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The Interfaith Campus Ministries at UM-St. Louis are looking to promote religious tolerance and understanding by making people more aware of the different religions.
On the first Thursday of each month, Interfaith Campus Ministries will sponsor "Conversations and Controversy: An Interfaith Dialogue." Various speakers will discuss issues and relate religion to controversial topics such as sex and religion and stem cell research.
"We had meetings with the Interfaith Campus Minister and we took a poll of students and these were the most popular topics," said Tracy Van De Riet, campus minister with the Catholic Newman Center.
On Feb. 2, representatives of four major religions came to the Pilot House to introduce people to their religion, its practices and its beliefs.
These panelists showed how much diversity there was between different faiths and even within one religion.
Rabbi Avi Katz Orlow, Rev. Joretta Marshall, Rev. Vic Barnhart and Dr. M Waheed-Uz-Zaman Rana represented the Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Islam faiths, respectively. Some of the topics they discussed were about how their religions began, their clergy and the belief in the afterlife.
Within each religion, most have different divisions with different beliefs. Protestantism itself branched off from Catholicism and now encompasses numerous different faiths and splinter groups, including Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans.
"We have branched off in ways that are quite phenomenal," Marshall said. Martin Luther first formed the Protestant religion when he broke away from the Catholic Church in the early 1500s.
Catholicism, Judaism and Protestantism all follow scripture, but interpret it differently and accept different books of the Bible.
Catholicism has also branched off into Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholicism because the Eastern Orthodox does not follow the Papacy.
"We're not bound so much by the Papacy as by the celebration of the Eucharist and we have the same prayers," Barnhart said.
"Islam is also based on scripture and everyone has to abide by scripture," Rana said. "People have different interpretations but the scriptures are all the same. There are some splinter groups but the majority of them conform."
Judaism also has several different divisions. "There's tremendous variety about what it means to be Jewish," Orlow said.
He said that Reform Jews, Orthodox Jews and Conservative Jews are different branches of Judaism and the branch people are associated with depends on their country and denomination, and dictates Jewish lifestyles.
The panelists said that their members, regardless of religious affiliation, can have extremely diverse ideas when it comes to political views or lifestyle choices.
"There are very liberal Catholics and there are conservative Catholics," Barnhart said. "Literally, there are thousands of expressions of Catholicism."
Approximately 20 people attended the panel discussion. Afterward, audience members had the opportunity to ask specific questions about a particular religion.
Van De Riet said the goal of the panel and the Interfaith Dialogue series was to educate the community about the different faiths and their respective stances on issues.
"It's to make people more aware of different faith groups and what they're about so people can appreciate the different faith groups and be more tolerant of all religions," Van De Riet said.
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