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

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. 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

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

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.