I was born in a Catholic family, and I was raised in a believing family who really shared Catholic values ... When I got into high school, my mom gave me the choice to continue in the Catholic group or not, and I decided to continue ... and grow in my faith and learn more about my religion. I decided to stay because I am convinced.

I feel like I can do much more than I expected. I have realized that I can take my faith as far as I want to take it ... I do wish there was a bigger size of community. Back home, I was in touch with over 100 people my age that believed what I believed, and it warms your soul to have people like that ... I’ve managed, but I wish I could have that. It’s just another level of understanding.

There’s one quote from Saint Francis of Assisi; the translation says “Love, and do what you like.” I think its such a correct representation of what Christianity is … If you truly love, in the purest way of love, you can do whatever you want, because if you truly love, there’s no evil in you.

So I’ve lived my whole life in Utah, and Utah is known for being a very Mormon state … I was raised in that ... I’m a little bit in between now. I’m spiritually searching, but there are still beliefs that I was raised with, in that religion, that are still very important to me, like family and being a light and all those beautiful things in the world.

It’s interesting because for me. The practice is a lot more a connection to home than it is ... spiritual enlightenment or anything. It’s kind of hard because I’m the only Mormon on campus, which is good and bad. ... I’m realizing ... that it’s difficult because the heart of Mormonism is family. ... It’s funny going to church now, without a family; it’s a lot more empty, but it’s still a reminder of my family.

Joseph Campbell is an anthropologist and researcher, and in my home, he was like the Bible. The thing he’s probably best known for is [saying], ‘Follow your bliss,’ which is really very simple [...] I was also raised with Shakespeare, and I think that’s made huge differences in how I view the world. I can’t really articulate how, but I think having that poetry in your life changes a little bit how you view God [...] Also, Brene Brown had this talk called the Power of Vulnerability. I watched that and I was just taken aback. She has this quote where she says that vulnerability isn’t weakness. Vulnerability is the heart of innovation, creativity and change. [...] Vulnerability doesn’t mean fear anymore. That set me into a whole other way of thinking.

Before I came here, I went to an Episcopalian school, so we would have chapel every week and we would have religious studies class [...] I also went to church once a week with my family.

There’s this one song by Hillsong called “Still,” and I really love it because whenever I’m stressed, I just listen to it and it really calms me [...] the part where it says, “Father, you are king over the flood. I will be still, know you are God.”

I feel really free to share the word of God without feeling like someone is going to be offended, because over here, everyone’s really open and understanding ... It’s been a really good experience, because here, I feel like there’s actually a stronger Christian community than I had back home.

My family has always gone to an Anglican church. I really followed after my parents up until the age of 13 or 14, then I kind of made it my own decision. ... I don’t really care much for denominations in churches. For me it never really mattered. The importance of a relationship with God, for me, is that it’s personal, so if I can get a connection through worship and practicing a certain way, and you can get that in another way, then that’s what’s important.

The church I came from in New Zealand is a really cool community. Friday nights there would be services for 18-26 year olds, then afterwards, like 40 people would go have a pint with pizza and just hang out. But the demographic of the Anglican church I’ve gone to here is definitely much older or much younger, like international parents and their young kids. It’s also quite far from Saadiyat. ... What I mainly do is I just go into the spiritual resource room myself and do prayer and worship there.

I love the book of Esther in the Bible ... There’s the faith side of it, where she’s willing to go into the king’s throne room, knowing that God will support her in that, even though she could be sentenced to death for doing that. That’s really cool for me, and there’s also this passage where Mordecai is talking about ... the idea of endowed responsibility. I like that. That’s my go-to story to read.

Both of my parents were Protestant Christians, and they made sure that I grew up in the Christian tradition. We had a lot of family gatherings like Bible studies together, worship together, stuff like that. My high school friends, some were Protestants, some were Orthodox, some were Muslims, so it was pretty diverse.

John 3:16 for me basically summarizes the gospel, the good news that Christianity stands for. “For this is the way God loved the world; He gave his one and only son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” I think that’s a very powerful verse.

I think NYUAD has given us so many opportunities to practice our faith in so many different ways, and one of those ways would be the SIGs.

I was born Lutheran, and I was baptized as a baby. My grandpa was a pastor, but we never went to church aside from when we were visiting him ... So I just wasn’t actually ever raised in faith or to go to church or to have that be a part of my life ... It’s really evolved and changed this last year because when my grandpa died — that was the first time I’d gone to church in years ... and since I feel I was already in a vulnerable state, I was like, “Oh, there’s something to this; there’s something in this kind of collectivity.” There’s something about being in a space with people together, which is also a lot of why I do theater, because there’s something really powerful and potent to have physical bodies in a space experiencing something together. And then I found a really liberal, queer-friendly church on Christopher Street in New York City this summer, so I started going to that and started more actively identifying as a Lutheran than I had in the past.

I read a lot of Nadia Bolz-Weber’s writings. ... Her memoir, which is called Pastrix, was really instrumental, just because it was wrestling with a lot of the same issues I was in terms of, like, she’s this tattooed, cuss-filled woman who is in a community of queer-identified folk, who was brought up very differently from how she lives her life now. I also liked Take this Bread by Sara Miles, which is a conversation around the viscerality of faith. ... Something I’m really not into is faith and religion as this shiny, pure thing, because if you look at the roots of it, Christianity was a marginalized identity. It was an identity that had to fight for its existence; it was an identity that was not mainstream. ... The early religion was visceral and dirty, and that’s really changed now.

I feel like there are a lot of things on campus that we don’t talk about, and this year we’ve started to crack open some of them. ... I think religion is one of them, which is really great. ... I’m hoping for there to be more of an open dialogue on campus and more of an open state of not knowing, because I think, especially in college, it’s such a transformative time. … It’s such a time of change and shifting and both challenging and solidifying your own worldviews more openly. I think something that we’re working really hard on is acknowledging difference, acknowledging that difference exists and that it’s valuable. Not everything has to be a debate. You can talk to someone and still both go away having your same opinions but having a greater understanding of each other.