In a world divided, a religious studies and ethics group at Athens State University is seeking to foster unity among the many religions and cultures represented in North Alabama through community outreach and education. To that end, the Curtis Coleman Center will host an interfaith panel featuring representatives from Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14, in the Founders Hall.

Aladin Beshir, the first Muslim to serve as the president of the Huntsville-based Interfaith Mission Service, Daniel Schenker, a practicing Jew and retired University of Alabama in Huntsville English professor, and the Rev. Robert Ferrell, a Christian minister and IMS leader, will share their insights at the panel.

Panel members will spend the evening exploring how their similar faith traditions can promote understanding and combat poverty, prejudice and other social injustices.

Speaking to issues such as spirituality and racial inequality is secondhand to Ferrell, who left a career in social psychology to become a minster 16 years ago. Currently, he splits his time between working on IMS projects and as the Spiritual Director of Contemplative Interbeing, a ministry he recently founded.

He was initially recruited by Eric Betts, the co-director of the Curtis Coleman center to help assemble the panel, and ended up agreeing to be the Christian representative on the panel.

“This is part of my ministry with the IMS,” Ferrell said. “The key is to help students develop a way of seeing through multiple perspectives because we live in a pluralistic society.”

A society that Beshir fears is growing more and more Islamophobic.

“Whenever there is an opportunity, I speak on this subject,” Beshir, an active member of the Huntsville Islamic Center, said. “We must concentrate on the challenges we have as a community and build synergy so that we can move forward together.”

“We have proven through the IMS that the different faiths can come together and improve society,” he added.

Founded in 1969 during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the IMS has grown to include Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and other belief systems. The cooperative has founded numerous social programs including Food Bank of North Alabama, the Care Assurance System for the Aging, FirstStop, a ministry to the homeless, and the HELPLine, a free telephone counseling service.

“All of our traditions teach us to be neighborly,” Ferrell said. “When we learn to love someone, we understand them, it doesn’t mean we have to agree with them, but it does mean we can work toward a common goal.”

The panel will field questions from the center’s directors and audience members during the one-hour session. Students, faculty, local clergy and members of the community are all invited to participate.

The center plans to make the interfaith panel an annual event.

“We must continue to work together to build bridges between the faiths and break down prejudices and misunderstandings that build walls that divide our communities,” Betts said.