For this edition of The Trend, we paired audio from a couple of unrelated events this year. The first was part of a presentation by author and social critic Os Guinness, who spoke at the University of Southern Indiana in January of this year. Guinness' talk was titled "Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity".
We've been hanging onto that presentation since January, in hopes of finding the right segments to pair it with to create a good Trend program. Last weekend, we found them.
Some of Guinness' main points on religious freedom and civil discussion were put into practice during a debate at the University of Evansville. The debate was over local author David Hayden's book "Muhammed and the Birth of Islamic Supermacism". Debating Hayden was the imam of the Islamic Center of Evansville, Omar Atia. The moderator was UE chaplain Tammy Gieselman.
While the rest of the world doesn't seem to be able to address such potentially devisive discussions without violence or rancor, they can be held here. As we've chronicled in our Labels and Reclamation Studios reporting projects, for some reason courageous people are rising to the challenge of bringing civil discussion back on the American scene.
WNIN will continue to follow this local movement and report on it as we learn more.
