Posted on: 27th February 2025

A JEWISH student, a Christian student, and a Muslim student were sitting round a table in a Leeds coffee shop. During the conversation, the Jewish student observed, “We [that is, Jewish students] live in a faith bubble.” The Muslim student suggested that Muslim students did just the same, and the Christian student agreed that Christian students acted in a similar way.

This conversation inspired one of the authors to try to burst the bubble; and so it was that a few families in the congregation of St George’s, Leeds (a church that has a thriving student congregation), each agreed to host two students from their own congregation for a meal in their homes alongside two Muslim or Jewish students.

These went down well: in the first round, a few years ago, students didn’t leave their hosts until late — one group at nearly midnight, and others not much earlier. These meals have continued over the years, with a break during the ravages of Covid (although hosts now endeavour to finish a little earlier. . . ).

Things have moved on from there. Christian students have been to meetings organised by the Jewish Society (JSOC), and have been invited to one of their Friday-night dinners on campus. Muslim students have invited students from St George’s to a sisters’ book-club meeting, and they have used the church centre as a venue for a fund-raising event. Meal hosts are to be invited to a Muslim charity dinner in a local banqueting suite.

An interfaith event at St George’s which was initiated by one of the church’s own students. The event, Faith in a Multifaith Culture, involved 30 or so students from St George’s in listening to a trainee rabbi, a vicar, and an imam, answering questions about their faith communities and what it meant for each to be a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim. The questions didn’t focus on differences between the three faiths, but on commonalities. So, each speaker talked about what they saw as similarities between the three faiths, about the issues that their own community was currently facing, and why they thought that being a member of a faith community was important. Rather than simply learn facts about other faiths, students began to understand what it might be like to be a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim.

Sharing their thoughts at the end of the meeting, one student was resolved to consider how he might support his Muslim colleagues during the approaching month of Ramadan. Another said that she had always seen interfaith activity as something not very important: she had now changed her mind. A third was inspired by the idea that adherents of all three faiths worshipped God — even though they might each describe him differently. And the Jewish and Muslim faith leaders encouraged the Christian students to stay firm in their own faith, and to live out the Christian ethic.

Read the full article by David Kibble and Qari Asim here.