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2009-10 Goals

Student Coalition:

Last year, as the JMU Interfaith Coalition formed, one of our biggest regret is not having gotten more student input and involvement. We plan to focus this year on correcting this mistake and would like to invite you and/or your organization to meet with us to share your thoughts, concerns, ideas, and to help us shape the future purpose and actions of the Interfaith Coalition.

We would be happy to attend one of your group meetings to conduct a focus group with your members or independently with you. If you want to schedule a focus group with us, please let us know and we will work to schedule something with you.

If interested or for more information, please contact Interfaith Coalition Steering Committee Members: Thomas Lavenir (540) 568-7314 and Greg Meyer (540) 568-8074

Scriptural Reasoning:

JMU-EMU Scriptural Reasoning meets on the second Thursday each month from 6pm to 8pm. We work with a model of scriptural study pioneered by Peter Ochs. Our participants are from the two universities and the community.

Scriptural Reasoning is the practice of reading sacred scriptures together in small groups. Normally the passages of scripture chosen are Jewish, Christian and Muslim and are linked together by a particular issue, theme, story or image. When read together in this way participants - or "reasoners" - find at times that astonishing and powerful new conversations, meaning and relationships may open up.

Scriptural Reasoning is the thinking that occurs when scripture is taken up and discussed by a group of interpreters. It therefore works through both the reasoning that is implicit in scripture and the reasoning that practitioners, as interpreters, bring to scripture. But, most importantly, scriptural reasoning is the reasoning that is "disclosed" as members engage in dialogue about scripture.

Scriptural Reasoning is the creation of a generous space for each other beneath the sacred canopy of our scriptures. It is a mutual space, generated from a sheer superabundance of scriptural meaning. Some liken it to the biblical mishkan, or ‘Tent of Meeting'

Scriptural Reasoning is not about asserting a set of doctrinal propositions or learning an Inter-Faith catechism or correcting other people's misapprehensions about your own scriptures or religion. It is certainly about loving your scriptures, but it is not about imposing them on others.

If interested or for more information check this url or contact: Lorie Merrow (540) 568-3975

Excerpted and compiled from How to Pitch a Tent: A Beginner's Guide to Scriptural Reasoning by William Taylor; scripturalreasoning.org; and A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning by Steven Kepnes.

Service Learning:

• ASB Interfaith Trip-

This trip provides an immersion experience through which students can live and work side-by-side with members of a community in the heart of Appalachia. During the week, we will assume the posture of learners toward our hosts, eager to learn from their lives, their stories, and their experiences. We will also assume the posture of servants to provide meaningful service to the community. Students on the trip will have the opportunity to look outward, to hear and share life stories with others who are very different from themselves, and to experience the realities of poverty. In this way, it is hoped that students will see their own lives in a new way, and that they will hear an invitation to live differently... that they will seek a path whereby God can transform them inwardly so that they can move outward to help mend the brokenness in the world - to become God's agents of healing and peace.

Download this document to obtain more general information about the trip and whom to contact.

• HARTs-

More information is forthcoming. If interested or for more information, please contact: Laura Lockey (540) 568-9613

• Labyrinth-

If interested or for more information, please contact: Lorie Merrow (540) 568-3975

Click on this icon to download the Jerusalem Women Speak event poster.

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Get Involved!

Click here to see how you can help, including how to subscribe to our listserv.

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Click on this icon to download the Spirituality Dialogues event poster.

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The vision of the JMU Interfaith Coalition is to facilitate mutual understanding of any and all religions and world views, and to promote positive civic engagement in the JMU and local communities