Meet R. Skyler Oberst, our pluralism writer

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skyler photo 1 — Meet R. Skyler Oberst, our pluralism writer 1

R. Skyler Oberst, a student at Eastern Washington University, recently returned to Spokane after interning for the Pluralism Project at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where he worked closely with Diana Eck and other faith leaders. He wanted nothing to do with religious diversity, until one day he saw attackers assault a group of his Muslim peers. “Something shifted inside of me after that evening. I realized that the anguish and torment occurring in front of me was happening all over the world, and that in order to create a lasting peaceful world, action started not on the floor of the United Nations or the United States Senate, but in my heart and through my actions,” Oberst wrote in a recent letter to Harvard. That event, he said, prompted him to start the Compassion Interfaith Society at EWU. He described the student group as a forum for understanding and appreciation. He’s also involved in Friends of Compassion, a group of Spokanites interested in exploring compassionate action. For SpokaneFAVS he writes about pluralism and interfaith issues.

Tracy Simmons

Tracy Simmons is an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and digital entrepreneurship. In her approximate 20 years on the religion beat, Simmons has tucked a notepad in her pocket and found some of her favorite stories aboard cargo ships in New Jersey, on a police chase in Albuquerque, in dusty Texas church bell towers, on the streets of New York and in tent cities in Haiti. Simmons has worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut and Washington. She is the executive director of FāVS.News, a digital journalism start-up covering religion news and commentary in Spokane, Washington. She also writes for The Spokesman-Review and national publications. She is a Scholarly Associate Professor of Journalism at Washington State University.