Atlanta ? Shuffling between classes at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, Adam Meredith-Ployd saw an intriguing opportunity to apply what he’d learned in his studies on the history of Christians and Jews — an opportunity worth $25,000.

Following Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ,” which drew criticism that it contained destructive Christian stereotypes of Jews, an essay contest had been founded to promote understanding between the two faiths.

“It highlighted a conflict that can be invisible in a lot of ways,” said Meredith-Ployd, a 22-year-old Christian graduate student whose essay took the top award last month. “I think what ‘Passion’ brought out is there’s still residual issues between Christians and Jews that are 2,000 years old.”

The contest’s founder, 25-year-old magazine heiress Elizabeth Goldhirsh, said she created the competition for people 16 to 22 in the wake of the movie; the aim was to try and develop some interfaith unity within the younger generation.

“Unfortunately, we’ve grown up with so many leaders on TV using religion for very negative purposes,” said Goldhirsh, who is Jewish. “When you think about other religions, you think about conflict rather than what brings everyone together.”

Goldhirsh, a Harvard Divinity School graduate student and daughter of the late Inc. magazine founder Bernie Goldhirsh, said she offered a large prize package — a total of $100,000 was awarded, making it one of the most lucrative writing contests in the nation — to attract interest in the issue.

The strategy worked. Four thousand entries came in, though what they showed was a surprising lack of familiarity with building interfaith relationships in general, said the Rev. Christopher Leighton, executive director of the Baltimore-based Institute of Christian & Jewish Studies and one of the contest’s judges.

‘Religious sensibilities’

The problem, Leighton said, was that many of the entrants — particularly Christians — thought the answer was to make the other side see the error of its ways, rather than to promote respect for differing theological points of view.

Organizers found that many entrants “haven’t developed the ability to cross a border to comprehend the religious sensibilities of their neighbors,” Leighton said. “The essay contest confirmed how much work needs to be done.”

That finding doesn’t surprise Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, one of the only interfaith groups in the nation focused on young people.

“Although there’s lots of good interfaith work being done in the world, very few of them involve young people,” Patel said. “They’re always the top picture in the newsletter but the bottom priority on the budget.”

Raising awareness

Patel said he had been working to raise awareness of interfaith issues through high school religious forums and national volunteer days that bring together young people of different faiths to do community service projects. The movement is “in its total infancy,” but “the U.S. is going to have to come to terms with being a multifaith society,” he said.

“It is an enormously sensitive area,” said Patel, a Muslim. “People’s relationships with God is the single most precious thing that they have.”

In the contest-winning essay, Meredith-Ployd found common ground in Christians’ and Jews’ view of time, based on the Bible’s account of the seven-day creation of the world in Genesis. Both faiths, he noted, honor the seven-day cycle that culminates on the Jewish Sabbath and Christian Sunday.

“At the heart of both these ethics is the resounding declaration that God’s reality is not the world’s reality,” Meredith-Ployd wrote.

Leighton, a Presbyterian, said the contest, which may expand next year to include discussion about Islam, has served to “expose young leaders to some of the complexities, some of the intricate challenges that come in our world today” — but they can’t just stop with a 2,500-word essay.

The Institute of Christian & Jewish Studies has designed a fellowship program for 12 of the contest finalists to continue their study of interfaith issues.

“It’s not enough to simply engage in abstractions,” he said. “Ultimately, what holds power is the ways in which people express and embody their religious values and commitments.”