By Hailey Stephens 21' and Wah Chook 22'
Multifaith Ambassadors
This post is the start of our series on "College Campuses and Worldviews" Check out more by following the "College Campuses and Worldviews" tag.
Hello, everyone and welcome to the very first Encounters Blog post of the 2020 fall semester! Because it’s the very first blog, we want to introduce our readers to the two Multifaith Ambassadors who are running not only this blog, but also the Encounters Podcast!
My name is Hailey Stephens, and I’m a senior English-Writing major (so running this blog is right up my alley)! If you see me around campus, it could be at one of many places because I do way too much work, but it’s all work that I absolutely love. I work at the Coffee Shoppe, am RCA of Dolan and Magill, President of Interfaith, President of SAI, and, of course, a Multifaith Ambassador. My own faith is non-denominational Christian, and my family always instilled in me the importance of faith and growth within one’s faith. On top of that, I’ve always been taught more generally to believe in the idea of giving back as much as I can and being the best I can be. Of course, as I’ve grown up, I’ve questioned many things about what I believe in and how my faith fits into the person I would like to be. Coming to IWU has helped me wrestle with my
questions about my religion in order to
deepen my own faith. These questions drew me to Evelyn Chapel and the Interfaith RSO, which has now gotten me to where I am today! I’ve learned how to search within my faith to answer the tough questions I might have avoided before coming to college, and I now know that who I am and what I believe in can be reconciled. I’ve become a better Christian, better leader, and better advocate for multifaith work in my community. Overall, I’m excited to work on Encounters this year, and to use this platform to lift up different voices across campus!
My name is Wah Chook, and I’m a junior Nursing major with an advocacy and religious diversity minor. I try to get around, you might see me working a CAB event, sitting in a student senate meeting, getting together with my residents in Munsell, playing the mellophone in Titan Band, giving a campus tour to prospective students and of course trying my best to get my act together. In addition, I am Hailey’s Vice President for IWU’s Interfaith RSO. You’d probably expect the opposite but I have no clue what my worldview is. I think I have settled on thoroughly liking religion through a philosophical lens. Questions like “How is religion so impactful for individuals?”, and “What does religion fulfill for human beings?” are things I often ponder on. When people ask me what my worldview or religious beliefs are, I tend to freeze. I grew up with a Buddhist upbringing but my parents were never super duper religious. In high school, Christianity became a big part of my life to where I got baptized. I think conversations about religion are really fascinating but I myself am at a pause in my own faith journey. I believe there has to be a higher being that exists but I have actively avoided exploring what that might be or mean to me. The chapel and the Office of Multifaith Engagement has been a space where I have felt content with being “religiously- up in the air”. I like Hailey, am extremely excited to use both this platform and our podcast to lift up voices, engage, and empower voices of our own and across campus!
Every month both Encounters Blog and Podcast will be focused around a theme. This month’s theme is “College Campuses and Worldviews”. For this blog page, we will be posting a new entry around the month’s theme every monday. For the podcast, we will be releasing one episode every month. The release date is the second to last wednesday of every month. The month of September’s Encounter podcast will be released on September 23rd, 2020. We are so excited to start this wonderful journey with you all this year! Here are our contact information if you have any questions, suggestions, or just want to chat: Lchook@iwu.edu (Wah’s email address), Hstephen@iwu.edu (Hailey’s email address).
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