Backstory: A dorm that prays together ...

The Brown Interfaith House isn't "a little oasis" apart from the rest of campus, says Rabbi Alan Flam, a senior associate university chaplain and a house adviser. Because of the trust they build, residents can take on the "high-voltage" conversations that tend to swirl at colleges. "They reach out and amplify those conversations."

The group lives in Diman, a rosy-brick dorm where, on the opposite end, members of Kappa Alpha Theta carry on sorority life.

Weekly student-led interfaith discussions, open to any student, take place in the group's spacious lounge. Topics have ranged from the variety within Judaism to beliefs about an afterlife.

Among residents, there's a wide continuum, between J.T.'s rock-solid faith and Eli's atheism (actually, he says, sometimes he's more "ignostic," a term in "humanistic Judaism" suggesting that the question of whether there's a God doesn't really matter and can't be known). Many house members unite in a commitment to social justice, such as advocacy work for the homeless.

Melissa Kline, house president, says coming to college and attending services on her own confirmed her embrace of the Episcopal religion. She's studying cognitive science, and enjoys talking about her identity as a scientist and a person of faith. The two don't conflict, she says, but she ponders "how you keep those things separate, and what it means for your religion and your science."

Alex Surasky-Ysasi, a junior who attends Catholic services at the chapel, appreciates that she can disagree with church doctrine on issues such as its refusal to ordain women, but still be understood as devoted. "The crux of my faith is about who is God in my life, what does that mean for how I live my life," she says.

Alex signed up for a "faith-sharing buddy." These pairs - including Eli and his "doubt- sharing buddy" - meet to talk one-on-one. The daughter of a Catholic-Jewish marriage, Alex is buddies with Yael Richardson, one of the leaders of the campus Jewish center. She peppered Yael with questions so she'd better understand her father's Jewish side of the family. Now, when she goes to a Shabbat service, he playfully asks if she's going to convert. No, she says. "That would scare my mom's side of the family a lot."

While studying in Israel last year, Eli renounced his "communal connection to Jews." Participating in meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, he found he didn't have any more sympathy for one group than the other: "I realized I had crossed over when I started speaking of Israelis as 'they.' "

Despite his tendency to impishly needle people, he appreciates how the house exposes him to "the richness outside the Jewish tradition." The value of it, he notes, came home to him on the plane to Israel, when a Jewish teen next to him glanced at a magazine article about the tsunami disaster and commented that God was angry with the Muslims. "I was shocked," Eli says. "I said, 'Have you ever even met a Muslim?' And he was shocked I was even asking!"

Eli had. He worked closely with Muslims on Brown's Multi-Faith Council, and would be returning to a dorm that includes both Yael, an observant Jew, and Atena Asiaii, an observant Muslim. Not only do the two women live in the same house, but in the same room up on the second floor. Occasionally they even pray at the same time, one facing Jerusalem and the other facing Mecca.

• Tuesday ... their story.

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