Global Religious Experience Seminar
The Global Religious Experience Seminar is a non-credit opportunity designed to help BYU students reflect on their interreligious experiences through small group discussion and writing. Students are guided in their reflection and writing by BYU faculty and visiting scholars with expertise in articulating religious experience. The aim of the seminar is for students to learn to articulate how experience with religious communities around the world shapes their own religious understandings. The seminar allows students to wrestle with the beautiful and the difficult in hopes of cultivating a greater appreciation for the human pursuit of God and the ways that we individually and collectively experience divine inspiration. Students leave the seminar able to communicate their experiences within academic frameworks and with an understanding of how such a practice can deepen faith.
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Toggle ItemWhat can students expect if they’re accepted into the seminar?
Students who have completed a BYU international study program in the previous twelve months are eligible to apply. Applications are due on 1 September, and the seminar is held weekly during fall semester. Accepted students will receive $600, half at the beginning of the semester and half upon completion of the writing portion of the seminar. This support is generously provided by the BYU Kennedy Center, BYU Religious Education, and the Council for Interfaith Engagement.
Participating students meet once a week during the fall semester with BYU faculty and visiting scholars to discuss pieces of writing, scholarly work on religion, and to peer-review each other’s work. Student essays are published online through the Kennedy Center. The seminar conveners help students prepare their drafts to be presented in BYU Religious Education’s Student Symposium and other forums where they can share their writing.
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Toggle ItemWhy was the Global Religious Experience Seminar created?
The Kennedy Center sends more students abroad than most other universities, immersing them in diverse cultures, societies, communities, and traditions. While there are many ways BYU students express what they learn from these global experiences—photography, course assignments, film—this seminar was created to help students discuss and write about what they learn from their interreligious experiences.
While studying around the world, BYU students are moved by mosques, synagogues, temples, and cathedrals. They are challenged with interreligious dialogue. The student essays offer a window into the enriching experiences BYU students have while traveling. The seminar requires active student participation and direction. A new group of Global Religious Experience Fellows create their own unique experiences each fall semester, supported by faculty in Religion and International Studies.
