TruthBook Religious News Blog

RACHEL ZOLL
September 10, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) — There is the dread of leaving the house that morning. People might stare, or worse, yell insults.

Prayers are more intense, visits with family longer. Mosques become a refuge.

Eight years after 9/11, many U.S. Muslims still struggle through the anniversary of the attacks. Yes, the sting has lessened. For the younger generation of Muslims, the tragedy can even seem like a distant memory. "Time marches on," said Souha Azmeh Al-Samkari, a 22-year-old student at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Yet, many American Muslims say Sept. 11 will never be routine, no matter how many anniversaries have passed.

"I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every year," said Nancy Rokayak of Charlotte, N.C., who covers her hair in public. "I feel on 9/11 others look at me and blame me for the events that took place."

Rokayak, a U.S.-born convert, has four children with her husband, who is from Egypt, and works as an ultrasound technologist. She makes sure she is wearing a red, white and blue flag pin every Sept. 11 and feels safer staying close to home.

Sarah Sayeed, who lives in the Bronx, said that for a long time, she hesitated before going out on the anniversary. The morning the World Trade Center crumbled, she rushed to her son's Islamic day school so they could both return home. The other women there warned that she should take off her headscarf, or hijab, for her own safety. She now attends an interfaith prayer event each Sept. 11, keeping her hair covered as always.

"There's still a sense of 'Should I go anywhere? Should I say anything?' There's kind of that anxiety," said Sayeed, who was born in India and came to the U.S. at age 8. "I force myself to go out."

The anniversary brings a mix of emotions: sorrow over the huge loss of life, anguish over the wars that followed, but also resentment over how the hijackings so completely transformed the place of Muslims in the U.S. and beyond.

A poll released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 38 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence. That is down from 45 percent two years earlier.

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Labels: 9/11, emotion, fear, interfaith, Islam, Muslims, Pew forum on Religion, Rachel Zoll

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Interfaith Spirituality 101: what are three universal lessons from Islam?

August 14,
Dr Deb Brown

This is the fifth article in a series of weekly articles about universal lessons offered by the spiritual Teachings, beginning (in alphabetical order) with Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Indigenous wisdom, and continuing this week with Islam.

This article does not address the ideas and beliefs that led to 9/11, which have been denounced repeatedly by Muslim scholars around the world. This article focuses on Islam, the sacred religion of peace founded by the Prophet Mohammad (570–632 AD), who is believed by Muslims to have directly received the word of Allah/God from the angel Gabriel and transcribed it into the Qur’an (Koran). The word "Islam" means "submission" in Arabic, and its primary focus is on humbly submitting to the Divine.

This article looks past issues that often divide us, and offers three of many Muslim lessons that could be considered universal lessons for all of us. These three lessons are not meant to capture centuries of Muslim thought and are offered in no particular order:

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Labels: Deb Brown, interfaith, Islam, Muslims, peace, spirituality

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Friday, August 14, 2009

Buddhism strengthens ties to church

By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 08/09/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

What in the recent past seemed exotic and foreign is now almost routinely folded into "the fold."

Buddhism is not only accepted as a mainstream American religion, it is a path increasingly trod by faithful Christians and Jews who infuse Eastern spiritual insights and practices such as meditation into their own religions.

When John Weber became a Buddhist at age 19, his devout Methodist parents were not particularly pleased.

In recent years, however, they've invited their son, a religious studies expert with Boulder's Naropa University, to speak at their church about Buddhism.

"That never would have happened before," Weber said. "They would have been embarrassed."

The Pew Forum's Religious Landscape Survey in 2007 found that seven in 10 Americans who have a religion believe there is more than one path to salvation. A growing number of people are contemplating more than one each.

And they are contemplating contemplation itself.

There are Jubus — Jews who bring Buddhism into their practice of Judaism — and Bujus, who are Buddhists with Jewish parents. Then there are UUbus, or Unitarian Universalist Buddhists, and Ebus, or Episcopalian Buddhists. There are Zen Catholics.

"There is a definite trend and movement that will not be reversed," said Ruben Habito, a laicized Jesuit priest, Zen master and professor of world religions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "We are in a new spiritual age, an inter-religious age."

Search can lead back home

People are hungry for a deeper spiritual experience — meditation, mindfulness, personal transformation, deep insight, union with God or the universe.

