A rare event took place in the UN General Assembly on February 7, 2012: religious and secular leaders from around the world gathered to affirm “Common Ground for the Common Good,” marking the close of the second annual World Interfaith Harmony Week (February 1-7).
Experience Your Neighbor's Faith to Deepen Your Own
We are coming to a realization that religious zealots cannot be fought with indifference. Extremists of all nationalities and religious persuasion feeding on prejudice, legislating exclusion, and resorting to violence cannot be prevailed upon by people with less passion. Telling them to "cool down" and to "be moderate" will not do it. We must allow fires greater than theirs to arise. Our passion for a whole and interdependent word must rise above their passion for a segregated and zero-sum world.
KidSpirit – Youth Model the Spirit of Pluralism
Take a moment to look back on your youth. Do you remember being 12 or 14? That awkward age on the cusp of adulthood, when you were neither a child nor yet an adult, but alternately identifying with both? Imagine your deepest held values and beliefs at that age; your fledgling sense of self and vulnerability. Did you have opportunities to share what mattered to you? To listen to voices different from your own and marvel at their unique worth and beauty? Flash forward a few years to your late teens and early twenties. How do you recall that sense of self now? Stronger? More settled? Perhaps a bit less open-minded than before?
New Journal on Religion and Contemporary Life
"Religion" is one of the most difficult words to define. People use the word all of the time but have a hard time flushing out its precise meaning. Having spent time on issues surrounding defining "religion," I felt it would be a good idea to start a new journal where "religion" can be analyzed, interpreted, and compared with other phenomena. I figured it would be an accessible, academic, online forum for people to publish on issues surrounding "religion." Much like State of Formation, Claremont Journal of Religion is meant to facilitate academic dialogue and encourage the enactment of deep pluralism.
Telling Stories of Muslims and Christians in Syria
Twelve years ago, I travelled to a monastery in the Syrian desert, where I met an Italian priest by the name of Father Paolo Dall'Oglio. For 20 years, he had been living in rural Syria, serving as the abbot of the ancient monastery of Deir Mar Musa. There, he led a community of Arabic-speaking monks and nuns dedicated to prayer, hospitality, manual work and dialogue with Muslims. As I settled in I was astonished to notice Muslims visiting all day, admiring the church frescoes, joining the local Syrian Christians for lunch, even excusing themselves so that they could perform their prayers in a quiet corner [Father Paolo Dall’Oglio] of the monastery grounds. I had never seen love between Muslims and Christians embodied so effortlessly, a communion of human beings sharing daily life.
When Dialogue is Not Enough
Where do we see ourselves five years from now?” asked Jean, a founding member and frequent facilitator for the West Los Angeles Cousins Club, a group of Jewish and Muslim women.
“I’ll Have a Dark Roast Mocha Latte with Social Values to Go”
Java. Joe. Brew. Whatever you call it, coffee is a fixture in American culture, a heart-warming part of our national diet. With average consumption exceeding 400 million cups a day, America is the leading consumer of coffee in the world, an $18 billion dollar market that secures 90 percent of its production from the third world. While the cost of an average cup now ranges from $1.25 to $2.50 in the US, not counting higher priced gourmet specialty brews, millions of farmers in countries like Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Sumatra, working year ‘round growing the beverage we imbibe, receive but a tiny fraction of that price for their labor. Too often, the multi-national financial machinery that grinds out our richly flavored brew leaves poverty in its dregs.
Unique Clergy Network Empowers Religion Sector
Here’s the challenge.
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Engage all of the 440 clergy serving a northern California region of just under a million people.
Should People of Different Faiths Pray Together?
This question has become increasingly important with the growing interaction between members of the world religions at all levels of society. Still quite a new issue in the Western world, few churches have given it much attention. In most cases, practice is well in advance of thinking about interfaith worship. I write as a Christian, mainly from a British context, and it will be good to hear from other standpoints.
The People Who Write for TIO
This posting marks TIO’s sixth issue. Half a year in seems a good time to catch a breath and see where we’ve come. More than 100 articles, news items, interfaith reports, and calendar events have gone to TIO subscribers and can now be found at www.theinterfaithobserver.org. In sum, this material underlines the assumption which motivated this venture in the first place – that those who embrace interfaith culture need to know more about each other, the manifold resources that are surfacing, and the ways healthy interfaith collaboration can contribute to peace, justice, and care for the Earth.