by Paul Chaffee
Stories from Institutional Religion – The Far Reaches of Faith and Practice – In Memoriam
Passing the Baton
by Paul Chaffee
This month I am stepping down as the editor of The Interfaith Observer. I do so happily confident that the Tri-Faith Initiative of Omaha, Nebraska will give new life to TIO, new resources reshaping it to address the interreligious needs…
The Spirit in the World
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
The original impulse to create TIO nine years ago came from realizing how very much interfaith activity was sprouting up in the world and how very little most people knew about it, local interfaith activists included.
Skillsets for Interfaith Relationships
What does it take to create and nurture healthy interfaith culture? Good intentions and an open heart are surely necessary.
Being Able to Empower Each Other
by Paul Chaffee
The digital tools that began raining down back in the eighties have been an enormous boon to religion and multifaith organizations and how we communicate.
Paying Attention to Spirit
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Hundreds of thousands of pages have been written detailing the history and doctrines of our particular religious traditions, most of them demonstrating how different we are from each other.
Past Gifts for Tough Times
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Eight years ago, on September 15, 2011, TIO was launched. That makes this the 89th monthly issue. (We skip August.) Since then this publication has featured more than 1,000 interfaith stories along with…
A New Day for Interfaith Relations
by Paul Chaffee
August 2019 should go down in interfaith annals as a milestone, a month when a quiet, mostly unnoticed development emerged that could exponentially magnify…
Compassion – Interfaith’s Common Ground
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
In preparing each month’s TIO, we typically invite two or three more contributors than we usually publish, on the safe assumption…
A Fifth Directive Added to the Global Ethic
A TIO Report
Towards a Global Ethic – An Initial Declaration is a cornerstone of the modern interfaith movement. The text was drafted by German theologian Hans Küng at the request of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.
Groundbreaking Interfaith Curriculum Being Published
by Paul Chaffee
Interfaith Made Easy may initially inspire caustic remarks like “then it can’t be much about interfaith.” A closer look by either novice or seasoned interfaith activists is likely to inspire awe and appreciation.
Seeds of Hope
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
A few years back Millennials were suffering considerable verbal abuse for being the ones who’ve walked out of church, who have given up the religion their forebears fought so hard to claim and defend.
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)
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.
The Gift of These Voices
Those of you who have followed TIO since it launched in September 2011 know that a major motivation for creating this publication was to tell the untold interfaith stories proliferating around the world. That much has begun, with 1,500 articles in TIO’s archive now being programmed with new software that should make them much more accessible by subject, theme, and author. We hope to launch TIO’s renovated website this September, with TIO’s whole library available to you in just a few clicks.
Featuring Eboo Patel
This year TIO has devoted its March-July issues highlighting a handful of contributors who have made a special mark in the interfaith community and been particularly generous in contributing to this journal. This month we are happy to share the work of Eboo Patel, a 41-year-old Muslim who grew up in Chicago, did his PhD at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then founded the Interfaith Youth Core. Today IFYC has a staff of 45, a $6.5 million annual budget, and a laser-like focus on developing interfaith leadership in the confines of higher education in the United States.
Featuring Vicki Garlock and Bud Heckman
The best gift in editing this publication for the past five years has been getting acquainted and working with hundreds of interfaith leaders, young and old, women and men, from dozens of different national, religious, and spiritual affiliations.
Featuring Marcus Braybrooke
The Reverend Doctor Marcus Braybrooke has aptly been called the dean of interfaith historians. He has travelled hundreds of thousands of miles attending interfaith events for half a century. His work mining the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago and the subsequent evolution of the Parliament of the World’s Religions is where the student of interfaith history must begin. Amazon’s Marcus Braybrooke Page, which lists 37 of his books, introduces him this way: “Marcus Braybrooke is an Anglican priest, an interfaith activist and author. He is President of the World Congress of Faiths, Co-Founder of the Three Faiths Forum, and a Peace Councilor.”
Planning this Year for TIO 2.0
This month marks the fiftieth issue of The Interfaith Observer (TIO), and the time has come to take a breath and a break from ‘business as usual.’ For the next five months, from March through July of 2016, TIO will look back and gather the work by and about five of our most prolific writers, one a month. Next month, we will feature the work of Marcus Braybrooke.
Winter Light
Bittersweet may be the best word for the final months of 2015. The international gathering of leaders in Paris took climate change more seriously than ever before, a major step forward in terms of what is required. But the climate agreements were punctuated by violent massacres in Paris and San Bernardino and by the ongoing chaos in the Middle East, which has never been more toxic.