Throughout the past two weeks I’ve been thoroughly excited to see a great deal of peaceful, interfaith discourse happening on Facebook and face-to-face conversation.

It started with the gay marriage debate last week when a whole bunch of Christian folk had some genuine talks about letting “us” get married. Personally, I had the pleasure of talking to some people who had best friends who are gay, and they were actively trying to figure out how people can reconcile their religious faith and a non-heterosexual sexuality.

Then came our friends from the Eastern part of the world, weighing in on how they see the world through Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh lenses (I’m sure I’m accidentally leaving a lot of folks out but bear with me). In fact, one of my friends had his first meaningful conversation with a Muslim, and his perceptions of the faith were greatly challenged.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of participating in a Passover Seder with a friend’s family. We sat around a table, read through the ritual and discussed the culture and history behind the words in our guidebook.

Yesterday, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that he wished all of his Christian brothers and sisters a happy Easter, and explained that Jesus was important to him, too. He just calls Jesus Isa.

All of this happened within a week, and I grew in my understanding of other cultures and religions. I try to make this a habit (I mean, I’m a religious studies major), but there’s something about observing, or even participating in conversation and rituals different from your own. It is ever so important to continue to strive for this understanding, especially on our campus.

We’ve talked a lot about diversity lately, and a great deal of it has centered on racial diversity at SMU. However, I often think we overlook religious diversity unless we’re talking about Islam (which we group together as a whole) or different Christian denominations.

We have Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh and Atheist students who identify themselves not only as a member of a particular religion or group, but as members of subgroups within those broader groups. What this means is that even if you meet Muslims, they may not hold the exact beliefs as their friend sitting on the bench with them. If you meet a Christian, they could be incredibly conservative and fundamentalist, or borderline Unitarian (take the United Church of Christ, quite different from the Church of Christ).

It almost seems silly to assume that we only have a few religious groups represented on campus. I would go so far as to argue we have hundreds depending on one’s personal belief system. And they all deserve equal respect on this campus.

So, as we take our discussion of diversity further, I encourage all of us to not assume that because we’ve met a new friend who practices a religion of which we’re not familiar that they represent the entirety of that religious group. That means we have to meet even more people to attain a broader understanding of the world and they way in which people encounter, or don’t encounter god(s).

So go out there and start talking. You’ll encounter cool friends, great food and a sense of peace that we really can get along in the world.

Graves is a junior majoring in communication studies and religious studies.