On US campuses, religious students' ties cross faith lines

Their ancestors once killed one another, and in certain hotspots, some of their distant kin still do. But on American college campuses, traditionally devout students are forging close ties across religious lines that once seemed impenetrable.

Certain signs are subtle, such as when Jews and Muslims fast together during each others' holidays at Washington University in St. Louis.

Others cry out for attention. For example, at West Virginia University this fall, Muslims and evangelical Christians will publicly discuss a topic of faith for the third time in two years. Between debates, the two groups meet weekly to play soccer.

With or without institutional encouragement, believers of varied stripes are bonding in these collegiate settings and others that many regard as hostile to their values. From classes where they say faith is mocked to parties where drinking, drugs, and flirting are standard order, observant students say they often feel out of place, even marginalized.

But irony would have it that in the company of historical rivals, they're finding kinship among others who pray, read scripture, bear witness, and keep a Sabbath holy -- even if it's not their own.

''I don't feel that history or what's going on in the world at large should affect my relationship with another individual," says Michelle Palmer, a sophomore at Washington University. ''College in general is a very secular environment. It makes religious people of different religions sort of stick together [because] we're thinking along the same lines."

Palmer's experience is a case in point. This year she chose, as have other religious Jewish women at her school, to share a room with a religious Catholic. The reason: ''It was easy for her to relate to the things I do that might seem weird." For example, both pray in their rooms, observe religious diets, and never have men spend the night.

Her friends aren't too different. A 150-student, substance-free dormitory attracts so many religiously observant first-year students, she says, that ''what ends up happening is that religious Jews, religious Christians, and religious Muslims all become really good friends."

Such bonds haven't always been the norm on US campuses, which sometimes excluded or limited religious minorities, even in the 20th century. Campus ministries have traditionally aimed to unite students of a particular faith background, such as Lutherans, Catholics, or Orthodox Jews. Yet collaboration across faith lines has accelerated in the past decade, especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as new groups have intentionally created forums for dialogue and socializing.

Author Colleen Carroll Campbell observed the trend toward interfaith bonding among religious conservatives as she researched her 2002 book, ''The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy." She sees an ''ecumenism of orthodoxy" taking shape in a world of parties and fleshly pleasures where ''almost everything that's celebrated is something they can't take part in."

''They have to have friends who share their values," Campbell says. ''They have to even be willing to make alliances with people [of another faith whom] they might not otherwise have found simply because it's too hard to be a student today on some of these campuses. A young man trying to wait until marriage or a young woman trying to avoid the binge drinking -- you just can't do that on your own. You really need community."

Sometimes an institutional framework leads the way. At Wellesley College, for instance, a ''multifaith living and learning community" opens this month. Like dining halls at Dartmouth College and Mt. Holyoke College, Wellesley's program brings Jews and Muslims together in a common space where both Halal and Kosher food are served. Wellesley's 11 participating students will also live together and generate topics for campuswide discussion.

In other cases, student groups are taking the initiative. At West Virginia University, for instance, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship teamed with the Muslim Students Association in 2004 for a high-profile, moral condemnation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Joining forces raised the moral authority of both groups, according to Intervarsity organizer Sean Wightman.

''It was a unique voice on campus in a tense time, and it resonated with folks," Wightman recalls. ''We were able to say, 'A wrong is a wrong is a wrong, no matter what your political or faith point of view is'."

Collaboration didn't stop there. When Muslims wanted a forum in the spring to explain what they believe about the Koran, they arranged a public debate with Intervarsity members who, according to senior Glen Davis, ''were going there to share the Gospel." This fall, they expect to gather as many as 400 people when both groups sponsor speakers for a forum on Jesus's death and resurrection.

Similar forums for Christians and Muslims have been happening at Wayne State University in Detroit for about six years, according to York Moore, Intervarsity's director for regional evangelism in four Midwestern states.

Between Christians and Muslims, ''there's a mutual interest for converting each other," Moore says. ''So a lot of our dinners would be discussions where the leadership of both organizations understood that part of what we're doing is to present the case for our faith, as it were, to one another, and to debate that. [Doing so means] building relationships that are really friendships."

And interfaith friends, it seems, believe in sticking up for one another. When a menorah was stolen at Georgetown University in December, the Muslim Students Association immediately denounced the offense and sent a leader to give a speech about it.

''We're all very vulnerable because we're religious groups, and students are very antistudent-religious groups," says Hafsa Kanjwal, a Georgetown sophomore who cochairs the university's Interfaith Council, which formed last year. ''Anything against a religion is also going against us" in the Muslim Students Association.

Support goes both ways. When Muslims at Washington University were petitioning a campus store to stock halal food three years ago, some asked Rabbi Hershey Novack to support the cause, which he did. ''It sounds counterintuitive -- why would Muslim students reach out to a Jewish rabbi?," Novack says. ''But on a deeper level, it's very logical. . . . Both have a respect and value for their own faiths. . . . We have every reason to be supportive and hope they would be supportive of our kosher products."

Whether bonds forged on campuses will ever come to dissipate religious rivalries on the world stage remains anybody's guess. Still, some participants are reporting signs of hope.

Kareem Khozaim of Cincinnati, for example, has Egyptian-born parents and lots of relatives in Egypt who, he says, would never consider going to Israel even though it's just next door. Still, he chose to fast on Yom Kippur with his Jewish friends at Washington University. They in turn would fast with him at Ramadan, and some visit his family.

''I would bring home a Jewish friend, and say, 'She's very close to me,' and kind of force some of my relatives to come face to face with this phenomenon," says Khozaim, a 2004 graduate. And it may be working: one younger cousin in Egypt, he says, is now seriously considering a visit to Tel Aviv.