Stevens Interreligious Forum examines “Who Is Chosen by God?”

HOBOKEN, N.J. — The Interreligious Forum 2004, sponsored by the Humanities Division at Stevens Institute of Technology, will be presented Wednesday, December 1, 2004, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the third-floor Fielding Room at the Wesley J. Howe Center, one block east of 8th Street and Castle Point Terrace on the Stevens campus. Press are welcome to attend. For directions and parking information please call the News Service contact at the top of this release.

The topic for this edition of the Interreligious Forum will be “Who Is Chosen by God?” and will be discussed by a cross-section of clergy and religious experts with backgrounds in the great religious movements of the world.

“Among the questions examined under this rubric,” says Professor Susan Schept, the forum’s organizer and moderator, “will be, Is there a religious ‘in-group’ social hierarchy? Who are the ‘chosen people’ within each group? Who may enter God’s kingdom, and what are the prerequisites? What are the perceived relations between one’s own group and the ‘other’?”

The Interreligious Forum panelists:

Dr. Vahan Hovhanessian is an Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, N.Y., and Pastor of the Armenian Church of the Holy Martyrs in Bayside, N.Y. Hovhanessian holds a doctorate in Biblical Studies from Fordham University (1998). He has several publications in English, Armenian and Arabic in the fields of biblical and Armenian Church studies.

Dr. M.G. Prasad is the chairperson of the education committee of the Hindu Temple and Cultural Society in Bridgewater, N.J. He is a spiritual disciple of yogi-seer Sriranga Sadguru of Ashtanga yoga Vijnana Mandiram, Mysore, India. Prasad writes and lectures on Vedic Hinduism. He has also published research articles on acoustics in relation to Vedic Hinduism. He is an outreach associate for the program Religion and Ethics Weekly on PBS television. Prasad is professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens specializing in acoustics and vibration.

Robert Scheinberg is a graduate of the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he is pursuing his doctorate in Jewish Liturgy. He is the rabbi of the United Synagogue of Hoboken, NJ and an adjunct professor of liturgy at the Jewish Theological Seminary and at the Academy for Jewish Religion. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, Rabbi Naomi Kalish, and their daughters Adina, Shoshana and Talia.

Tasneem Shamim is a Somerset, N.J., ophthalmologist and the president and a founding member of the Muslim Women’s Coalition, based in the Somerset section of Franklin Township, N.J.

Debra Sheridan, who will give perspectives from both Catholic and Lutheran faiths, is the Director of Parish Ministries of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Glen Rock, N.J., and a graduate of Drew Theological School, Drew University. Ms. Sheridan is also the former Catholic Campus Minister of Stevens (1999-2002). She has also participated in all of the previous Interreligious Forum events at Stevens.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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