InterFaith

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IF

Type of group	Diversity, Networking, General Education
Selective	No
Membership	~10
Meeting time	TBD
Meeting place	Paresky
Office	Chaplains' Office, Second Floor of Paresky
Established	Fall of 2009 by Mustafa Saadi '12

InterFaith is a type of umbrella group that seeks to bring together and, hopefully, properly represent the religious groups on campus. As such, IF attempts to have a representative from every religious or religious/spirituality related group on its board each year. Together, this board hosts interfaith discussions open to the whole campus (often with food supplied), various events which brings in different speakers, and various service work around the Williamstown and North Adams areas. Likely to be a tradition, IF has also put on Interfaith Month, an entire month dedicated to speakers and events meant to educate the general campus about a certain aspect (such as the afterlife, et cætera) of all the many faiths on campus.

History

InterFaith first came to others' attention in October of 2009 with an E-mail from Mustafa Saadi '12 and Jennifer Monge '12. Just half a year before this, during Winter Study, Williams Secular Community had been started and the Chaplains had been hosting interfaith discussions as well during the beginning of the Fall of 2009 as their usual Theology On Tap events. It's possible that these events may have spurred the feelings of need for an interfaith group on campus. Regardless, the below E-mail was sent to all known religious group affliates on campus:

Hi Everybody,

Hope you everyone is having a great start to the year.

I wanted to inform you all of a new group that will hopefully start and grow with the help of your respective organizations. We currently call ourselves IF. It stands for inter-faith. Get it? IF…inter-faith. If you don’t and have a better idea we are open to changing the name.

Our mission is to bring various faith groups (This ranges from Hinduism, to Christianity, to Atheism) together based on beliefs and practices that bring us closer to each other. And within this zone of recognized similarities we can discover ways in which we are different from each other. Moreover, and more importantly we really hope that inter-faith collaboration will further intra-faith goals. I am going to purposely leave the meaning of this vague in order to give us space to define it ourselves.

To implement our mission we are trying to set up an Inter-Faith council where each organization will send a representative. The specific details of the council can be worked on together. But this council’s would serve as a space for faith groups to come together and organize events that bring us together while at the same time further each group’s respective agenda. For example, this group will be in charge of organizing an InterFaith week.

With that said, we plan on holding our first meeting this Thursday in Paresky room 222 from 7-8pm. I will send out I would really appreciate if each group would be able to send one representative. Please email if you can make it, if you cannot make it but are interesting in participating in the future, or if you just simply do not want to make it.

Also if you may think of some volunteering opportunities that we our groups can do together I would very much appreciate it so we can start IF running. We have some events in mind, but would really like it if we collaborated together in creating this event.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or need further information.

My name is Mustafa Saadi[...].

Hope to see some you this Thursday in Paresky,

Thank you and Best Regards,

Mustafa Saadi and Jennifer Monge

The groups eventually met and InterFaith was formed.

Groups Under InterFaith

While InterFaith seeks to involve all religious groups, not all groups sent representatives to join IF. Of the groups that did join:

The Muslim Student Union (MSU)

The Muslim Student Union is the Islamic group on campus. All are welcome and meetings are every Friday at 4 in the Muslim Prayer Room.

The group was founded with the purpose of bringing together students of Islamic heritage in friendship and brother/sisterhood while educating others about Islam.

The MSU has consistently held a Fast-a-thon during the month of Ramadan for various causes, as well as bringing different speakers to campus.

==== Williams Secular Community (WSC) ====
Williams Secular Community was created as a means to fill the gap among the many religious groups on campus for those of a non-religious flavor.

While open to anyone, WSC serves particularly as a support group for atheists, agnostics, and those questioning any sort of religious belief. The group also serves as a safe God-less place on campus for any type of secular thinker or adherer.

WSC also hopes to bring better education about different flavors of non-religiousity/spirituality (atheism (strong and soft), agnosticism, spirituality, and all other possible grays) as well as creating a safer enviroment for said people.

WSC meets every Tuesday for dinner at 6 P. M. and holds a discussion on various topics in Paresky on Thursdays at 10 P. M. The group also hosts speakers and puts on various events, like their Ask an Atheist event.