds, and interpretations of interfaith cooperation, but each speaker emphasized the importance of such a movement, and how the leadership of such a movement lies in the hands of today’s youth.
After attending the Interfaith Leadership Institute (ILI) in July 2011, I consider myself one of many youth leaders standing on the front lines of this movement, ready to take on the world one individual and one belief at a time. The ILI equipped me with the tools and skills necessary to bring such a movement to my campus, but it emotionally equipped me with so much more. Never have I felt more accepted then I did at the ILI, which was an environment saturated with diversity and with individuals far different from me. The ILI became the foundation of an ever-growing passion of mine—interfaith cooperation.