Zakariya Abdullahi, Contributor

As per the course description, “Interfaith scholars is for student leaders who are interested in exploring the religious diversity of the Augsburg student body, the wider Twin Cities community, and the United States through interreligious dialogue and action. We invite religious believers from a variety of traditions as well as the non-religious to apply in order to converse respectfully with other about what you believe, why it matters, and how it propels us to action in the world.” Beyond that, you gain lifelong skills to improve as an individual and learn about what people value most and why. 

This year’s Interfaith Scholars class is different from the past due to COVID. The class is taught by Professor Matt Maruggi from the Religion Department. Our class is a year long, similar to the other two public leadership classes, and we still have the class as a seminar style that is student led. It allows us to share our diverse backgrounds and the way that we view the world. We all sit together, whether in person or over Zoom, and learn from each other and guest speakers of diverse religious backgrounds. This intimate learning style allows us to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. 

As someone who is majoring in political science and international relations, I joined the Interfaith Scholars because I am interested in why people vote, protest and organize and I believe that either a religious or a non religious background can be the answer. While engaging in our main question of what people value most and why we thought “What does the rest of campus value? Why?” This led to the creation of our public service project. I am pleased to announce that the Interfaith Scholars this year are working on creating a public project that centers our Augsburg community. Inspired by the famous “Humans of New York”, we wanted to showcase the diverse faces, ideas and beliefs of the Augsburg community, so we have created the project “Humans of Augsburg.”

Please follow our Instagram @humansofaugsburg to see our project and to submit to us.