Program sparks religious chats

It models what civil conversation on different faiths can look like

Though conventional wisdom says you never discuss religion or politics in polite company, Erik McHenry and Sam Glanzer put the advice aside and started a conversation about faith, each trying to understand a little better what the other guy was thinking.

Not your typical drawing card for college students.

Both men attended faith-sponsored universities and signed on with a program designed to get Latter-day Saints and Evangelical Christians talking to each other, rather than trying to argue about doctrine and "truth" and who is or isn't a Christian.

Glanzer was student body vice president at Brigham Young University back in 2003, and McHenry — a student at Colorado Christian University — approached him asking for help to get BYU students involved in a dialogue with Evangelical students who had been invited to campus through a little-known program sponsored by BYU's religion department and headed by professor Bob Millet.

Attracting hundreds of students from Christian universities including Biola, Azuza Pacific, Colorado Christian, Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary, the program continues to grow and will expand this spring with visits to Weber State University, Utah State University and BYU-Idaho.

Though still in the planning stages, this fall there are plans for a national conference to facilitate student dialogue on interfaith issues.

The conversation between the two college students began much like another one had a few years earlier between Millet and the Rev. Greg Johnson, a local Evangelical minister and former Latter-day Saint who wanted to spark a religious dialogue among Utahns of different faiths. Their regular lunch meetings turned into what has now become a series of conversations — held around the United States and even in a few nations abroad — where the two men model for an audience what a civil conversation between people of different faiths can look like.

The two younger men watched the two veterans in action, and they liked what they saw.

Now, both McHenry and Glanzer have graduated and married. Glanzer served as a groomsman at McHenry's wedding, and McHenry moved to Utah with his wife, where he became a ministry associate for the Rev. Johnson. The couples are now close friends, often attending events at each other's churches and getting together for dinner.

Both agree their differing beliefs simply aren't an issue.

That friendship, and untold others that have begun from the student program at BYU, is exactly what Millet and the Rev. Johnson have been hoping would grow from the seeds they've been planting for several years.

They'll be planting once again on Sunday. The event is free and is being sponsored by a local neighborhood council that has worked for years to build interfaith relationships within their own east-side neighborhood.

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