Exploring Spiritual Experiences and Meaning-Making in Interfaith Prayer among Urban Youth
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Abstract
Spirituality among youth in interfaith contexts has become an increasingly significant area of inquiry within religious and social studies. Despite growing participation in interfaith prayer communities, limited research has explored how young individuals subjectively experience spirituality within these shared religious spaces. What remains unclear is how youth interpret, negotiate, and internalize spiritual meaning during interfaith prayer, particularly in multicultural urban settings. This study adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach to examine the lived spiritual experiences of youth involved in interfaith prayer gatherings. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with ten participants from diverse religious backgrounds, the study identified four central themes: encountering the sacred in shared silence, negotiating faith and identity, developing relational spirituality through empathy, and engaging in ritual as a liminal space for transformation. The interpretative analysis revealed that interfaith prayer is not merely a symbolic or social activity but a deeply personal and transformative experience that fosters both spiritual depth and pluralistic understanding. These findings offer a nuanced view of how youth construct spiritual meaning across religious boundaries and suggest that interfaith environments can nurture identity formation and spiritual growth. This study broadens current understandings of youth spirituality and highlights the value of phenomenological inquiry in capturing the richness of interreligious spiritual experience.
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