World Religion Day

I would not have known that today was World Religion Day, had not attended a forum on interfaith marriages at our local public library. The forum was our local interfaith groups' way of marking the day. I *did* know that Bush has cynically pronounced today "National Sanctity of Life Day". (Eye roll.) But I like this better.

Observed on the Third Sunday in January each year, in all Continents, from major cities to the most rural of localities, World Religion Day events help foster interfaith understanding and harmony. It provides the opportunity to seek a unified approach to the spiritual challenges that confront humanity, and recognizes that the Earth is but one country and mankind its citizenry.

At the two hour forum, three couples told their stories, and there was some small group discussion too. The man who leads most of these things is a member of the Sikh religion, and worked on a book about Religion in Ohio. At the beginning of the program, he cited some statistics from the book. One that stood out to me was that almost *half* of Ohioans don't list themselves (whereever one might list such things) as belonging to ay particular faith tradition. That would probably come as a surprise to a lot of people, who think "Christian Right Red State" when it comes to Ohio.

At the end in a question and answer segment, one attendee asked the couples if they thought America was becoming more or less tolerant with regard to religion. One of the panelists, who is a Hindu man married to a Catholic woman, and is a doctor, said recently he had grown a beard, because one of his kids wanted him to, and he was on vacation at the time, so he did. He was surprised at the number of people--friends, family members, and his *patients* for crying out loud, said things like, "You look like a terrorist with that beard." He noted that these were people he respected, and he was pretty stunned to hear them say that, as if it was, well, an okay thing to say.

He said he challenged some of them, gently, and looked up pictures of the 9/11 hijackers to see see that none (or maybe almost none) of them had beards. Which seemed, to me, like a decent response. It's not good to just "let those things slide", but it takes patience and creativity to challenge those everyday examples of bias in a non-confrontational (or at least non-heated) way.

Alternate link for comments