Fostering understanding, cooperation and friendship

Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies

About the Jay Phillips Center

The Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas promotes critical, normative and civic approaches to interreligious encounter.

The center is dedicated to a scholar-practitioner approach to cultivating interfaith leadership that promotes basic (inter)religious literacy through lived encounter with people, communities and ideas, and provides opportunities to wrestle constructively with our growing religious diversity. The center recognizes that communities can be healthier when differences are engaged in a sophisticated manner by informed citizens, rather than ignored.

The center partners with the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John's University. It shares the common mission to foster understanding, cooperation and friendship among people of diverse religious, spiritual, and secular identities, worldviews and lifeways through academic study and civic engagement.

Upcoming Public Events

Retracing Jewish Roots on the North Dakota Prairie

Stories and Lessons about Life, Family, and Faith with Rebecca Bender

Published in September 2021, this video features Rebecca Bender introducing her recently published book Still (North Dakota State University Press, 2019). View the video by clicking on the image. You may also read more about this video and instructions to order a discounted copy through Oct 1, 2021.

Interreligious Encounter in a Virtual Covid-19 World

As the world migrated online in the spring of 2020, interreligious learning and encounter moved with it. For students completing their interreligious engagement experience for THEO468 in Summer and Fall 2020 at St. Thomas, this meant a pivot to encountering religious diversity across the globe in virtual spaces. Their experiences culminated in several short public narratives and stories with video, pictures, and audio published in a single online StoryMap that documents their insights gained. Visit the StoryMap at the link below to read their narratives about interfaith leadership and virtues, appreciative knowledge and (inter)religious literacy, and global dialogue.

Visit the Public StoryMap

Programs and Resources

Engagement

Seminars and Lecture Series

Interreligious Micro Grant for Guest Speakers in Classrooms

Engagement

Research Resources

Engagement

The Jay Phillips Center engages campus and community in many ways.

Public Events

We serve the campus community and the public by hosting events that promote the public understanding of religion and interreligious relations.

Conferences and Symposia

We host conferences and symposia organized around timely questions, relevant events, and innovative ideas in the area of interreligious studies, interfaith leadership and civic pluralism.

Bridge Building

The Jay Phillips Center promotes interfaith community relations by bringing together people of different religious, spiritual, and secular identities to learn from, and serve alongside, each other.

Seminars and Lecture Series

Our seminars and lecture series invite scholars, leaders, practitioners, and community members with various religious, spiritual, and secular identities together for conversation around important topics and issues. Past seminars and lectures have focused on topics such as Muslim identities in Minnesota and North America, Hindu-Christian encounters in India, and interfaith leadership in business education.

Interreligious Micro Grant for Guest Speakers in Classrooms

This program provides micro grants to faculty to enhance their courses with an interreligious component by inviting guest speakers to their class to offer views from religious minority traditions or on topics that relate to interreligious studies and interfaith relations. More about the Interreligious Micro Grant program for Guest Speakers in Classrooms.

Engagement

The center sponsors programs and conversations, often focused on books, films or current events, among groups of students, faculty, and people from the wider community.

Research Resources

The Jay Phillips Center offers a variety of resources that support research and scholarship in the field of interreligious studies, including the Jan Phillips Database.

Research Resources

Engagement

The Jay Phillips Center engages campus and community in many ways.

Public Events

We serve the campus community and the public by hosting events that promote the public understanding of religion and interreligious relations.

Conferences and Symposia

We host conferences and symposia organized around timely questions, relevant events, and innovative ideas in the area of interreligious studies, interfaith leadership and civic pluralism.

Bridge Building

The Jay Phillips Center promotes interfaith community relations by bringing together people of different religious, spiritual, and secular identities to learn from, and serve alongside, each other.

Seminars and Lecture Series

Interreligious Micro Grant for Guest Speakers in Classrooms

Engagement

The center sponsors programs and conversations, often focused on books, films or current events, among groups of students, faculty, and people from the wider community.

Research Resources

The Jay Phillips Center offers a variety of resources that support research and scholarship in the field of interreligious studies, including the Jan Phillips Database.

Research Resources

Student Interreligious Research & Interfaith Leadership Programs

The Jay Phillips Center offers two robust programs for students to study interreligious relations and engage with religious diversity while building their skillset to lead in a world growing in religious diversity.

Contact Hans Gustafson for more information.

