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Interfaith forum

Regular readers probably have forgotten that I attend meetings of Gator Freethought, the campus organization that’s friendly to atheists, agnostics, and all others who question religious beliefs. We’ve had our last meeting of the year, but that wasn’t the end. Blake, the outgoing president of the club, was going to be representing freethought at an interfaith forum on campus.

The event was held on Wednesday evening, the last day of classes, in the smaller ballroom in the student union. There were a lot of empty seats, probably because people were at home studying for their upcoming exams. I guessed that most of the audience members were there to see their guy or gal take part in the discussion; not many people looked like they were genuinely disinterested. I have to admit I was in the former camp. I sat with a group of Freethought members.

(Derail: People always seem to say “disinterested” when they mean “uninterested.” I’ve also seen an excellent clip from The Rachel Maddow Show [which I otherwise don't watch, by the way] in which Ms. Maddow says “uninterested” instead of “disinterested.” If you’re uninterested, you don’t have any interest—you’re bored or you don’t care—and if you’re disinterested, you don’t have any interests—anything that could be considered a possible source of bias or prejudice. Paul Brians has an entry on this error in his Common Errors in English Usage web site, which is worth checking out. In the associated book, there’s a cartoon in which a man says to a woman something like, “Let me make myself clear: I’m not disinterested, I’m uninterested.”)

Um, right. So, the forum was emceed jointly by what appeared to be a Christian and a Muslim. Answering their questions, as well as some from the audience, were the panelists:

• Representing Christianity was a guy from Campus Crusade for Christ. He seemed ill at ease and spoke with thinly disguised contempt at the other belief systems that were represented. He must have said that Jesus “stepped into the pages of history” at least six or seven times. I was surprised they couldn’t get a better speaker, considering how many Christians there are.
• Representing Islam was a dapper local businessman. He had a good sense of humor and explained how Islam gives people advice on how to live their everyday lives. He used the word “brother” in referring to some of the other panelists and joked with brother Blake that only a freethinker was brave enough to sit between a Muslim and a Jew.
• Blake was the only student on the panel. His answers were short and to the point (giving him less of a chance to dig himself into a hole, he said later), and he was careful to represent freethought in general without mentioning the A-word. I liked his answer to the question, “Who is the most important figure in your religion (or lack thereof)?” He said, “Yourself,” because freethought is about thinking freely (hmm…) and not taking for granted the things that other people tell you.
• Representing Judaism was a local rabbi, who explained how Judaism also gave advice for everyday life. A kid from the audience, badly feigning ignorance, asked him some innocent-sounding questions to try to get him to link Judaism with Zionism. The rabbi didn’t fall for it. You could have cut the tension in that room with a knife right then.
• Speaking for all denominations of Hinduism was a distinguished Indian woman of a certain age. She explained how Hindu beliefs and practices vary greatly and called out some of the moderators’ questions as being specifically geared toward the Abrahamic religions. She had to dip out about halfway through, so she made a quip about avatars as another distinguished Indian woman of a certain age took her place.
• Speaking specifically for Hare-Krishna-ism while wearing Krishna robes and Krishna face paint was a young representative from the local Krishna House. She gushed with enthusiasm while getting all buddy-buddy with the other Hindu and quoting the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. Though she would get extra credit in the enthusiasm department, she used a lot of terms that were vague (like everyone’s favorite, “energy”) or not very clear to us laypeople.
• Finally, representing the Bahá’í Faith, whose name I had to copy and paste from the Wikipedia article, was a professor or something (what, you want me to actually read the program I took home?). The Bahá’í Faith (Ctrl-V) is essentially a greatest-hits compilation of the world’s major religions, but Ms. Bahá’í Faith didn’t do a good job of explaining what it was actually about. She talked a lot without saying very much.

It was a great way for Blake to go out as Gator Freethought’s president. He was definitely one of the better speakers on the panel, and even though freethought was the odd belief system out (as evidenced by the tacking-on of “or lack thereof” to seemingly every question), he did a good job of representing our club.

And this is what I do when I should be studying for exams. I’ll be glad to have them over with. By the time I write my next post, I’ll be home free… for a little while.

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