by Noah Giddings, ’24

Center for Interfaith Cooperation Internship 

The Center for Interfaith Cooperation is a local Indianapolis non-profit focused on improving the relationships between different faith groups and creating community between religious groups. The CIC hopes to improve the relationships between different religious communities through mutual exposure, thereby demonstrating the humanity common to all. Over the course of the fall semester, I had a chance to participate in these community building efforts and witness the role of interfaith within our modern world.  

 The work of the CIC challenged my beliefs of what our community is and who makes it up. On the board alone, some nine different faiths are represented, and even more exist within the Indianapolis community at large. On a personal level, it was a shock to see the religious and cultural diversity in a community I thought I was familiar with. Like many raised from the Midwest, I wasn’t exposed to much cultural or religious diversity growing up. I came to mistakenly assume that our communities lacked any significant cultural, ethnic, or religious diversity. The work of the CIC, through their events like the Festival of Faiths, the Interfaith Banquet, and community religious dialogues, demonstrates the incompleteness of that view: considerable diversity exists within our communities, and merely needs an opportunity for exposure. The CIC highlights and raises the profile of many faith communities that may not otherwise receive such exposure. Within Indianapolis alone, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jains, and Pagans all call the city their home. Similar diversity can be found in most cities across the country — even if our mainstream culture doesn’t highlight their role.  

 In a larger sense though, the work of the CIC captures the pluralistic ideal that we aspire to as a society. Far from idle talk about inclusivity and cultural diversity, the CIC activity facilitates tolerance, understanding, and empathy our society aspires for. By introducing people to unfamiliar religious, cultural, and ethnic traditions, they become more empathetic to those groups of people. In this way, a stranger becomes a friend.  

 Perhaps the greatest takeaway of my time at the CIC and my interfaith experiences is that it demonstrates the humanity in people who, on the surface, may appear dissimilar to yourself. The superficial distinctions of dress, custom, or cuisine can lead people to believe that others are unlike themselves; that nothing is shared in common, and perhaps the “other” isn’t fully human at all. But a simple introduction to someone who seems unlike yourself will illustrate the fiction of this idea; although people may dress differently, eat unique food, or practice a different set of rituals… They are still people. We have a chance to learn this firsthand when we come into contact with these people, providing an opportunity to change and challenge our beliefs. Without these encounters, our beliefs may unfairly calcify and become distorting caricatures of those around us.  

 Though there may still be ideological or political differences across lines of faith, we come to see the humanity in people of different faith backgrounds than our own — the first step to creating a truly interfaith community and facilitating cooperation amongst all people. The importance and value of pluralism and interfaith collaboration may be best described through a political analog: while Liberals and Conservatives may disagree, both recognize the right of the other to live within the larger community; both are equally endowed to citizenship in a shared national space. Interfaith engagement attempts to cultivate shared citizenship in a common social space — whether a Jain, a Pagan, a Christian, or a Sikh, everyone has a place in the modern world.