On Tuesday evening Kansas State held a World Religions Festival in Forum Hall. Organized by Mike Wesch, professor of anthropology, the event featured presentations from speakers across ten religions. 

“I have come to realize that this is my life, and I’ve got this one shot, and these are the people I share the planet with,” Wesch said. “I just love that I was able to bring those people on the stage with me, and maybe present to all of us just as a reminder that these are the people we share the planet with.”

Wesch said special thanks should be given to Cao Dai Reverend Canh Tran for helping unite these religions.

“Reverend Canh Tran of the Cao Dai was welcoming to all these other faiths,” Wesch said. “He’s like a hub that brings together all these religions where they feel like great friends to each other. I wanted to bring that same spirit to the World Religions Festival.”

Global religious leaders, professors, students and other professionals shared the stage at the festival.

“I love that it creates a celebration of diversity,” Wesch said. “Of course, we had diversity of race and ethnicity and nationality, but also adding that religious layer is really important. A lot of times we talk about diversity and we’re only thinking about skin color, but here, we had real intellectual diversity too.”

President of the anthropology club Jenna Fischli said an event like this is important because it’s a chance to better understand the world.

“I think it’s important to know more about the people around you,” Fischli, senior in social studies education, said. “There are people of different faiths and different cultures all around us, even at K-State.”

Emily Steinlage, freshman in elementary education, said it was nice to see diversity represented in the festival.

“Being on campus, I’ve met a lot of different people from lots of different backgrounds, so learning more about that has been really interesting,” Steinlage said.

Junior in computer science Amala John said it was eye-opening to learn from someone who believes it, rather than a textbook.

“You can really see the beauty in that religion more when you’re learning about it from people,” John said. “It was really interesting to see the similarities between all the different religions. You pull pieces out that everyone can relate to.”

John said her main takeaway from attending the event is despite all their differences, people can be surprisingly similar.

“Human beings are beautiful and diverse and we all come to many of the same conclusions — no matter where we’re at — and hold so much more in common than we think we do,” John said.

Wesch said there’s talk of continuing the festival in future years.

“We’ve built up great relationships with 10 different religious partners,” Wesch said. “We could maybe expand that. We’re already talking about maybe doing this again — like an annual event — but it might rotate to Korea, Taiwan and then back here.”