Habito, who calls himself a Zen Catholic, is one of the experts who say the search is a little like Dorothy and her ruby slippers. The quest for meaning ultimately leads some, like Dorothy, to their own backyards.

Judaism, Catholicism and Islam have rich traditions in contemplative practices, yet these had all but disappeared from everyday congregational life.

For many Christians cut off from the past, or alienated from the faith of their upbringing, Buddhism has served as the bridge to ancient wisdom.

"The problem is the contemplative tradition in the Christian Church has had its ups and downs over the centuries," said Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and leader in the Centering Prayer movement, a modern revival of Christian contemplative practice.

"We sensed that the Eastern religions, with their highly developed spirituality, had something we didn't have," Keating said. "In the last generation, 10 to 20 years, some didn't even think there was a Christian spirituality, just rules — do's and don'ts and dogma they didn't find spiritually nourishing. It's important to recover the mystical aspects of the gospel."

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Labels: Buddhism, Christian, Electa Draper, God, interfaith, meditation, religion, spirituality

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Interfaith relationships require strength

Married couples of different religions find ways to make it work
July 25, 2009
BY TINA ARONS

Santos Uvalle glanced at his wife as he thought about how to describe the first half of their marriage.
"It was hell on wheels," the 33-year-old said.

He married his wife, Myra Uvalle, when he was 17. She was 16. They promised the usual things — for better, for worse — but they never thought getting through religious differences would be so hard.

Santos Uvalle, who works at an oil reclamation plant, grew up evangelical. Myra Uvalle, a student nurse, grew up Catholic.

"He refused to change, and I refused to change," Myra Uvalle, 32, said.

Jason Harmeyer, pastor of volunteer ministries at CrossRoads Fellowship, said differing faiths can "play a very significant role" in a marriage.

Harmeyer, who works with married couples in their 30s, said research usually ranks religious disagreement somewhere in the top 10 causes for divorce.

"I counsel four to six couples per week dealing with relationship issues. No doubt some of that comes down to belief issues," he said. "By the time it gets to my office, these things are inflated. You might consider it a pebble in the shoe, but these people have been walking with that pebble in their shoe for six months to a year."

For Santos and Myra Uvalle, the pebble bounced around for a decade.

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Labels: divorce, interfaith, intermarriage, Tina Arons

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Friday, July 24, 2009

The new Christian bridge builders

A new crop of Christian leaders, such as Rick Warren, are demonstrating a willingness to reach out to Muslims in spite of the "Islam is evil" message delivered by many of their counterparts. Are American Muslims ready or able to reciprocate beyond dialogue?

By Junaid M. Afeef,
July 20, 2009

Rick Warren, the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, spoke recently at the 2009 ISNA Convention in Washington, DC. He arrived at the convention center and made his way across the registration and information booths, up two flights of escalators and then again across the numerous exhibitors’ booths just outside of the auditorium where he was to speak. Several ISNA executives were with him, but he was able to pass by most convention attendees without any fanfare.

Given that the ISNA convention is a racially diverse gathering the sight of a white man in a summer suit was hardly noteworthy on its face, but given what his presence at ISNA means, perhaps a little more fanfare was in order. Rick Warren’s willingness to reach out to Muslims is a bold step towards greater inter-religious dialogue in the United States. Warren’s gesture at ISNA, as with the MPAC convention last year, represents a marked departure from the "Islam is evil" message delivered by other Evangelical Christian leaders like Franklin Graham.

After all, several reputable national studies after 9/11 have shown that Evangelical Christians hold very unfavorable opinions of Islam and of Muslims. Right after 9/11 a Pew poll found that 62 percent of Evangelical Christians believe that their faith is very different from Islam and a 2003 Beliefnet/Ethics and Public Policy survey found that 77 percent of Evangelical Christian leaders had an unfavorable view of Islam.

Warren is obviously part of that very small minority of Evangelical Christian leaders who does not have an unfavorable view of Islam and who does not think his faith is that much different from Islam. That is why he is willing and able to come to speak sincerely to large Muslim audiences. It is good for American religious pluralism that Rick Warren and the national American-Muslim leadership have found one another.

This relationship and the ensuing dialogue are important because they help pave the way for grassroots dialogue between their faith communities. The grassroots inter-religious dialogue is where great gains in understanding and bridge-building can be made. Understanding and relationships between American-Muslims and Christians are vital to sustaining America’s tradition of religious pluralism.

