Bob Tomaszewski
Staff Writer
On Friday Jan. 23, students gathered midday at Koten Chapel to pray for a purpose. That purpose was for the world to be less violent. The FOCUS group led about eight students in praying for a less violent world.
The idea of praying for a change started with Georgia Hirst, a transfer student from London who says, “the amount of news that permeated the borders of America was few compared to where I lived.”
“For example, the terror attacks in Paris,” Hirst said. “I was never confronted with them unless I went to an English news site.”
Hirst said “It has to do with the fact that it’s much further away.” England is closer to Paris than the United States by a whole ocean, so the sense of immediacy isn’t the same. The Boston Bombings affected people in the U.S. more than people and Russia and as a result. Russians will know less about the attack.
The Paris attacks were touched on briefly in my own classes at North Central College but in only one class.
“At home,” Hirst said. “It would have been confronted in our lectures. It was only by checking English news websites that I found out about it.”
From the educational power point shown during the prayer session, it certainly seemed like a lecture.
“It’s raising awareness so that prayer can increase. The more the activists and people in power know about it, the more that can be done,” he said.
Hirst points to women’s rights in India as an example.
“Often because it reflects badly on the country, that’s a reason why the news doesn’t actually get out. Because they don’t want it to,” he said.
During the prayer event the student speaker focused on three main points: Boko Haram, The Islamic State and women’s rights in India, tying all of these particular focuses back to religious extremism.
The Islamic State is based in Sunni extremism, and according to the power point shown at the event, is “mainly focused on violence.” If this were true and the group were not more focused on founding an Islamic State, then it would have been difficult winning the hearts and minds within its borders. Even the women’s right’s violations in India can be traced back to extremism, as ‘sacrificial killings’ were among the list of violations being prayed over.
Although it was led by a student speaker, many of those present seemed focused staring intently either at the power point or at their hands. The speaker allowed the information he presented to sink-in a powerful way to bring awareness and depth to all those numbers before praying.
In the future, Hirst says she wants to, “make (the prayer group) as broad and wide as possible because we believe in a God who is broad and wide over the whole earth.”
