PAINTING A DINNER:
HOW CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS STARTED BUILDING FRIENDSHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
By Anaëlle Enders
I am a recent college graduate who studied Education and Middle Eastern Languages and Culture. Through my studies I’ve been blessed to have friends from different faith backgrounds, including Muslims. Living and studying abroad in Muslim-majority countries was especially powerful; it opened my eyes to appreciate a part of the world I had not seen before.
As a follower of Jesus at my university, together with my faith community at Cru, we are always trying to learn how to better love our neighbors — our second most important rule of life, a commandment superseded only by loving God.
Over the past few years, we’ve had the opportunity to visit a local mosque and learn about Muslim practices and theology over shared meals. Through these experiences, many in our Cru chapter met Muslims for the very first time – and walked away wondering why they weren’t doing this more often. So we prayed for doors to be opened on campus.
This is one story of how watercolor painting turned into a fascinating and fruitful dinner-dialogue for Cru and the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of Washington. I hope this story might serve as a bouncing off point and encouragement for other student leaders who want to try something similar.
This might come as a surprise, but I felt nervous to bring the idea to MSA. Although we had made Muslim friends at the local mosque, there was no official connection yet between our campus organizations. We didn’t know the history of any previous interfaith efforts on campus, and we hoped other Christian groups hadn’t left a bad impression before us.
We were clear and upfront that we weren’t trying to say our faiths are the same. Both MSA and Cru had concerns about interfaith events that implied universalism and denied our differences. Neither of us wanted that.
So we decided to simply show up. A couple of us went to an MSA dinner open to anyone. My brother connected quickly with students at his table, and the first people I met when I walked in greeted me with big smiles and made sure I got food. I ended up talking with some of the women there and discovered we shared a love of art and poetry. We exchanged contact info, made plans to create together, and ended up watercoloring and doing digital art side by side several times. We didn’t paint things that were particularly spectacular. But during those times we were able to learn about each others’ families, how we grew up and what was most meaningful for us, which felt like the more important goal. I got to know one woman as a friend who is kind, silly, creative, who loves to go on walks— and I am so thankful for her friendship.
My brother, meanwhile, met one of the speakers and floated the idea of doing an event between our groups. They were immediately hyped about it. A year later, we were invited to an MSA Iftar (fast-breaking meal) during Ramadan, where we connected with more board members and started a group chat to plan something for spring quarter. Putting faces to names and meeting in person was probably the single most helpful thing that moved the whole process forward. It started with friendship, and the event grew from there.
The dinner-dialogue format came out of a shared conviction: we didn’t want another panel. We wanted real conversations. When our planning team of five met in the library for the first time, we each introduced ourselves, shared our roles in our organizations, and talked through the “why” behind the event. From the Cru side, we wanted people to make personal connections over a meal, using optional question prompts to spark discussion but leaving room for organic curiosity. We were also clear and upfront that we weren’t trying to say our faiths are the same. Both MSA and Cru had concerns about interfaith events that implied universalism and denied our differences. Neither of us wanted that. We wanted authentic space for connection, and hopefully lasting friendships, which meant being honest about who we are and what we believe. So while we discussed this intentional effort to be clear about our differences, we also acknowledged an anticipation and desire that during the event our communities could share and connect over our similarities too. Together we committed to setting clear guidelines at the start of the evening: no debating, no pressure to be experts, just people speaking from their own experience.
On the logistics side, we built an RSVP form, planned for about 60 people total, and reserved the room for three hours so things wouldn’t feel rushed. We built in time for the Asr prayer (mid-evening), which felt important to us. We wanted Muslims to feel fully at home and able to act as usual. The MSA board offered to cover the room booking and brought dessert and drinks; Cru covered the entrée. Before the night itself, we gathered our Cru students to talk through the spirit of the evening: come curious, come humble, and remember we’re here to make friends, not rehearse our arguments. Not everyone on our end agreed about everything leading up to it, and there were moments of real tension in the planning, but we kept releasing that to God and to each other.
About 65 people showed up, which still amazes me. The room filled with a mix of Muslim and Christian students who mostly didn’t know each other yet, and from early on the tone was warm and genuinely curious. We started with food and introductions, then moved into table conversations guided by prompts that ranged from light (“What’s your favorite place to shop?” or “Which would you fight: one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?”) to deeper questions (“When did your faith become important to you?”) to genuinely searching (“What’s a question you’ve always had for someone of the other faith?”). We also played a four corners game that had people laughing and moving around the room, which helped break any remaining ice. The night closed with delicious cupcakes made by one of the MSA members.
There was sharing about mental health, travel, and life plans – the kinds of things you talk about with people you actually want to know.
What I didn’t expect was how deep some of those table conversations went. For one pair of students, the story of a loss of a close friend came up, and they spent part of the evening talking through grief together. Another person told me this week that she’s planning to have dinner with someone she met that night. There was sharing about mental health, travel, and life plans – the kinds of things you talk about with people you actually want to know. The question about favorite scripture verses especially moved me; it let people share something precious to them without being asked to defend it. I won’t pretend every conversation was easy or that the evening was without awkwardness. But both groups navigated it with a lot of grace, and the debrief afterward with the MSA confirmed what we felt in the room, that people were genuinely touched by how kindly and authentically everyone had shown up.
Throughout the whole planning process, I was cautiously hopeful. I cared so much about this going well, since it was the first event like this we’ve done officially. Interfaith events can get overwhelming fast, and I knew that. But God reminded me gently, through a dear friend, of Psalm 46:10-11: “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” That verse became an anchor for me. Several times I had to take a deep breath and remember that it’s actually better that it’s not all in my hands.
What I learned most concretely is that genuine relationship has to come before any event. The friendships I’d found through art cafe hangouts and iftars were what helped this whole thing accelerate. I also learned that Muslims I met through this process have a deep, sincere desire to know and follow God — and that getting to know them helped me to ask deep questions, explore what I love most about Jesus — enriching my own faith, rather than threatening it. For our Cru chapter, I think the biggest gift was simply having a first experience – the first time many of our students sat with a Muslim and talked about what they actually believe. That first conversation changes things. It makes the neighbor real. I came away trusting that God is doing something much bigger than any single dinner. So far it is something I can’t see yet, but am excited to watch unfold.
This dinner was never intended to be a one-time thing. My hope, and the hope of the friends I made through this, is that it’s the first of many. Through this process we got to connect with people we never would have encountered in our day-to-day lives and share authentically from our love of Jesus by genuinely loving them, which I hope they felt. We got to learn from people who have such a genuine desire to know and follow God, and to talk about faith in down-to-earth ways, starting with the simple table of friendship. As Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” I believe that. None of the good that came out of that night came from perfectly executed logistics or perfectly chosen words. It came from God opening a door we had been looking for for three years. The next few months for me will involve drinking more tea with my Muslim friends, running a half marathon together, celebrating their graduations, and doing life side by side. I trust he can do anything through these friendships, and I pray he does more.