To kick off the season for non-violence, Sinclair Community College is a holding a World Religions and Spiritualities week to promote tolerance and respect of people from different faiths, according to Barbara Battin, interfaith campus minister.
The celebration will be starting on Monday, Jan. 31 at 11 a.m. in the Library Loggia, where Battin will make an introduction and Mo Khani, Geography professor will follow with a presentation on geography of world religions, according to Battin. It will continue through Feb. 3 with each day having a variety of different speakers and events going on.
Tuesday will be focused on Eastern religions, Wednesday on Western religions and Thursday on spiritual practices. Each day there will be a reading of the children’s book “Old Turtle,” which calls for religious awareness and a chance to win a stuffed turtle afterwards.
The event is being held to give the Sinclair community a chance to “explore religious and spiritual, promote dialogue and seek mutual understanding,” according to Battin.
“Our world is full of conflict and one Rabi, I think in the Dayton Daily News a while ago, quoted the UN as saying ‘most of the major conflicts in the world has something to do with religion.’ So one of the key issues in our century, is to learn how to, not just to tolerate, but to appreciate one another’s religious traditions,” Battin said.
The event is also corresponding with the season of non-violence, which starts on Jan. 30, the death date of Mohandas Gandhi and goes through April 4, the death date of Martin Luther King, Jr. Battin said the week is one way of practicing non violent relationships with one another.
The focus of the non violence season this year is building the beloved community and using Martin Luther King, Jr.’s world house vision which comes from his book, “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?,” according to Battin.
“We live in a world where the students that are being educated at this college will go into a work place that has a great diversity to it and one of those diversity issues is religion,” she said. “During Ramadan, if someone sitting in the cubicle next to you is Muslim and you invite them to lunch and they say ‘I’m sorry I can’t.’ It would be important for you to know why, that they are engaging in a religious fast.”
Amanda Hayden, Religion professor said she hopes that everyone at Sinclair finds at least sometime to come down to check out the event and that they find something beneficial from it.
“Learning about other faiths and religions shouldn’t be something we fear, but should be something that helps us grow and learn and discover our own beliefs and practices more authentically,” Hayden said.