UW-Madison religious advocates encourage increased faith awareness

Sean McNally
Although the University of Wisconsin-Madison funds organizations of a variety of religious backgrounds, some campus religious leaders believe understanding different faiths should play a more prominent role.

Sean McNally, president of Badger Catholic, said a broad perspective of world religions is an “essential” part of the liberal arts education promoted by the university, and he would like to see improvements in campus religious engagement.

“There are completely different worlds for how you live out your faith on campus,” McNally said. “If we’re going to do diversity, let’s do it big and embrace that and have discussions.”

Additionally, McNally said he would like to see an increased emphasis on religion from the university, such as including it in the ethnic studies requirement.

“I’d like to see large group discussions in a respectful and open space,” McNally said. “Highlighting religious diversity more would be something easy to do and give a lot of students a much broader perspective on differences.”

Professor of history and religious studies Charles Cohen also said religious understanding should play a bigger role, adding he believes the university’s religious diversity efforts are “feeble and lacking.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

most religious studies classes at public universities(and frankly some at Catholic universities)are harshly unfair towards Christianity in general and in particular orthodox Catholicism.