Going off of our discussion from Tuesday, it seems like we all have some really intriguing ideas on how to not only gather attention from the public, but on how to make attending the event worth their while. On the surface it appears as if we've planned this sort of "fun-fair" type convention, what with the ideas of a movie night, scavenger hunt, trivia, so on and so forth. However, what message do we really want to send through our dedicated time?
Personally, I feel that what we should really focus on is the diversity in religion and religious aspects. Although our class is living proof that there is more to learning about religion than just in ancient scripts, the unfortunate truth is that many will read the first word and turn away just based on their own experiences. I am all for living your truth and staying away from things that you know you wouldn't be comfortable around, as in my person life religion has always been the root cause of negative energy in my household. This is why I tried to emphasize good advertisement, just knowing myself if I saw something specifically linked to religion with no other interesting aspect, I would most likely avoid it at all costs. Making sure we get peoples attention seems to be a strong point within our group though, so all should come together smoothly. That being said, we should really try to incorporate a lot of unique and unknown religious symbolism throughout the event, things people wouldn't necessarily associate with religion in order to serve the learning purpose.
As well as these, we should also try to make some of the same connections we did during class between religion and popular culture. Sure it may seem cheesy to some, but it's interesting to draw parallels between how something such as Comic-Con can easily be referred to as a religious institution due to the "worshipping" of the contents inside. Overall, it may seem difficult now in trying to come up with the educational value, however we are still in the early stages of development and already have a plethora of great ideas about how everything will work out.
Thank you very much for highlighting the importance of religious diversity, as well as the variety of things that are a part of studying "religion." Both, I think, are important to communicate! And if we do it well, we might go a long way toward reducing the stigma around "religion" as a concept, which you also noted.
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