Though religion itself is intangible, it manifests itself in that which is tactile: a Bible, the Quran, a statue or an omnipotent entity.
And in an apartment off campus, faith has manifested itself in four different rooms, taking a different form in each.
In one, Buddhism; in the other, Judaism; Catholicism in the third; and in the last, “skeptical.”
But this religious medley doesn’t affect the roommates’ relationships with each other, according to Jiwei Zhu, Buddhist.
Zhu, a junior in biological sciences, spent his childhood in China, surrounded by a religious family. However, now it is only when he travels across thousands of miles to China that he attends temple.
“Buddhism is not really a popular religion here,” Zhu said. “Religion doesn’t [affect life in the apartment] at all. Buddhism is the way you’re living — the way you’re supposed to be living in perfect harmony with the Earth.”
Zhu practices his faith individually by meditating and maintaining constant awareness about his actions. This way, he said, is a completely nonintrusive way of life.
“It doesn’t conflict with anyone else of other people’s religions,” he said.
In fact, faith doesn’t come in to play at all, Sean Brown, who is skeptical about religion, said of living in the apartment. He said he didn’t know Zhu was a practicing Buddhist when he met him.
“[Religion] doesn’t affect daily life much at all,” Brown, a sophomore in communications, said. “Actually, I don’t think religious practices come into any conversation, ever, in our apartment.”
Brown, who was born and raised Presbyterian, was 13 years old when he decided not to go back to his church.
“I stopped going to church the day I was confirmed,” he said. “The point of the confirmation class was to take a serious look at scriptures. I decided I didn’t believe it, and I literally never went back. I don’t think they expected that.”
The importance Christianity places on humanity’s origin and destination is what swayed Brown away from religion, he said. Instead, he places emphasis on the issues at hand in the political and social sphere.
“Religious debate is not terribly pertinent to world issues and should not be an issue in politics,” he said. “We’d get a lot more done if we’d stop worrying about it. The religious right is the reason [President George W.] Bush is in the White House. It’s atrocious. It should not be the decision of the religious right to elect a president.”
Though Brown said he doesn’t see himself returning or converting to any religion, he expects to run into some complications when he has children.
“I’ll struggle with the issue of how to instill the same morals that I was brought up with,” he said. “But I’m not going to do it from a religious standpoint. I plan on teaching them basic human morality.”
