{"id":1615,"date":"2022-10-19T17:05:30","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T21:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redchairblogs.wpengine.com\/holymoly\/?p=1615"},"modified":"2022-10-19T17:05:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T21:05:30","slug":"the-gift-of-religious-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/2022\/10\/19\/the-gift-of-religious-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gift of Religious Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Jewish Community hosted its annual \u201cPizza in the Hut\u201d to celebrate Sukkot. This holiday commemorates one of the three festivals which Jewish people acknowledge as a commandment to make a pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple. The holiday includes building a sukkah, or temporary hut, that symbolizes the fragility and nomadic nature of life as well as one\u2019s dependence upon God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I was a little late, when I arrived I saw a beautiful diverse group of people enjoying pizza and conversation together on the lawn of the Spiritual Life Center. As I looked around, I saw our Jewish students offering pizza to Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Humanist, Muslim, and Queer students. It was one of those moments that I want to remember for a long time as a beautiful religiously diverse group of students ate and talked together.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It reminded me of the well-known rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who made the comment that \u201cin this aeon diversity of religions is the will of God.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My work as a chaplain in higher education has convinced me Heschel\u2019s comments are true. Religious diversity really is the will of the Divine. It is not a problem that needs to be fixed or erased. Instead, it is a promise and gift that must be embraced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Religious diversity is an intrinsic good that actually allows us to gain a fuller understanding of the Divine. We need the different religious traditions of our neighbors to better understand our own. My spirituality has blossomed because I have learned from Humanist, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim colleagues and friends. I now have a fuller and deeper understanding of the Sacred because I have practiced my religion inter-religiously. It is holy and sacred work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is my hope that we continue to be a campus that embraces all religious or secular traditions and learns from each other as we practice our traditions together, so that we might all become fuller human beings seeing the Sacred in everything and discovering the Divine all around us. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Jewish Community hosted its annual \u201cPizza in the Hut\u201d to celebrate Sukkot. This holiday commemorates one of the three festivals which Jewish people acknowledge as a commandment to make a pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple. The holiday …<\/p>\n

The Gift of Religious Diversity<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nathan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1QIf6-q3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}