Lunch and Conversation: Food for Thought: Religious Minorities at LMU

Abstract

Students, faculty and staff from religious minorities on LMU’s campus were invited to lunch together, in an effort to gather people and facilitate conversation. In addition, an open invitation with an RSVP was be given to the whole LMU community, with the hope of also reaching people of any or no religious tradition who want to participate in this important conversation.Lunch began with a staff member representing a religious minority offering a blessing of our gathering and our food. As lunch was served, a religious minority student will give a brief presentation on her/his experience of being religiously active on LMU’s predominantly Christian, Catholic campus.Table conversations offered a comfortable environment for people of differing religious traditions to share their experiences of how their religious activity both affects and is affected by the LMU community. Theme of the day: students.talk. convivencia . If we truly share life with others, does that mean that “we” have to become like “them”? Or are there things which we simply cannot give up if we are to remain ourselves? At LMU, how do we balance our Catholic, Jesuit, and Marymount identities with openness to people of other faiths or no faith at all? In Los Angeles, how do we respect different kinds of diversity – religious, ethnic, sexual, economic – without deteriorating into separation from each other? In this new century, is religion destined to divide us? Or can it unite this broken world