Fostering understanding, cooperation and friendship

Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies

Upcoming Public Events

"Visual Prayer" virtual interfaith art exhibit

The exhibition Visual Prayer, curated by David Jordan Harris and Deborah Kim Ultan, draws together the artistic and spiritual practices of the Interfaith Artist Circle, a group of nineteen Twin Cities-based artists who understand and experience prayer through multiple paths. Their work reinforces the deep connection between art, healing and spirituality at a moment when our community faces a global pandemic, climate change and acute political and economic unrest. Steeped in traditional theological texts, original poetry, familiar iconography as well as silence and abstraction, Visual Prayer opens a dialogue among faiths while offering space for meditation and reflection. Sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas, the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John's University, the University of Minnesota-Libraries and the Minnesota JCC.

Visit the online exhibit

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.

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. Click here to read 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.

Research Resources

Seminars and Lecture Series

Research Resources

Interreligious Micro Grant for Guest Speakers in Classrooms

Research Resources

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

Interreligious Research Fellows

The Jay Phillips Center hosts the Interreligious Research Fellows, a one-year (two semester) program that allows students to design and implement an academically rigorous research project examining and engaging the encounter between, among and/or within religious communities and people with various religious identities.

Contact Hans Gustafson for more information.

Student Leadership Programs

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.