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Labels: Christian, evangelicals, interfaith, Islam, ISNA, Junaid M. Afeef, Muslims, pluralism, Rick Warren

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Monday, July 06, 2009

Women’s Spiritual Voices: Muslim, Jewish, and Christian

July 2nd, 2009

On May 21, 2009 the Moroccan American Cultural Center and the American Jewish Committee sponsored an interfaith panel discussion in New York City on “Women’s Spiritual Voices: Crossing Continents, Finding Common Ground.” Panelists explored the roles of women religious leaders in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and they included three Moroccan women, Fatima Zahra Salhi, Nezha Nassi, and Ilham Chafik, who are “mourchidates” or religious counselors; Mahara’t Sara Hurwitz, a member of the rabbinic staff at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York; Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein, spiritual care coordinator at the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York City; the Reverend Elizabeth Garnsey, associate rector at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City; and moderator Sarah Sayeed of the Interfaith Center of New York. In 2006, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI created the mourchidates program for women to serve as religious counselors in community health programs, women’s detention centers, and mosques. Fifty mourchidates are chosen from approximately 1,000 highly qualified applicants, and they receive intensive training in 32 subject areas including law, psychology and theology. They must also have learned at least half of the Qur’an by heart. Watch excerpts from the panel discussion edited by Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly intern Juliana Comer, a senior at James Madison University.

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Labels: Christianity, interfaith, Islam, Judaism, spirituality

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Finding Spirituality and Solidarity in the Interfaith Community

Stephen Rohde
Constitutional lawyer, Lecturer, Writer and Political Activist.
June 25, 2009 11:06 AM

Today is Torture Accountability Day. Across the country, people and organizations are urging the Obama Administration to keep its promise that no one is above the law by launching criminal investigations against any former Bush Administration officials who played any role in authorizing and committing torture during the "War on Terror." One of those organizations demanding accountability is Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, many of us feared what America would do in retaliation. For years we had pleaded, cajoled and threatened warring nations around the world, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland to Kosovo, to settle their ancient differences through peaceful negotiations and international treaties, not through escalating war, renewed violence and ever more bloodshed.

On Sunday, September 23, 2001, I found my way to an interfaith service at All Saints Church in Pasadena convened by Rev George Regas. I was deeply moved by the scriptural readings, prayers and songs presented by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others. I had not expected to be so touched by this outpouring of spiritual faith in peace and justice and the rejection of war and violence.

The outgrowth of that healing event was the creation of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace ("ICUJP"), which has been the center of my personal efforts since September 11 to contribute to greater understanding and lasting reconciliation between people of all nation alities and beliefs. This year, I was very proud to became Chair of ICUJP.

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Labels: ICUJP, interfaith, justice, peace, Stephen Rohde, war

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Saturday, June 13, 2009

The New Muslim-Catholic Coalition

The New Muslim-Catholic Coalition

The political experts will decide if President Obama's speech at the University of Cairo on June 4 was a factor in the unexpected electoral defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon's elections on June 7. But while the international effects may be murky, a clear and immediate result of the Cairo speech is its impact on Muslims living in the U.S. Pride about praise of one's religious traditions from political leaders often adds votes and voices within U.S. society. Catholic America should know: this was part of our past journey to inclusion.

But more than a touchy-feely sort of thing is the likelihood that the Cairo speech will produce greater support for socialized health care and an end to Israeli settlements. Those Catholics in America who agree with the bishops and the pope have long supported a universal health care plan and a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel. With the President's speech, Muslims in the U.S. have been invited to make an alliance with Catholics.

Obama's speech aligned the U.S. treatment of Muslims and the Muslim world with the vision of Pope Benedict XVI. That's not my opinion, but one found in the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano and echoed by Archbishop Wilton Gregory who speaks for the U.S. bishops: "Both the pope and president concur that a dialogue of civilizations must supplant the specter of a clash of civilizations ... All Catholic Americans who hope for a more secure world, and peace among the religions, can feel grateful that the president underscored the indispensable role of religion in advancing educational, economic, and scientific goals."

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Labels: Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, Catholicism, interfaith, Islam, Israel, Pope Benedict XVI, President Obama

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Friday, May 08, 2009

Israel: pope to urge universal religious freedom

The pope will speak not only human rights and freedom of religion, but will denounce forgetfullness in the face of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Look for Pope Benedict XVI to emphasize interreligious cooperation when he visits the Holy Land, May 8-15, says Reverend James Massa, director of the U.S. Bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. Father Massa has studied the thought of Pope Benedict and did his doctoral dissertation on the pope’s earlier theological writings on the ecclesiology of communion before he was elected Pope Benedict. Father Massa noted themes to expect from the papal visit in Media Talk, a backgrounder found on the Media Relations site of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"In all that takes place in these days of pilgrimage, Pope Benedict XVI will invite the followers of all religions to ‘stand together in defending and promoting life and religious freedom everywhere,’” Father Massa said, quoting the pope from his 2008 visit to Washington. He recalled Pope Benedict’s meeting with Jewish and other non-Christian religious groups. During that meeting, Father Massa recalled, the pope said that generous engagement in interreligious dialogue and “countless small acts of love, understanding and compassion” make it possible for us all to be “instruments of peace for the whole human family.”

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Labels: Holy Land, interfaith, Israel, James Massa, Pope Benedict XVI, religious freedom

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Monday, April 27, 2009

Churches Across Faith Traditions Plant 12,000 Trees

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Apr. 23 2009

In keeping with the biblical mandate to care for God's creation, thousands of people from ten faith traditions have come together to plant 12,000 trees in northern Michigan.

Thousands of volunteers will be picking up tree seedlings on May 2 and planting the equivalent of a forest across 400 miles the following day.

Being stewards of God's creation has taken on greater significance as more Christians view global warming as a serious problem.

According to a Pew Research Center survey from July 2006, 78 percent of white mainline Protestants, 68 percent of white evangelicals and 86 percent of Catholics believe global warming is a serious problem. Nearly half of all Catholics and 40 percent of white mainline Protestants say it's "very serious."

Earlier findings by the Pew Center showed that for Catholics and mainline Protestants, protecting the environment takes priority over abortion and gay marriage concerns. For white evangelicals, the environment still ranks below the cultural issues.

Nevertheless, the Pew Center found a fairly strong consensus across faith traditions on regulations to protect the environment in contrast to other issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

Labels: Audrey Barrick, Earth Day, global warming, interfaith

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Obama appoints The first Muslim American woman head of Gallup as advisor

Obama appoints The first Muslim American woman head of Gallup as advisor
Tuesday, 21 April 2009

The first Muslim woman appointed to a position in President Barack Obama’s administration met with lawmakers Monday and discussed her role on an interfaith advisory board the new administration hopes will broaden dialogue and understanding.

Dalia Mogahed’s dimpled smile shined from under her hijab, the Muslim headscarf, as she addressed senate staff and think tanks at a meeting organized by the Congressional Muslims Staffers Association to discuss American Muslim public opinion in the wake of a recent survey.

The Egyptian-born American who heads the Gallup American Center for Muslim Studies a non-governmental research center providing data-driven analysis on the views of Muslim populations around the world, became the first Muslim veiled woman to be appointed to a position in the White House.

"I am very honored to be given this opportunity to serve my country in this way," Mogahed, who will be Obama's window into the Muslim American community, told AlArabiya.net.

Last month, Obama signed an executive order setting up a new body at the White House called the “Office of Religious Partnerships” to support religious institutions and strengthen inter-faith dialogue and government ties. The advisory group, consisting of 25 religious and secular representatives, is to report to the president on the role religion can play in resolving social problems and addressing civil rights issues.

"The key idea of the council is to tap into the energy and wisdom of religious organisations and leaders who focus on faith groups to solve common problems," explained Mugahed.

Mogahed will brief Obama on what Muslims want from the U.S. in a bid to create channels of communication and correct erroneous image of Muslim Americans.

The advisory group will help define issues of concern to religious constituents including the effects of economic crisis on minority groups and the phenomenon of fatherless families. It will also seek to reduce the number of abortions and strengthen inter-faith relations between Muslims and Christians.

"The main premise behind the council is cooperation between faiths and helping them become a force that helps push society forward," said Mogahed. "These societal challenges are shared by all faith-based groups and it is our task to unite them against common challenges."

Mugahed will keep her full time job at Gallup while serving as an advisor.

Mogahed’s appointment comes at a critical time given the rising tide of Islamophobia in the media and within some academic circles.

