Happy Holidays! ( It's December 25th!)

Happy Holidays everybody! What a great holiday season we've had here at Blair. Although we have been plagued with tragedy, our love for one another and longing for peace will triumph. It is the season of giving. We hope you remember to give thanks for all the presents and blessings you have received, for there are many who may not be able to enjoy the simple pleasures we are accustomed to.
Let's promote peace and goodwill to all men as we approach the new year. Embrace the new year with open arms. If you believe in the power of prayer take a minute to pray for those families in Connecticut affected by the Newtown shooting. Pray for all people. Pray for peace. If you don't pray send good thoughts and love to all the people with less than you this holiday season. We should all do our part to make this year a little better than last.
So put a dollar in the donation jar and celebrate the holidays with those you love. Be thankful and loving! Tis is the season. Happy Holidays to you and yours!
- The Montgomery Blair Interfaith Club

We don't want to exclude atheists

In our interfaith group, we want to make it clear that we want to include everybody, and from the beginning we never considered leaving out atheist, agnostic, or nonreligious people; however, one of the first challenges we stumbled upon was whether the term 'interfaith' by definition excludes nonreligious people. That's not at all what we want; we want to promote the education and tolerance of all belief systems, but atheism/agnosticism (at least according to some) is not a faith.

In order to solve this problem, I've been doing some research and came across this article by Chris Stedman. I highly recommend you read the whole thing, but here is a select bit:

The fundamental misunderstanding that many atheists have is that they imagine the interfaith movement as uninterested in combating religious totalitarianism and solely existing to maintain religious privilege—as an excuse to show that religion, in its many diverse forms, has a monopoly on morality—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

As Stedman goes on to point out, the true goal of interfaith work should be to bring together people of diverse backgrounds and to converse, question and challenge. This is what we are trying to achieve in our club.

Stedman also linked to this article by Jesse Galef (warning: there is some cursing). Though I do not agree with everything he says, he makes some important points, including that the term interfaith means what you want it to mean. It only becomes an exclusionary "Kumbaya club" if you make it that.

At the same time, we want to use language that is clearly and openly tolerant and all-encompassing; to paraphrase John Green, the words we use to describe the things we think matter, and I think it is worthwhile to consider whether 'interfaith' really can include everyone.

Galef also notes that associating community service with interfaith work "strengthens the impression that religion is the source of charity." There is a conflict between an interfaith group being about the faiths themselves (think about the interfaith events, interfaith prayer sessions...things that could clearly exclude atheists) and them being about the people of those faiths coming together for a common good, and that is something with which we as an interfaith club will have to grapple. I think it's also important to note here that we're going to have to forge our own goals and missions here; we can't rely on what the word interfaith has meant in the past. It's up to us to make it mean something worth doing.

Last, I'd like to include one more quote from Stedman.

If the only thing keeping some atheists from participating is a semantic disagreement with the word “faith,” I think that is a missed opportunity.

If you're atheist or agnostic, please feel welcome to join our group! If you don't think the semantic disagreement is trivial, we can work together to fix this issue--along with any other problems that might make our club less inclusive and appealing to everyone.

Please let us know what you think in the comments below, and/or join us on Thursdays in Room 157 to have a discussion about it! This is important, and so is what you think!

Some interesting blog posts by Blair students

By Sarah: Sevivons to Play With and Latkes to Eat
By Leila: about Islam
By Abir: Interfaith Healing: A Lesson from Newtown's Vigil
And by our president, Juliette: My LDS Identity Shouldn't Define Me

Our group will try to start more conversations about issues relating to religious education and tolerance.

First club meeting!

Though we are still in the planning stage right now, we got a lot done today. We set the club rules (Juliette should have them up on the blog soon) and took care of some housekeeping. Soon we'll be able to get started in earnest with discussions and volunteering, but I am happy with where we are, considering the amount of time with which we had to work.

If you're interested in helping us educate Blair about different faiths and belief systems, please join us Thursdays in room 157!

Join us for our first club meeting next Thursday!

Next Thursday, room 157, 3:00-4:00 PM.

Coming Soon

Information about meetings and events.

We will meet at 3:00 on Thursdays in room 157 when our club starts up. Pending approval by the SGA.