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This article was co-authored by Peter Dziedzic and Nic Cable, active students in the interfaith movement at DePaul. Both Peter and Nic are regular contributors to this blog and serve in leadership capacities through DePaul Interfaith and University Ministry.
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Often, the American government is perceived to be a bulwark of obscurity and indecisiveness, an agent of mismanagement and intrusion. There are times, however, where we do encounter an initiative or program that truly emphasizes the humanity of all people, the narrative of our common struggle for freedom and social justice, and our fight for a better nation and a better world.
President Obama has just announced an Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge, an initiative urging universities and community colleges across the country to pursue a year of interfaith cooperation and community service on their campuses. This initiative models and builds off of the energy of the Interfaith Youth Core’s Better Together campaign, which strives for the normalization of interfaith cooperation on college campuses through service initiatives.
At DePaul, we are at a dynamic crossroads, and live, as a community, at the very pulse and soul of the energy that the President seeks to cultivate. For example, as a Vincentian institution, we are deeply committed to bringing radical change to the world, and as a religiously diverse university, interfaith engagement is a foundation of our daily lives. We have a variety of programs that exemplify this organic campus experience, ranging from DePaul Interfaith and the DePaul Better Together campaign to the Center for Interreligious Engagement and the various awareness and educational programming offered by student organizations such as Hillel and UMMA.
Ever week, nearly two dozen student groups serve disenfranchised and under-resourced areas of Chicago. Every winter and spring break, over one hundred students travel to all corners of the country and abroad to participate in Service Immersion trips, organized by University Ministry. Finally, each year, we come together as students, faculty, and staff from diverse backgrounds to engage in Vincentian Service Day, a yearly interfaith day of service. DePaul has clearly been living the President’s challenge for years.
This initiative shows not only the need for more interfaith awareness in our country, but the need for further development and growth of our diverse community at DePaul. We must nourish our common narratives, address our common challenges, and together, create a common awareness – we are a country strengthened by our diversity, and responding with fear or resistance to this deep reality of our national spirit would be a denial of the richness and wonder of our citizens, our history, and our global community.
We urge DePaul’s administration and student body to wholeheartedly consider and embrace this challenge. We can do this in various ways, including joining a DePaul Community Service Organization, travelling on a Service Immersion Trip, or attending the upcoming Vincentian Service Day. By embracing this presidential challenge, we will work together to ensure that this thread of humanity that unites is, not only as Vincentians, but as students, as Chicagoans, as Americans, and as global citizens is never forsaken. That which unites us demands nothing less.