Sampling from religious smorgasbord

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This article was published 06/11/2018 (2564 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — For Winnipegger Brent Kroeker, the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto is like a buffet: “You want to sample everything.”

With more than 500 speakers, presentations and programs, that’s not possible, but Kroeker, 34, is doing his best.

The freelance web developer is attending his second such parliament. He also attended the one in Salt Lake City in 2015.

“The parliaments are so uplifting in this day and age, with so much strife and polarization,” Kroeker says. “It’s so inspiring to see so many people from different religions coming together and addressing important issues. It makes me think we might stand a chance as a human race.”

A member of River East Mennonite Church in North Kildonan, Kroeker also attends First Unitarian Universalist Church. He became interested in interfaith activities when he realized he “knew nothing” about other religions.

“I took it on myself to do some research, to meet people from other faiths,” he says.

It started out as an intellectual exercise, Kroeker says, “with me wanting to give other religions the same chance I had given Christianity, the faith I grew up in.”

As he developed friendships with people of other faiths, including through a young adult interfaith group he organized in 2014-15, it became more personal.

By meeting people from other religions, Kroeker discovered “how similar we all are, and that I could learn a lot from other faith traditions.”

Among the commonalities were beliefs about things such as restorative justice, care for the environment, peace and the importance of “how we relate to the divinity,” he says.

There are different ways of expressing those things, Kroeker says, depending on the faith tradition and the culture it comes from, “but underneath, the core is the same.”

Learning about other religions also helped him in his own spiritual journey.

“From Hinduism, I learned that there are different ways of relating to God — some people do it better with the heart, and others, like me, with the mind,” Kroeker says.

His faith tradition emphasized “feeling close to God, but I was never was able to do that,” he says, adding as a result he “always felt deficient as a Christian.”

Kroeker says Hinduism taught him “there are different ways to connect with the divine.”

“I have my own unique way of being spiritual,” he says. “I don’t have to conform to one way of how faith should be practiced.”

Among other things, Kroeker is enjoying the speakers and sessions at the parliament, such as one on the latest scientific insights into what happens to the brain when meditating, another about artificial intelligence and religion, and about the future of religion.

He is also looking for ways to challenge himself. One way he did that was by attending a pagan Dark Moon Esbat Ritual, a lunar-based service focused on introspection and letting go.

“It was way out of my comfort zone, but it was fascinating,” Kroeker says. “The parliament is a great environment to ask deep questions, both about what your faith means to you, and also what it means to others.”

The Parliament of the World’s Religions runs Nov. 1-7.

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