by Marium Mohiuddin
“You have to come and help me right now!” he said. All I could think was “it’s 4 a.m., and there’s no way I can sneak out.” My parents would kill me. Despite being a senior in college...
by Sparrow Etter Carlson
I write this now with my hand on my heart, and here it will remain. For what follows is about the precious people within our midst who are treated as ex-humans in our society and...
by Mohammed Jibriel
I recently learned about the concept of moral injury, which describes the profound psychological, behavioral, social, and spiritual distress that...
by Zack Ritter
“All 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza are terrorists,” she said as we were eating cookies, standing around the flickering flames at Shabbat services. I was...
by Paul Chaffee
If Swami Vivekananda’s clarion voice at the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions introduced us to the challenge of living happily in an interfaith world, it was Huston Smith’s voice in The Religions of Man (1958) which taught us what that meant.
by Philip Goldberg
A dispute at a small evangelical college; the death of a Supreme Court Justice; the presidential election campaign – these and other recent events remind me, yet again, that our religious attitudes and spiritual orientations are almost infinitely diverse. Not only are there vast differences among adherents of every tradition, but also diversity within the diversity within the diversity.
by Vicki Garlock
Empowerment comes in a dizzying array of forms. It might involve building a water well, playing in a rock band, practicing martial arts, or owning a scooter. But what happens when one person’s empowerment triggers another’s moral outrage?
by Lucy Gellman
Sitting in a drafty, castle-like Presbyterian church on Easter Sunday with my partner’s family, I could feel anxiety bubbling up with each hymn I didn’t know. Around us, the white walls of his church stretched out toward the ceiling like long, sinister fingers. The organ struck a round note. A light wind pressed at the side door, rattling its heavy handles.
by Katherine Marshall
Corruption is a live topic today. Since 2005, international anti-corruption day has been “celebrated” on December 9, in hopes that a visible day marking the topic can raise awareness about corruption and bolster a sense that something can be done to combat and prevent it.
by Marcus Braybrooke
Michael Servetus, who wrote for Jews and Muslims as well as Christians, has been called by Jerome Friedman, “a prophet of interfaith dialogue.” He was a man of prodigious intellect, a scientist and a free-thinking theologian
by Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Most college students have at one time or another asked, ‘If there is only one God why are there so many religions?’ This is a good question that I as a Rabbi have often been asked.This is my answer. The Qur’an declares that Allah could have made all of us monotheists, a single religious community, but didn’t in order to test our commitment to the religion that each of us have been given by God.
from URI-Europe
The conference Words Matter (Stop Hate) was held on Friday, November 18, 2016, at City College in Coventry, UK. This conference was initiated for a reason; following the UK EU referendum to leave the EU, there has been an increase in hate speech and crime. Especially amongst young people, there has been an increase of online hate speech and an increase of tension in and between communities, thus harming the region’s harmony and prosperity.
by Henry Goldschmidt
Imagine you’re an officer in the New York City Police Department. It’s Friday night, and you’re working on a block that’s closed for police activity. A young woman wearing a long, modest skirt and full-sleeved blouse says she lives on the block and needs to get past the police line. You ask for identification to check her address, and she tells you bluntly, “I can’t carry ID on Shabbos – it’s against the Torah.” Is she for real, or maybe up to something?
by Frederica Helmiere
After my second child was born, I found myself yearning for a hearty dose of vocational discernment. Perhaps it was the presence of this new little life in our home that compelled me to reassess my own life’s calling, or perhaps it was a general growing dissatisfaction with my work that I could no longer ignore.
by Ruth Broyde Sharone
Who could have predicted that a Muslim immigrant, Khizr Kahn, known by family and friends as a gentle, soft-spoken man, would make history on the fourth and final night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention or that he would become one of the most sought-after speakers in the country – especially on the Interfaith circuit?
by Noorjehan Asim
The moment I sat down at the dinner table, a little voice in my head began to scream. My instincts told me to run, but my body ignored them. I remained glued to the posh furniture that lined the hallway. Dining with Mr. Richard Olson, the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, was bound to be harrowing for any 15-year-old looking to make a lasting impression.
by Paul Chaffee
Empowerment is a tricky word, wrapping itself around a particularly complex word – power. For half a century empowerment has been popular cultural theme, particularly in management circles, albeit not without controversy.