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Labels: American Muslims, Dalia Mogahed, faith, Gallup American Center for Muslim Studies, interfaith, Office of Religious Partnerships, President Obama, religion

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Friday, March 27, 2009

Interfaith Marches in Bethlehem Deliver Message of Peace

Mar-24-2009

Tim King
Salem-News.com

A movement to end the violence in Palestine and Israel is spearheaded by an author with rare insight into religious extremism.

(SALEM, Ore.) - A strong message embraced in peaceful solidarity was shared with people in the Middle East during an interfaith peace march in Bethlehem, for the future of the West Bank and Israel.

Dr. Frank Romano is the author of a fascinating book called STORM OVER MOROCCO that retells the story of his captivity among religious zealots in the middle east.

He is presently organizing interfaith events for Hebron, West Bank and Gaza that will take place in August, 2009.

The marches are also dedicated to building humanitarian efforts to improve the education of people in the area, including cross-cultural dialogues, mixed student programs, and other methods that will improve the economic environment.

Dr. Romano's inadvertent induction into the world of Islamic extremists began in 1977 when he was attending the Sorbonne in Paris, studying philosophy.

He says he had sort of a vision that if he traveled to the middle east maybe on the way he would find himself, and learn what my spirituality was, and become helpful and more directly involved in the peace process.

Interfaith Freedom March

"The marchers walked in the light of the creator, following the principles of non-violence and respect for all creatures which are common denominators among the Peoples of the Book (ahl al-kitab) who reside in the area, as it is written in their Holy Scriptures of the Qur’an, the Torah, the New Testament, and in other texts."

Romano explained that Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sufis, Kabbalists, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, etc., and members of all faith communities were welcomed as part of the event.

With the recent Israeli attack on Gaza that cost 1300 Palestinian lives and 13 Israeli lives, 4 by friendly fire, we may have reached the turning point that can lead to a lessening of tension among people in a part of the world that has simply seen too much violence in recent years.

It is optimistic but a worthy gamble. The Internet is allowing more western viewers to see real and accurate stories about Gaza and similar Israeli situations, without a complete and total pro-Israeli slant, or a strictly pro-Palestinian bias.

In keeping with that, Romano says hopes the marches help counter-balance the filtered and false information about the suffering of the people in the area, notably Palestinians and Israelis.

"Their suffering has become invisible in the face of narratives with no basis in reality and exaggerated reporting on incidents of violence and subsequent retaliation, often dominating the news and distracting the world from focusing on the day to day suffering of the residents in the area."

Romano, like many who strive to help create peace in this contested place, believes that removing all West Bank settlements would help in diffusing the tension accelerating since 1967; tension that is begging to have the emergency brake applied.

"As such, the occupation of the West Bank must end as a precursor to peaceful coexistence on the condition that adequate security measures are taken by both sides to preserve the peace."

He says he hopes the march, "is a precursor to freedom through love and understanding that is achieved by bringing all people together, as brothers and sisters and as children of the creator, showing the world that all people want peace in Israel and Palestine."

It could not happen soon enough, and plenty of people in Israel and Palestine agree. Below are scheduled appearances for Dr. Frank Romano, and other links that will help a person learn more about his efforts to bring about a lasting change that benefits the entire world.

Labels: faith, Frank Romano, interfaith, non-violence, peace, peacemaking, Tim King

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Institutions trying to be more inclusive with public prayer

By Kathryn Kennedy
The Daily Reflector

Monday, March 23, 2009

Page one of three. Click on "external source of complete article.

One must only drive around Greenville to see how religiously diverse the community is today.

The city houses all the world's major religions, Mayor Pat Dunn pointed out: The Al-Masjid Islamic Center, Congregation Bayt Shalom, The Hindu Society, a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation & Study Center, a Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Protestant, Catholic and Evangelical churches.

There are no statistics available for Greenville or Pitt County in particular — the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't record religious data. But a recent American Religious Identification Survey showed increases in non-believers, Muslims, new religious movements like Wicca or Scientology, and nondenominational Christians nationwide. And as Greenville's population grows, so do the minority groups.

“The university and medical school bring in people from all over the world. When that happens, you will get a bigger picture of what the world religions are,” said Debi Habiba Niswander, leader of the Interfaith Alliance of Eastern Carolina which represents nine religious traditions and non-believers.

City government and other institutions are reacting to that growth in an effort to be more inclusive in a long-standing national tradition — public prayer.

“We have 200 years of history if you go back,” Dunn said, noting that Congress opens with a prayer. City Council has a prayer schedule wherein each council member has a turn at delivering the invocation.

