On Tuesday, February 28, the First Baptist Church of Midland hosted the Permian Basin's second interfaith dialogue event. Participants this time included Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami from Kauai's Hindu Monastery, Rabbi Holly Levin Cohn from Temple Beth El in Odessa, Pastor Dr. Randell Everett from First Baptist Church in Midland, Monsignor James Bridges from St. Stephens Catholic Church in Midland and Imam Wazir Ali from Masjid Al Islam and Masjid Al Qur'an in Houston. The questions that each of the panelists answered in turn were: What is the role of women in your faith community including leadership and worship? What is the central nonnegotiable truth on which your faith is built? What are some of the important practices done in the home in your faith? The morality of capital punishment? How does your faith acknowledge, value, teach and promote diversity? Is the humanity considered one family? Each of the speakers was eloquent and clear in his and her responses. This educational style of interfaith panel, repeating the pattern from last year's event, worked extremely well. The well received two-hour event, arranged by Dr. Padmaja Patel, one of our latest Saiva Siddhanta Church arulsishyas, was attended by around 500 members of the Midland-Odessa community. It was webcast live, and in the coming weeks it will be available on YouTube for those who were unable to attend in person or live online. Stay tuned! Read the full report by Sara Higgins at mywesttexas.com here.

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