An ambitious Hindu inspired venture aspires to global impact through an interfaith alliance centered on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).
Can Things Get Better for Us All?
by Paul Chaffee
Trying to understand the scope of the word ‘interfaith’ is a never-ending exercise these days. Religion itself, in a remarkable turn-around, is taking center stage in the mainline media day after day.
A Conversation in Bangladesh about Religion and Women’s Roles
Secular and religious perspectives on gender roles and the meaning of women’s rights vary in different societies and can be a focus of considerable tension. Development practitioners often argue that women’s equal rights, including girls’ access to education, employment, and health care, are so fundamental that they amount to a litmus test of serious commitment to social progress. But lingering doubts are often framed in religious arguments.
Exploring Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University
The attacks on September 11, 2001. Religious conflict in Northern Ireland. Protests over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
Sustainable Development Goals Engendering New Partnerships
In 2007, an Op Ed appeared in the International Herald Tribune, entitled “You gotta have faith at the UN.” A play on words, the article posited that the shifting sands of geopolitics and concerns surrounding available developmental resources, were demanding a rethink of multilateral institutions and traditional forms of global developmental partnerships.
Sacred Aid and Humanitarianism
The relationship between the religious and secular worlds is an enduring global mystery. Many of the most popular and powerful political movements in the world have religious agendas, use religious imagery, and call for reintroducing religious law into public life. Domestic tensions and conflicts that once seemed to have a primarily ethnic, national, or tribal character now begin to show the markings of religion. Religion is making itself felt in every dimension of a world once imagined as solidly secular.
KAICIID Launches Peace Mapping Program
As world leaders prepared to adopt the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” at the United Nations on September 25-27, the Vienna-based International Dialogue Centre, known as KAICIID, launched the “Peace Map” in New York City: At the heart of its first phase, the Peace Map offers an interactive database of over 400 organizations that work to promote interreligious dialogue around the world.
Fragile States: Five Imperatives
Joel Hellmann argues persuasively that the challenges that fragile states present are absolutely central not only for those focused on international development and poverty but far beyond. They cut to the core issues for international relations, tightly linked to security, refugees and migration, and governance institutions, not to mention, inter alia, crime, humanitarian challenges, and the qualities of life that human rights are all about.
Spontaneous Interfaith Relationships
For decades interfaith activists have been searching for “flint” to create the positive sparks needed for interfaith engagement and collaboration. In the beginning we would look for potential partners from different religious communities, speak to them separately, and then invite them into a wider circle for dialogue. We would lay the ground work and then praise the merits of their coming together, encouraging people to find a common language, to become comfortable with one another, share information about their religious practices, and “bond.” We wanted to create a non-threatening environment which we hoped would ultimately lead to a relationship of trust and then inspire more opportunities to engage the larger community. Sometimes it would take months to create that first encounter. Sometimes that first encounter would backfire because the individuals weren’t quite ready to go beyond their comfort zone.
Nina Meyerhof – Planting the Seeds of Spiritual Activism
If there is to be a new leadership model for building a better global society
it must have spirituality as its base.
Climate Key to Sustainable Development
Pope Francis told world leaders on Friday that in order to address poverty, hunger, war and inequality, they must first tackle climate change.
Nostra Aetate - Text and Context
Declaration on
the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI
October 28, 1965
Apocalyptic Prophecy: A Brief Cross-Cultural History – 1
What is apocalyptic prophecy? The Greek term apocalypse refers to the end of time and is an idea that has haunted humanity for centuries across cultures. There are Hopi, Mayan, Hindu, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Zoroastrian, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian versions of the end of the world, to name a few. Jewish prophets such as Daniel foretold an apocalyptic future, using “light vs. dark” imagery and haunting descriptions of the end in the Book of Daniel (a part of the Jewish scriptures). The Dead Sea Scrolls, traditionally ascribed to the Essenes, a Jewish monastic sect that retreated into the wilderness at Qumran to await the end of the world, also describe a final confrontation between the armies of God and demonic forces. These writings make it clear that apocalyptic theology was a potent force in their struggle against Roman oppression.
Publishing About Faith and Health
On July 7, the renowned medical publication the Lancet launched a series of articles on faith and health, led by Ed Mills. Lancet Senior Executive Editor Bill Summerskill made clear that this was a significant departure, a first. Speaking at the World Bank in Washington D.C., he and his colleagues did not shy away from the fact that the path to publication had not been easy. But they saw the opportunities and issues raised as vital to achieving universal health care, which in turn is at the core of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) that are close to being finalized at the United Nations. [Disclosure: I was a member of the author team and contributed to two comments that are part of the series].
A Kairos Moment: Faith Calls to Action
Over this six-month period, world leaders will meet time and time again. They face daunting agendas and the stakes are high. Hopefully they see starkly what seems so obvious: that the complex challenges are closely related one to another (peace and poverty, environment and political will), and that bold action is urgent.
There Are No Silver Bullets
by Annie Duflo
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are upon us, the goals which the international community will agree on for helping the poor around the world. They follow the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)…
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” was Cain’s reply when God asked him where his brother Abel was. (Genesis 4:9) It is the same question being asked of wealthy nations by asylum seekers and migrants as they clamour to come in.
Technology: A Re-introduction
We’ve become the tools of our tools and the fault – and the solution – lie not in our tools, but in ourselves.
For all the stunning achievements of science and technology in the last 400 years, there has been a blind spot at the center of both enterprises: the absence of an overarching vision that ties everything together, or the recognition that, in fact, everything is indeed connected.
The sheer amount of information now makes it impossible for any single person to grasp the whole of knowledge, as Leonardo da Vinci once could. As a result, scientists and technologists become buried in silos of information with little or no vision of what is upstream or downstream of their work.