Niswander, who is a Universal Sufi, said a large part of the Interfaith organization don't want people to stop praying before meetings and banquets — though a couple are concerned with the separation of church and state. Most just want to feel recognized.

“It's a social norm,” she said. “To ask them not to (pray) is not right either. To ask them to do that where it includes everybody in that room, I think that is right. And needed.”

With that idea, the Interfaith Alliance held a discussion on inclusivity in public prayer in February. More than 20 people of various religious backgrounds and traditions took part.

“I really wanted to see where people were,” Niswander said, “how much it affected them. If people say, ‘Well I'm so used to it, it doesn't bother me anymore,' which we did hear. As a minority, their views, their way of looking at things and beliefs are pushed down. And the more that happens, the more you just become conditioned to it, which does not make it right.

“A public prayer ... includes the whole group that's in that room. We pray. That kind of inclusiveness. But they're not really taking into effect necessarily who that whole group is.”

Some are already responding to the increased diversity locally. The city of Greenville adopted a pre-meeting prayer policy in 2002. It states that prayers should be sensitive to members of the audience who do not share their beliefs and should not be used to advance or disparage a particular faith or belief.

The council also approved an objective this year to “promote an inclusive community that is respectful of all faiths.”

Many council members, including Larry Spell, don't drop names during their invocations. They give what is clearly a prayer but ambiguously religious. At the March 2 council meeting, Spell's prayer was, “Let us pray. Grant us wisdom and peace so that we may do the city's business in a collegial manner.”

He described it as a general prayer that anyone attending or watching can “apply as they see fit.”

The Pitt County Department of Social Services board has held a moment of “silent prayer or silent meditation” for more than a decade. The change was initiated when non-Christians first served on the board.

“It's probably a step forward to attaining a politically correct agenda,” Chairman Chris Haddock said. He identifies himself as a Christian but said he's not uncomfortable with the procedure because the moment allows one to pray “in whatever way you see fit in that setting.”

City Councilman Calvin Mercer also asks the room to observe a moment of silence when it's his turn to deliver the invocation, but for a different reason.

“I pray in private,” Mercer said. “I pray for my city. But when I'm on the public payroll, conducting public business, I'm not comfortable giving a prayer.”

Labels: inclusion, interfaith, Kathryn Kennedy, prayer

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Worldly religions find their way to Franklin

By VICTORIA GRAY
Sunday, March 15, 2009

FRANKLIN — Those interested in learning about world religions don't need to go to Harvard Divinity School, or even a closer university or college. They only have to go as far as West Main Street, where a series of interfaith dialogues begins today at Franklin Congregational Christian Church.

Rev. Jeff Stevens, pastor, said as part of the church's adult education program he has invited speakers representing various religions and members of the public to participate in these discussions.

The first of these dialogues is today at the church hall at 1 p.m. and features Mohamed Ebrahim, PhD, an Imam and director of the Dover-based Islamic Society of the Seacoast Area, as the guest speaker.

The next discussion is scheduled for Thursday, March 19, when Manitonquat, an elder of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, will speak about his culture's spiritual traditions.

Manitonquat, whose name translates to Medicine Story, is a counselor and lecturer with a Ph.D. in Religious Counseling. He is a retired ceremonial leader and is currently involved in a prison spirituality program in New England, including at the Concord State Prison for Men.

Manitonquat, who lives in Greenville, said he is looking foward to Thursday's discussion in Franklin.

"I'm always interested in interfaith dialogues," Manitonquat said. "It's very exciting for me to connect with people from various faiths and talk to them about Native American spiritual beliefs."

He added that Native American spiritual beliefs do not constitute a religion or religions and that there are many different traditions among the various tribal councils and nations in North America.

One universal belief is that of respect — that everything in creation, including every person, deserves respect.

He said that, in his prison programs, this concept resonates with inmates, many of whom have neither been given nor seen examples of respect in their lives before.

The next common belief is in "the primacy of the circle as the form in which people should gather together."

The circle, also an important symbol of the life and death cycle, symbolizes the equality of members in gatherings, as there is no head or end.

The third belief is one of continually thanking the spirit and natural world.

Manitonquat has written a book that is soon to be published, called "The Original Instructions," which he said is based "on a lifetime of listening to elders and trying to figure things out."

He said the title comes from a frequent answer elders gave when he asked, "What is wrong with human beings today?"

