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...
Parliament of World's Religions
by Paul Chaffee
Jesus warned about those who have eyes but cannot see. His injunction resonates today when considering the general ignorance of the dangers of nuclear weapons, a risk of even greater consequence than climate change.
by Marcus Braybrooke
The Global Ethic, adopted at the 1993 Parliament of World Religions, is clear evidence that the coming together of people of faith is not an end in itself but part of the search for a more just and peaceful world.
by Joseph Prabhu
The Reverend William E. Lesher – Bill to his friends – was a man of many parts and roles. Seminary president, theological scholar and educator, pastor and religious leader, civil rights advocate and marcher, pioneer of the modern interfaith movement, and toward the end of his life, a tireless promoter of a possible new civilization for humankind.
by Ruth Broyde Sharone
In the past 30 years of grassroots labor, I’ve occasionally encountered couples as devoted to interfaith activism as they are to one another. Such is the case of Jean and William Lesher, two people who live, breathe, and exemplify what it means to be in partnership and to share a lifelong commitment to the interfaith movement.
“As Columbus discovered America, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago discovered woman.” This was the optimistic boast of Bertha Palmer (1849-1918), president of the Board of Lady Managers at the Exposition, of which the 1893 World Parliament of Religions was part. She was a businesswoman and philanthropist. The Palmer House, where many participants in the 1993 Parliament stayed, bears her name.
On a rainy afternoon in late February 2012, a dozen women gather in a room of a hotel near the United Nations headquarters in New York. They are activists representing women’s organizations from across the U.S. and the world, and they come rooted in diverse spiritual and religious traditions. They are participants in the 56th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), attracted to our particular conversation by an informal grassroots invitation to join in celebrating women’s spiritual leadership and the Divine Feminine at the next Parliament of the World’s Religions.
