The Toledo community will gather to share their perspectives on religiously based topics at The University of Toledo Center for Religious Understanding’s upcoming Interfaith Forums.

“Fiction and Fact” will be Monday, March 16, and “Holy Days and Holidays” will be Tuesday, April 7, both at 4 p.m. in University Hall Room 4700. The events are free and open to the public.

Participants will join in small group discussions to explore different religious outlooks and traditions as well as to share their own perspectives.

“The forums are important because they are interesting and real ways of hearing from people who think differently about religion than you do — not just a book or a lecture, which come at arm’s length, but a real, live person who inhabits and is living out an entirely different way of thinking about what the point of life is and what is most real, valuable and the deepest source of human fulfillment,” said Dr. Jeanine Diller, director of the UT Center for Religious Understanding.

The first forum will take place during Muslim Awareness Week and is co-sponsored by the UT Muslim Student Association. With the goal of dispelling religious stereotypes, participants will talk about common prejudices toward other religions and how to work toward better understanding.

The second forum will take place on the eve of Holi Toledo — a UT recreation of the cultural event in India celebrated by throwing colored powder.

Diller said the forums are modeled after a similar program offered by the Lubar Institute at the University of Wisconsin in Madison that is focused on alleviating tension between people of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths.

Tags: College of Languages Literature and Social Sciences