The answer he often got was "They have forgotten the original instructions."

Manitonquat says this means that the earliest inhabitants of world, including on the North American continent, lived more in harmony with the natural and spiritual world than people do today.

He said since Europeans settled the continent it has been their religions and spiritual traditions that have dominated and been propagated.

"No one really understands the wealth of spiritual understanding that existed here before," Manitonquat said.

Stevens said that, as the population in New Hampshire becomes more diverse, it is increasingly important that people learn about and respect each other's cultural, spiritual and ethnic backgrounds.

He added that there is a Buddhist population in the state and a growing number of Sikhs and members of the Bahá'í faith.

Sikhism is a religion that formed in India approximately 500 years ago. Followers believe in a single, formless God who can be known through deep meditation. They believe in samsara, karma and reincarnation as Hindus do, but reject the caste system.

Stevens has been pastor at the church since December 2007.

Originally from Williamstown in Western Massachusetts, Stevens received a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and has always been interested in world religions.

He said one of the professors at the school, Diana Eck, started and still directs the "Pluralism Project," which began in 1991 to explore America's changing religious landscape. The project has recorded the growth of religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism in the U.S. as a new wave of immigration that began 30 to 40 years ago continues.

"The Lakes Region is sort of on the edge of the movement toward more religious diversity, this wave of great change," Stevens said.

He said he is excited that the first speaker will be discussing Islam, as he worked with Muslim (followers of Islam) communities in the greater Boston area while at Harvard.

Stevens said despite the substantial Muslim population in the U.S., many people still know little about Islam, though the religion, along with Judaism, shares some of the same history as Christianity.

He noted that Thomas Aquinas, in the 1100s, wrote a letter to Christians, Jewish people and Muslims about the things their religions shared in common.

Islam began in the Middle East more than 1,400 years ago and is the second largest religion in the world with more than 1 billion followers. The word Islam means "submission to the will of God (Allah in Arabic)".

Muslims believe there is only one God and that God sent a number of prophets to humanity to teach them how to live, including Jesus, Moses and Abraham.

The final Prophet was Muhammad, who Muslims believe most perfectly delivered God's message, therefore they follow his example (called the Sunnah) and base their laws on the holy book, the Qur'an.

The five basic Pillars of Islam are a declaration of faith, praying, fasting, charity and undertaking a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one's lifetime.

The Islamic Society of the Seacoast Area is located in Dover and serves more than 300 Muslim families in coastal communities in New Hampshire and Southeastern Maine.

...Amala Dharmacharini, program director of the Aryaloka Buddhist Retreat Center, will lead a discussion on Buddhism.

Buddhism developed out of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama who, in 535 BCE, reached enlightenment and assumed the title of Buddha.

He promoted 'The Middle Way' as the path to enlightenment rather than the extremes of mortification of the flesh or hedonism. Buddhists believe in reincarnation and that, after many lives, a person can attain nirvana by releasing their attachment to desire and the self.

Stevens said he also is working on booking a speaker from the Bahá'í Faith, a faith that arose from Islam in the 1800s. Bahá'í beliefs promote gender and race equality, freedom of expression and assembly, world peace and world government.

Other speakers may include representatives from neopagan traditions and from the Jainist religion.

Jainism is one of the oldest religions in India and its followers believe that the way to true bliss is through lives of harmlessness and renunciation. Followers believe every living thing in the universe is sacred and has a soul. Because of this, they follow a strict vegetarian diet and live in a way that minimizes their impact on the environment.

Labels: Bahá'í, Buddhism, Christianity, God, interfaith, Islam, Jainism, Native American Church, Pluralism Project, religion, Sikhism, Victoria Gray

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Friday, March 06, 2009

JCPA Approves Effort To Build Dialogue With Muslim Groups

By Nathan Guttman
Published March 04, 2009,

Washington — The Jewish community’s main umbrella organization for domestic policy has struck a significant blow against internal resistance to dialogue with Muslims.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs adopted a resolution March 2, calling for local and national Jewish groups to build coalitions with Muslim Americans and to oppose anti-Muslim bias.

The resolution comes 18 months after Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism — America’s largest Jewish religious denomination — broke new ground by addressing a major Islamic organization, despite strong criticism from some quarters of the Jewish community.

Previous attempts at engaging with the Muslim community have left some Jewish activists bruised and scarred by skepticism and harsh criticism from their fellow Jews.

