Posts Tagged ‘perspective’

For the final session of Perspective Citywide, Nicola Jackson presented a talk on Judaism.

For the seventh session of Perspective Citywide, we were joined by Malcolm Deboo who traveled up from London to talk to us about Zoroastrianism. London boasts Europe’s only Zoroastrianism centre and Malcolm presented a fascinating look at a religion which very few people are familiar with.

For the Paganism session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Rhiannon Grant to the group. I had already seen the talk at the Atheist Society the previous Friday but it was never the less entertaining and the discussions were great.

On Wednesday, we welcomed Hull & East Riding Humanists secretary Tim Stephenson over to Leeds to present the Perspective Citywide session on Humanism. Tim’s talk was excellent, looking at both the philosophical side behind Humanism and also why it is important to stand up and be counted as a Humanist.

For the forth session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Joel Baker to talk about Christianity.

Joel is currently serving as the interfaith secretary for the Christian Union at Leeds and discussions were very forthcoming – I had to call an end to them in the end because we ran out of time. A big thanks to Joel for coming down and very much looking forward to Tim tonight.

For the third session of Perspective Citywide, Sam Butler joined us from the Church of Scientology in Manchester. Scientology is a great religion for us to cover because it’s one where the popular conception and the church’s official line on what they believe are very different so it’s fantastic that Sam can come over and talk to us. Things got a little heated during some of the session, but Sam handled it well and the feedback after the session was on the whole positive.

Last Friday saw the second session of Leeds Atheist Society‘s 2011 Perspective. Unfortunately the speaker, who was going to be speaking on Hinduism, was unable to do the Friday, so Norm kindly stepped in at the last minute to save the event and talk about Humanism.

Following on from last week’s first session, on the Quaker movement, this week Perspective Citywide was joined by Aarik Subramanyam to talk about Hinduism. This was the first time a Perspective course has never covered Hinduism so we were very excited to learn about a religion which many people in the West know little about. The session was interesting and very informative, and not one to miss!

On Friday, the first session of Perspective 2011 took place with Robin Fishwick talking to us about the Quakers.

Next month, we’re launching Perspective Citywide, here in Leeds.

Perspective has been running on campus at the University of Leeds for several years now, starting it’s third run at the end of this month. It’s proved exceedingly popular and led us to us publishing the Perspective Leader’s Guide last year.

However, with it being based on campus it was somewhat limited in the audience we could get and so we really wanted to take it off campus so that everyone could access it.

As a result, we’re launching Perspective Citywide which will be taking place each Wednesday, starting 2 February. Running for 8 weeks, each session will see a different religious speaker joining us to talk about their faith and then open the floor up to a “no question off limits” Q and A with the audience. So if you have a burning question you want to ask, don’t miss out!

You can find out more information on Citywide on the Perspective Course website.