Right image: Dominique Stewart ’21, Interreligious Research Fellow (2019-2020, 2020-2021), Interreligious Cohort Leader (2019-2020)

Student Leadership Programs

Jay Phillips Center News

Interreligious Statement of Solidarity with the Muslim Community of Minnesota

Lois Dament retires after 37 year legacy of service to St. Thomas

Lois Dament, esteemed administrative coordinator for the Jay Phillips Center in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, retired this fall after 37 years of service to the university. Dament joined St. Thomas in 1984 and has since flourished in a variety of academic and administrative roles. She started in the Social Sciences Division (then economics, sociology, history, political science) and concurrently in the English Department, earning a B.A. and M.A. in English and receiving the Joseph Connors Award for academic excellence, and raising five children in the process. Professor Anne Klejment recalls, From the start, Lois served as one of two admins for the Social Science Division and English Dept in the era of typewriters, word processors, mimeograph machines, and hand -written phone messages! We all were crowded into the 4th floor of OEC. Lois and another admin were crammed into a tiny “fish-bowl” office. Smart and funny, she mastered new devices and procedures quickly and thoroughly and efficiently serviced faculty needs. No matter which position she held, Lois has always been a trusted and most knowledgeable “go-to” person on campus. She was a UST Loaves and Fishes volunteer at Faith Lutheran in Frogtown. […]
Arthur Vining Davis Foundations Funds St. Thomas’ Inaugural Student Interfaith Fellowships

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021| UPDATED SEPTEMBER 27, 2021 | By Heidi Enninga ’14 Diverse faith perspectives inform the way people live, work and play together. This reality inspired St. Thomas’ inaugural Interfaith Fellows Program, which was recently awarded a prestigious national grant through the Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy Program of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Launching in fall 2021, the program is designed to educate and prepare interreligiously literate leaders who are informed by how lived religious practices and beliefs shape America and who engage religious diversity in service of the common good wherever their personal or professional lives lead. “This program is really about developing the skill sets and competencies in student Interfaith Fellows to not only personally thrive and flourish, but also to lead in these spaces,” said Hans Gustafson, PhD, director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the Interfaith Fellows Program. Funded by a $100,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the program will offer opportunities for approximately 15 student fellows over the course of the four-year pilot. Seven St. Thomas students have been accepted into the first cohort, receiving a $2,000 stipend, funded by the grant and the Jay Phillips Center, to support their work. The recipients […]
Retracing Jewish Roots on the North Dakota Prairie

Stories and Lessons about Life, Family, and Faith with Rebecca Bender Online video program with Rebecca Bender Click here to access the video published September 2021 Rebecca E. Bender, co-author of the award-winning book Still, will present the online video program jointly sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas and the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John’s University (SJU). Still may be purchased for 25% off through Oct 1 from NDSU Press by clicking here and using the discount code “withfaith.” The video program, which was recorded at the Colman Barry Creativity Center at SJU, is available for online public viewing by clicking here. “‘Still’ is an inspiring account of five generations of a Jewish family, first as the Benderskys fleeing persecution in Russia and later as the Benders living and working as farmers and storekeepers on the Dakota prairie and, later still, in other locations and occupations,” said John Merkle, director of the Jay Phillips Center at SJU. “Throughout the book, readers encounter a family full of courage, grit and faith.” In her presentation, Bender shares stories and lessons she learned in the process of writing “Still,” which in 2020 won […]
Interreligious Statement of Solidarity with the Jewish Community in Minnesota

As members of Minnesota’s diverse religious communities, we stand together in strong condemnation of threats of violence made against the Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park. We join our voices also to speak against the desecration of a cemetery of our Jewish sisters and brothers in St. Paul. This threat of violence and the desecration of a sacred place of burial are deplorable – and, especially so, when our Jewish communities are celebrating holy days. These threats and acts of violence are intended to arouse fear and to violate religious feelings. We refuse to be intimidated and to succumb to fear. We stand side-by-side with the Jewish community in courageous resistance to such unacceptable and shameful acts. We are committed to the ongoing work of building inclusive communities in Minnesota where members of all religious traditions feel safe and supported in their places of worship, and in public spaces, to affirm their religious identities and to practice their faiths without fear. Our freedom to profess our faiths without fear is fundamental to our human rights. Threats and acts of violence against any faith are a threat to us all. We stand in solidarity with, and extend our support to, […]

Jay Phillips Center News

Affiliations

The Jay Phillips Center is affiliated with the following external organizations to foster local, regional, and (inter)national engagement in the areas of interreligious studies and relations.

Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations logo Minnesota Multifaith Network Logo