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Attack Response

Attack Response

by Susan L. Lipson

Since the shooting at Chabad of Poway, people of all faiths, from across the county, have rallied together for vigils and services to support their Jewish neighbors. Over 4,000 people showed up Monday night at Poway High School for…

Bridging the Chasm of the Heart

Bridging the Chasm of the Heart

by Michael Reid Trice

Our age is the story of seismic shifts in the guiding, normative ways for how life is lived on this planet. We experience these shifts as seismic because they pulsate and tear at the foundations of…

SabangMerauke – Setting the Interfaith Table in Indonesia

SabangMerauke – Setting the Interfaith Table in Indonesia

by Vicki Garlock

SabangMerauke, a non-profit organization in Indonesia, offers a loving, yet straightforward antidote to the fear that sometimes finds its way into human hearts and minds. Their message?  Get to know one another!

Breathing Life Into the Global Ethic

Breathing Life Into the Global Ethic

by Ruth Broyde Sharone

What would the manifestation of a global ethic look like in everyday life?Is it possible to translate the lofty ideals for humanity imagined by theologians and professors into a flesh and blood reality that people of all beliefs can accept and commit to?

Despina Namwembe and Grassroots Interfaith in Africa

Despina Namwembe and Grassroots Interfaith in Africa

A TIO Interview

Despina Namwembe is a force of hope to be reckoned with when it comes to grassroots interfaith work in Africa. A social scientist with a masters in peace and conflict studies, she coordinates the work of more than 30 grassroots interfaith organizations doing different social action projects in the Great Lakes countries of Africa.

Spirituality and Practice – Part 2

Spirituality and Practice – Part 2

by Paul Chaffee

TIO’s initial profile of Spirituality & Practice, in November 2012, suggested that the website was the premier gathering of spiritual resources and practices on the planet. Its 24,000 web pages constituted a vast library of reviews, profiles, blogs, and on-demand e-courses. Six years later, while sporting a beautiful new web platform, S&P has kept its vision and goals intact.

Review: Learning to Live Well Together (Wilson and Ravat)

Review: Learning to Live Well Together (Wilson and Ravat)

by Paul Chaffee

Like so much else in this contemporary culture, the ‘interfaith movement’ is at a watershed moment. For the past quarter-century, spontaneously, globally, thousands of groups have gathered to promote interfaith harmony.

Aziza Hasan: Breaking New Ground

Aziza Hasan: Breaking New Ground

by Ruth Broyde Sharone

Aziza Hasan is one of the most admired Muslim women in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of a small Mennonite college in Kansas, where she studied conflict resolution and mediation and spent two years as a member of AmericaCorps.

Despina Namwembe and Grassroots Interfaith in Africa

Despina Namwembe and Grassroots Interfaith in Africa

A TIO Interview

Despina Namwembe is a force of hope to be reckoned with when it comes to grassroots interfaith work in Africa. A social scientist with a masters in peace and conflict studies, she coordinates the work of more than 30 grassroots interfaith organizations doing different social action projects in the Great Lakes countries of Africa.

Rabbi David Rosen: Building Global Interfaith Communities

Rabbi David Rosen: Building Global Interfaith Communities

by Ruth Broyde Sharone

Tension can be at a rolling boil during interfaith encounters, but Rabbi David Rosen, a modern Orthodox Rabbi, born and educated in England, who lives with his family in Israel, has never been intimidated by the heat.

Forging Community Through Fasting

Forging Community Through Fasting

by Vicki Garlock

Increasingly, both Muslims and non-Muslims are using Ramadan as a chance to forge friendships across religious boundaries. Since iftar is a community meal anyway, it provides a ready-made way to change negative stereotypes about Islam and the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.

In Memory of Father Albert Nambiaparambil CMI

In Memory of Father Albert Nambiaparambil CMI

by Marcus Braybrooke

 

Father Albert Nambiaparambil, “the prophet of religious harmony,” as The Malayala Manorama, Kerala’s leading newspaper, called him, died on February 6 after a brief illness. He was 86. Albert made an important contribution to interfaith fellowship in Kochi (or Cochin), where he lived for many years...

Huston Smith – The Passing of a Giant in Our Midst

Huston Smith – The Passing of a Giant in Our Midst

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. 

Michael Servetus – the Martyred Interfaith Prophet

Michael Servetus – the Martyred Interfaith Prophet

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

The Interfaith Legacy of Guru Nanak

The Interfaith Legacy of Guru Nanak

by Marcus Braybrooke

An overwhelming sense of the Glory and Oneness of God made Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the founder of Sikhism, impatient with religious divisions, doctrines, and rituals. This sense of the Oneness of God is for me at the very heart of the interfaith journey. There are many practical reasons why interfaith cooperation is vital and as many attempts to find a theological or philosophical justification for it. 

Joseph Prabhu's Anatomy of Wisdom

Joseph Prabhu's Anatomy of Wisdom

by Ruth Broyde Sharone

“Wisdom includes action as well as knowledge,” maintains Joseph Prabhu, a professor of philosophy and religion for four decades, a passionate interfaith activist, and Mother Teresa’s first altar boy in India. “Action brings insight into dynamic motion,” Prabhu explains, “and insight without thoughtful action, to my mind, is seriously incomplete.”

Huston Smith and the Parliament of the World’s Religions

All of us can look back over our lives and identify people who have been significant role models. One of those persons for me has been Huston Smith. Perhaps the most important American scholar of religions for five decades, Smith was born the son of Methodist missionaries in Dzang Dok, China, where he spent the first 17 years of his life. Now 96 and confined to a favorite chair in an assisted-living apartment in Berkeley, California, the old gentleman – eyes sparkling – still “banters in Chinese with his friend, Mr. Lin, the maintenance man” (Lisa Miller, “Huston Smith’s Wonderful Life,” The Daily Beast, 2009).

Interfaith Generation Emerging

We are still fighting the myth that interfaith children grow up to be lost and confused. Rev. Erik Martínez Resly is an interfaith child who grew up to become an inspired community leader. I met Erik at the Parliament of the World’s Religions this year and later interviewed him about his work as lead organizer of The Sanctuaries, a racially and religiously diverse arts community in Washington, DC. — SKM

Sri Ramakrishna: A Profile

Except for students of Hinduism, Sri Ramakrishna is a largely unknown figure in the West. Yet his teaching and influence have helped shape the global interfaith movement. His vision, if not his name, came to Europe and America through his student and devotee, Swami Vivekananda, whose electrifying contributions at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions are invoked as the beginning of the interfaith movement. Marcus Braybrooke’s profile is so carefully researched that TIO is breaking its long habit of not using footnotes. For those who want to study Ramakrishna, they point the way.

Ramakrishna and Vivekananda: Midwives of the Interfaith Movement

Although no single person, group of persons, or religious tradition can be solely credited with the emergence of the interfaith movement – a vast and complex movement to which many hands and minds have contributed – it is certainly true that the interfaith movement as it exists today would be inconceivable without the contributions of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda.