When I was working as the Wackerlin Fellow at Aurora University, I organized a Day of Interfaith Youth Service under the auspices of the Interfaith Youth Core of Chicago. The long and short of it was that we took 40 young people of faith (Jews, Catholics, Bahais, Hindus, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Atheists, etc.) and put them together to tie together fleece blankets for our local transitional living community. After the blankets were all set, we gathered around for a massive feast (mostly of junk food) and then retreated to our original groups for some dialogue about the shared value of service.
Most of the kids in my group had already spent lots of time within their faith communities in various incarnations of service; many had spent time working in New Orleans after Katrina. One young man in particular made a very poignant remark. He told us that it was refreshing and welcome to have a safe space where he could talk about issues of "faith" without getting "religion" crammed down his throat.
It's comments like that that remind me why interfaith dialogue is so appealing, and especially to young people. There are precious few opportunities to engage our own faith in neutral, mutually-reinforcing spaces, and sitting down and chatting with other people about shared religious values is one way to make those opportunities available.
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