Saturday, August 25, 2007

Many faiths to gather to share knowledge with Rupertites

Built on the success of a conference held in the city last year, Prince Rupert will once again be host of World Religions Conference on September 8 from 3 to 7 at the Lester Arts Centre.

Hosted by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of BC, the one day seminar will feature speakers from six of the world’s denominations. The participants will gather together to provide their particular religions thoughts on the topic of Family Values. There is no admission price for the session and the public is invited to attend to learn more about some of the different faiths of the world.

The organizers have lined up six Guest speakers for the September 8th event.

They are:

Mr. Michael Barkusky, will attend from Vancouver presenting the viewpoint of the followers of Judaism.

Reverend Jim Whaley of Prince Rupert’s St. Paul’s Lutheran church will represent Christianity.

Examining the First Nation’s perspective will be Mr. Leonard Alexcee who was born at Lax Kw’alaams and is member of Prince Rupert’s First United Church.

Mr. Naseem Mahdi the National President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Canada will speak on the beliefs of the Muslim community.

Buddhism’s views will be shared by Mr. John R. DeGrace who is a director of the Buddhist Society of Northern BC based in Prince George.

Representing Sikhism will be Mr. Balbir Singh Parmar of Prince Rupert who has been heavily involved in local interfaith gatherings of the past.

The full agenda for the day will be administered to by His Worship Dave MacDonald of the District of Port Edward, it will be his task to keep the dialogue flowing and enable all those attending to make the most of what should be a fascinating afternoon and evening of cross cultural and religious discussion.

For those that are interested in learning more about the religions of the world, the September 8th program could be like having your World Religion’s text book come to life.

For those looking for more information there are flyers being delivered to local mail boxes or you can call their toll free number at 1 877-767-1965, send them an e-mail at religions @inbox.com or check out their website at www.ahmadiyya.ca/bc.

The organizers are asking for those interested in attending to RSVP them through one of the methods above.

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