As a place of communal gathering, idea exchange and enrichment of the whole person, U of T’s recently-approved Multi-Faith Centre is a worthy addition to our campus. It does not, as some have suggested, use faith to threaten freedom of personal philosophy.
The learning experience at every level is about more than scholastic education. A school does not teach subjects; it teaches people-people with needs that extend beyond the academic. A Multi-Faith Centre is a unique place in that it allows students and staff to explore their spiritual selves alongside people of other faiths. In a time of tension between and within religious groups, this type of coexistence will only help improve understanding and respect between groups and individuals. Projects like these also promote the welcoming diversity of cultures and ideas on which U of T prides itself.
There has been some opposition to the plan on the grounds that building a Multi-Faith Centre with U of T funds contradicts the university’s secular mandate and entrenches it amongst the religious. However, if the Centre is implemented with some vision, it can be a place not only for worship, but for dialogue that welcomes the kind of intelligent skepticism and questioning that are characteristic of all mature organizations, including religions.
It is important to remember that the vast majority of students who would use the Multi-Faith Centre for worship are critical thinkers who question and challenge their faith tradition and the other institutions around them, just as students without a religious background do.
A Multi-Faith Centre is not a declaration of war on atheists or an affront to thinkers and scientists-and there are many of the latter two in all faith traditions. The centre does not symbolize the fusion of the university with religious groups at the expense of non-religious students, since student groups of every ilk are granted space-including that most essential discussion space, the classroom-for exploring all types of issues. It is ridiculous to suggest that with the creation of this centre, a university, of all places, is discounting skepticism and doubt. These are our bedrock principles as academic investigators.
What the Multi-Faith Centre should be, and the name leaves it open to this, is a place where traditions are compared and questions of religion and spirituality are discussed. It is sophomoric to suggest that students fit rigid labels when it comes to religion or lack thereof, since many students identify with religious tenets as comfortably as they do with philosophies like existentialism. The Centre would provide a place for this myriad of belief systems and ideologies to be explored.
For those that practice faiths of all kinds, for religious people looking to deepen their understanding of their own faith, and the faiths of others, and for the non-religious interested in learning about and entering into dialogue with their fellow thinkers, the Multi-Faith Centre fits the bill.
