America is the land of different. Yet also the same. Confusing I know. But hear me out, we are made up of indigenous peoples, historic immigrants (those that have been here for longer than living memory), and more recent immigrants (they, their parents, or grandparents came here); so we are a blend of people and that includes culture and religions. But if you live in certain parts of America, like I do, it’s harder to find religions other than the variety of Christians. City areas get most of the diversity, so small towns or rural people might not even ever come across someone that isn’t the same faith as them (or even go to a different church). This can make hosting an exchange student of different faith or belief system either very scary or exciting, depending on your attitude.
We live in one of those rural places that almost everyone is some version of Christian and you can’t throw a rock without hitting like 5 churches (in the tiny tiny tiny towns we have, or the nearby larger small towns). But! We are not from here, we moved here, so we have been both exposed to more than the tiny town expansive rural area we currently call home, which made deciding to host a student of a different faith from the normal here easy. **Note: I am a humanist, so I don’t fall under any religious group, but my husband identifies as Christian, though he doesn’t attend church.** Our biggest concern with hosting a student that practiced a religion that is Christianity was the community, the other students at the school and their parents. But we were super pleased with how they welcomed her (as Muslim girl, no hijab or other outward signs of religious faith) and even were very curious about her religion, even though she wasn’t a full practicing Muslim (neither are her parents).
Other “religions” we have hosted are a humanist, an atheist, an agnostic, and a Christian girl who was still figuring out her beliefs. Next year both are non-religious. And none have been a problem for us. The only thing was that we did have to alter our diet a bit for our Muslim girl, no pork. But we just had it when she wasn’t home for dinners or put bacon on the side versus in the dish.
What is interesting about hosting so many different beliefs is that we have had some in-depth conversations about religion and beliefs and how their cultures and ours differ when it comes to it. For example in Norway at certain age you can either confirm as a Christian or a Humanist. Our first Italian broke with tradition and refused to be confirmed in the Catholic Church and got a little push back from it but also paved the way for other young people to choose for themselves.
I think the key to successfully hosting exchange students of different religious beliefs is just to be open and nonjudgmental about it. We would ask questions but never pressed if students got uncomfortable. And when they asked us questions I tried to be fair about my answers, my husband got the more specific Christian questions though. But you can always not talk about it, most students are told that host families won’t want to talk about religion, so they might not ever bring it up. In our house we try to make it a safe space to talk about anything. They want the American view point, and what better place than to get it from that their American family. You should always keep an open mind when it comes to hosting exchange students but even more so when you host a student of a different religious background.
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