By Charlie Wailes | Reporter
Neighbor Nights, Better Together and the Coalition of Asian Students collaborated Tuesday at the Bobo Spiritual Life Center for a night of food, community and cultural understanding. The event included guest speaker Michelle Ami Reyes — vice president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative in Austin.
Reyes writes regularly about faith and culture and said she is in the process of writing a new book.
“My husband and I are church planters in east Austin,” Reyes said. “It’s a multicultural community. East Austin is a disadvantaged Black and brown community, and everyday life is crossing cultures. The more I talked to other pastors, they didn’t know how to do church across cultures. My first book was for the church and how we can do it with love and passion.”
Reyes has also written a book entitled “Becoming All Things,” which aims to help Christians interact more openly with cultures different from their own.
“I think for college students struggling to find their faith, we should spend more time with ourselves asking, ‘What is my story, and what are the narratives born of my ethnic heritage?’” Reyes said.
In her speech, one of the questions Reyes asked was how we can use cultural celebration to rectify social injustice.
“When it comes to activism and justice, it needs to be personal,” Reyes said. “I want to encourage you all to think about deconstructing institutional racism. And our aim is not to burn things down or throw the metaphorical molotov cocktail; it is to make things better, and that path means not shaming people or labeling.”
Dallas senior Nelley Sobh is one of the organizers for Neighbor Nights and a civic interfaith leader with Better Together. Sobh said the goals of Better Together and Neighbor Nights are alike.
“Neighbor Nights and Better Together are under the same umbrella of spiritual life organizations,” Sobh said. “They’re so intertwined in values and missions. Better Together is more of a verbal exercise, while Neighbor Nights is putting our words into action.”
Sobh said Neighbor Nights regularly have speakers from many different backgrounds.
“The student associations that we collaborated with for this event chose Reyes to speak on their behalf,” Sobh said.
Neighbor Nights are dinners hosted by multicultural student organizations, and any Baylor students or staff are able to attend. Dr. Josh Ritter works in the department of spiritual life and student life and helps oversee Neighbor Nights, which he said began in 2015.
“That’s when spiritual life developed a partnership with spiritual affairs,” Ritter said.
“Neighbor Nights actually used to be called Cross-Cultural Dinners.”
Ritter said Neighbor Nights aim to pair with more multicultural student organizations. Last month’s dinner was a partnership with the Hispanic Student Association.
“We also started Better Together, which is the interfaith group on campus,” Ritter said. “In fall 2015, we had a prayer time for students to let them know they were welcome here. Once that happened, we really started with Better Together, and that was when we did our first interest meeting and common ground issue, which was literacy.”
Ritter said the purpose of Neighbor Nights is to encourage students and faculty to have conversations with people from different backgrounds.
“The question for us — the main question — is how do you love your neighbor if you don’t know how to get to know them?” Ritter said.
Neighbor Nights have different ways to try to encourage communication, according to Ritter.
“We have conversation cards at the table or guided conversation or panel discussion or sometimes a speaker,” Ritter said. “For our last Neighbor Night, we had Dr. Jorge Burmicky, who is also the speaker of the Hispanic Heritage Luncheon.”
Ritter said he thinks Neighbor Nights help students create new relationships by sharing personal stories and creating connections.
“Research indicates that none of us are persuaded by logical argumentation,” Ritter said. “But by personal stories and emotions, we can have amazing conversations and get to know each other without theological debates. We can highlight differences but still do good work together.”
Katy senior Sanjana Natarajan has regularly attended Neighbor Nights and said the open atmosphere allows different cultural groups to make conversation over dinner.
“My experience with it was great as well,” Natarajan said. “There is great food, and it’s a sit-down conversation about anything really. There are cultural groups that go like ISSA, which is the Indian Subcontinent Student Association.”
Natarajan said she encourages students to attend because Neighbor Nights promote diversity and shared cultural experiences.
“I think they do a good job with cultural events,” Natarajan said. “Neighbor Nights always helps me feel welcome, and I’d highly recommend that anyone who hasn’t been should go.”
