Where, in southern California do you go to have the ultimate inter-religious experience?  Where do you find hundreds and hundreds of the faithful gathered in peace rubbing shoulders (literally) under the hot sun, and sharing shouts of ecstatic emotional experience?  Answer: amusement parks.  This week our youth group did what we call: Ultimate Week!  It is a week of one amusement park after another.  Our schedule was Knott’s Berry Farm, Wild Rivers, 6 Flags Magic Mountain, and Disney California Adventure.  And if you think this was a week of fluff without religious depth, let me assure you, you are wrong!

Each and every day I saw a wide range of religious diversity.  Without question there were dozens of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian  youth and adults at each park we visited.  Each group is easily identified by their religious clothing.  Many Jewish leaders, young adults who were camp counselors wore yarmulkes (the men), and also the Star of David could be scene on jewelry.  Many Muslim women often wore a hijab, although the younger girls they led did not.  And the Christians were identifiable by the classic youth group t-shirt (myself included).  Hours and hours were passed in line and going on rides together.  Of course, when people spend time with one another there are issues that arise, for example, the ethics of the line.

What is the proper etiquette for waiting in line?  If someone comes up to you and says, “Excuse me, but my party is up there, may I pass,” do you let them? I do.  When it is a large group that wants to do this, I might be more grumpy, but I and most people allow this to happen.  This is grace.  I stood by one man from England who said as a few little ones cut the line to get with their group, “If you try to do that in England, they’ll send you to the back of the line!”  I chuckled to myself.  Here is a cultural difference, maybe not religious per se, but it still exists.  Perhaps one day, Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the US will share more in common with one another culturally than English citizens no matter their religious stripe.  Perhaps we already do!

The amusment park is one place where interreligious living is happening.  I like this.  I also like that it is young people who bring us together.  Almost all of the religious groups I saw at various amusement parks this week were centered around children and young people.  There were also YMCA camps and public school district camps.  Which I am sure were internally interreligious.  Isn’t it cool that it is young people who bring us together?

I might have a different confessional creed than a Muslim or Jewish youth leader.  But we all know what it feels like to be responsible for a dozen young people scattered throughout a park of hundreds maybe thousands of people.  Our stomachs flip the same way when we go on a ride, or hear about the troubles our youth face every day when they tell us about it in line.  Our brains ache the same way from the 90+ degree and from trying to explain, share, and question our religious beliefs so another generation will keep the faith.  We get drenched in the same way when we go on a water ride or wallow in God’s unfathomable grace.

In developing a Youth Theology, a way of talking about God that values and affirms young people as agents of God’s grace, I would do well to remember the layered theological experience of an amusement park during a hot summer day.