During his childhood, Earl El-Amin looked up to the black Muslims in his neighborhood.
"They were dignified, respected. They were like the vanguards of the community," he said during the "Faith in the Black Community" panel discussion held on Friday.
Sponsored by the Black History Month Committee and the Black Student Union, the two-hour long forum involved black members of the Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities.
The discussion covered the tenets of the panelists' religion and how each became a follower of his or her religion.
For the first hour, the representatives described what their religions are about and what they stand for. In the second hour, the panelists described their life stories, focusing on the role which religion played in helping them forge their own identities.
"The world is greater than your one life, but your life is in itself the universe. If I can't stand as an example, I must go back to the roots of my faith and make the adjustments there," said Maia Carroll, who represented the Buddhist Network of Greater Baltimore on the panel.
Panelist Herber Watts of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation said that Jews "are supposed to live your faith through your life."
Christianity teaches that "your actions do have consequences; you are responsible to your actions. We do disagree with evil. We do disagree with oppression, slavery, racism, sexism - anything which prevents people from living together in community," said panelist Mark Wainwright, a reverend from Macedonia Baptist Church.
The panelists chose to focus on the things that were similar among their religions. All four representatives believed in the importance of peace and betterment of the community.
"Don't let anyone divide you. This is coming together like no other time in human history. All these religions are coming together in America," El-Amin said. The Imam represented the Muslim Community Center of Baltimore on the panel.
According to Wainwright, religion "should call individuals to personal relationships with God and to personal responsibility for their actions. But it should also call communities, nations and the world to responsible practicing of faith traditions that they believe they have."
Watts agreed, saying that the goal of religion "should be to develop the moral underpinning of the community. It is imperative that integrity and morality and ethics be as much a part of the community as it was a part of the past, and it needs to continue into the future."
El-Amin said that the goal of religion in this new, unique time is to "develop what is human, the best of your humanity. We need to ask ourselves the question of what is a human and what do human beings do, and how does religion impact you to maximize your human potential."
To the black community, the panelists spoke of the importance of the joint values of community and humanity.
Carroll said that the "history of the presence of Africa within the United States is a beautiful epic of the rise of humanism in America ... to have the determination to fight for our humanity and to not give up that fight during humanity's most strenuous, most inhumane tests and finally to remember that the history of people of African descent in this country is to empower our youth and to empower our elders to embark on that same path of humanism."
Sophomore Justin Jones, who serves as the co-chair for the Black History Month Committee, said he found the event very informative.
"If the openness and coherence we saw today could be translated into the greater black community we'd all be better off," Jones said.
"It was a good chance to get a wide variety of backgrounds from experts on their field. I had a chance to see the benefits and in and outs of each religion," sophomore Lindsay Leslie said.
"This is a special time. This country is the most diverse country in human history - religiously, ethnically and culturally. In no other time in human history could we have this conversation," El-Amin said.
The panel was co-sponsored by Civic Frame, a Baltimore-based nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging critical thought on social issues. April Garrett, the group's founder and president, served as moderator for the forum.
