Developing Interfaith Friendships Through Shared Purpose: Emerging Adult Mentors in an Interfaith Sports Leadership Program

As religious diversity increases, identifying contexts that foster positive relationships across faith traditions has become increasingly important. Many interfaith initiatives emphasize dialogue and religious literacy, yet these largely cognitive approaches can inadvertently foreground the doctrinal differences they hope to bridge. Drawing on perspectives of lived religion, embodied spirituality, and intergroup contact theory, we argue that sport—an embodied, cooperative practice shared across cultures and traditions—offers a distinctive context for interfaith formation, one in which relationships emerge through shared bodily activity and common purpose rather than doctrinal negotiation. This qualitative study examined mentors’ experiences in Y-Sport: Greater Purpose and Performance, an interfaith sports leadership program developed through a partnership between Brigham Young University and Baylor University. Although both communities profess faith in Jesus Christ, we use interfaith—consistent with the field of interfaith studies—to denote engagement across two distinct, historically estranged religious communities, without prejudging either community’s Christian identity. Eleven Protestant and Latter-day Saint mentors completed semi-structured interviews analyzed using the team-based coding approach developed by Dollahite and Marks in the American Families of Faith project. Four themes emerged: (1) discovering common ground through shared purpose, (2) developing relationships marked by love, belonging, and friendship, (3) appreciating religious differences without perceiving them as threatening, and (4) experiencing personal and spiritual transformation. Participants consistently reported that their shared commitment to serving youth and strengthening faith in Jesus Christ became more salient than doctrinal differences, fostering authentic friendships while preserving distinct religious identities. Consistent with intergroup contact theory, these findings suggest that embodied cooperation organized around a shared purpose may cultivate meaningful interfaith friendships, with implications for interfaith education, mentoring, and peacebuilding.