Guest Post: Through blogging and workshops, students open up religious discussion December 7, 2010
Posted by Chris Garbutt in Student Life.Tags: campus groups, Christopher Hitchens, debate, religion, Religion in the Public Sphere, The Religion Beat, Tony Blair
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By Nicholas Dion
I had fought my way through the crowds on the streetcar. Fought my way through the angry cries of “Tony Blair, war criminal!” to get inside the building. I had fought my way to the front of the line to pick up tickets. I had cleared the security checkpoint. Now, I could finally find my seat, right up on stage, to the left of the spot where former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would soon be standing.
On a recent Friday evening, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation organized one of the semi-annual Munk debates at Roy Thompson Hall, in which Blair and renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens (of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything fame) would debate the motion, “Religion is a force for good in the world.” I had been offered tickets through the Centre for the Study of Religion’s Religion in the Public Sphere initiative (RPS), whose student steering committee I have coordinated for two years now. Obviously, for those of us interested in how religion is discussed in public, this debate was right up our alley. Within the university, we spend our days learning what scholars think about religion. Few are the opportunities to interact with the public, to hear their thoughts and share our passion for the subject with them. But this is exactly the kind of opportunity that RPS works to create. And it is a dimension of the RPS mission that we at the student steering committee have sought to make our priority.
How did we do this? For one, we created two seminars to contribute to the University’s annual High School Gifted Program Conference, to give visiting students a sense of what it means to study religion at university. Our morning panel, which looked at the Christian roots of vampire mythology, rode the Twilight wave and attracted an impressive crowd of 30 students. The afternoon session, led by law graduate student Howie Kislowicz, discussed the accommodation of religious beliefs in high schools, an environment that our guests knew very well.
Our other main project involved the creation of a blog, The Religion Beat, as another avenue for bridging the gap between the university and the public at large. Updated regularly by graduates students and undergraduates studying religion, the blog tackles timely subjects related to religion and the public sphere.
For example, Rebekka King has posted an analysis of the film Avatar as a religious metaphor, while Barbara Greenberg has discussed the meaning of Christmas for a secular Jew. Simon Appolloni regularly writes about issues of religion and environment, while Chris Zeichmann gathers links to relevant newspaper articles and other online sources in our weekly ‘link roundup’. With a rotating list of contributors, the blog provides readers with a plurality of voices interested in various issues related to religion.
There’s a lot of talk about “outreach” in the university today. It has become the new buzzword. What role should the university play in a liberal democratic society? How do we justify the billions of taxpayer dollars that we consume each year? How can we give back? I was surprised, when Dr. Pamela Klassen first began RPS back in 2007, of the extent to which my peers – students and faculty alike – supported what we wanted to do. There are tons of good ideas out there, but the majority of them will never get off the ground. So here’s a new buzzword – ‘initiative.’ Because if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that, as long as someone is ready to take charge, great things can (and will) happen.
As for the debate, I won’t spoil the surprise. But if you want it spoiled, you’ll just have to check out my summary of the evening on The Religion Beat.