One such activist is Rabbi Michael Paley of New York, who warned a room filled with community leaders, “It’s a dangerous conversation.” The danger, Paley said, is not from what is being said inside the room, but rather from how it will be perceived by other Jews.

In August 2007, after already being deeply involved in dialogue with the Muslim community, Paley spoke out in defense of the principal of a planned Arabic-language middle school in Brooklyn who had come under fire mostly from Jewish scholars. The critics accused her, wrongly, of being a “9/11 denier”— someone who rejected Muslim or Arab responsibility for the World Trade Center attack.

Following his public comments on the principal’s behalf, Paley, a scholar-in-residence and director of UJA-Federation of New York’s Jewish resource center, was ordered not to speak on the issue anymore. He told communal activists attending the plenum that pursuing Jewish-Muslim ties requires some courage.

Rabbi Jack Moline of Agudas Achim Congregation in Arlington, Va., also encountered criticism when trying to promote dialogue between Jews and Muslims. He said that each attempt to raise the issue brought about challenges from congregants “who believe Islam is essentially anti-Jewish.”

The issue boils down to the question of what makes a legitimate partner on the Muslim side.

But Rabbi Schneier noted that at the behest of Jewish groups, ISNA president Sayeed Syeed intervened with the King of Saudi Arabia last year to convince him to disinvite the Jewish anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta from a high-profile international gathering of religious leaders the monarch was sponsoring.

“This was unprecedented,” he said in an interview last October. “This is the kind of relationship we have been working for.”

A recent Gallup Poll of Muslim Americans, the largest ever conducted, suggested another possible common ground for Muslim and Jews — political affiliation. Both groups have similar voting patterns: Half of the Muslims identify as Democrats, a third as Independents and only a small minority as Republicans. The survey also found American Muslim women to be more highly educated than women in every religious group except Jews.

The JCPA plenum supported the pro-dialogue resolution by a large majority.

The Reform movement’s Mark Pelavin, who presented the resolution, stressed that many local Jewish communities across the country are “looking for guidance” on how to go about reaching out to Muslims.

But the American Jewish Congress’s acting co-executive director, Marc Stern, voted against the resolution and argued that guidance is exactly what it lacks. “It talks only about the easy issues,” he said, noting that the resolution does not address the problems of choosing Muslim interlocutors and setting the agenda for a dialogue.

Labels: American Muslims, dialogue, interfaith, Jewish-American, Judaism, Nathan Guttman

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Survey: Few Evangelical Leaders Had Contact with Muslims

By Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Feb. 19 2009

A surprisingly small portion of evangelical leaders in America have had contact with Muslims in the past year, a new survey revealed.

Only 33 percent of leaders on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals, the nation’s largest evangelical body, said they have had a serious conversation with a Muslim in the past year, according to the February issue of the NAE’s Evangelical Leaders Survey.

An even a smaller number, 27 percent, of the evangelical respondents said they live or work near a mosque.

The vast majority have had no close contact with an Islamic institution (73 percent) or individual Muslims (67 percent).

According to the CIA World Factbook, Muslims make up 0.6 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, Protestant Christians account for 51.3 percent of the population in America.

Among those that reported having serious discussions with Muslims, some indicated that the talks were through formal interfaith dialogues, professional ministry or international travel rather than personal friendships.

Some evangelical leaders, however, reported positive personal interactions with their Muslim neighbors.

An evangelical leader from Minneapolis said he lives within blocks of two mosques. He shared that during Easter he had discussions with a “kind, hard working young [Muslim] family man” about the two religions’ beliefs concerning the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Another evangelical leader, from a Hispanic church in California, recalled that a Muslim meeting place in his neighborhood was vandalized last year. Members of his church had helped clean up the meeting place and had sent them an offering.

The NAE survey questioned 100 members of the NAE board of directors that includes heads of evangelical denominations with about 45,000 local churches, executives of para-church organizations and colleges. The NAE claims to represent over 50 denominations and about 30 million constituents.

Labels: evangelicals, interfaith, Jennifer Riley, Muslims

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Friday, January 30, 2009

Groups unite for global celebration

‘For once, we’re all in the same room’
By JON TATTRIE
Sat. Jan 24 - 4:47 AM

Halifax joined the global celebration of World Religion Day on Sunday. A couple hundred people from at least 10 faith groups slipped through a snowstorm to gather at All Saints’ Cathedral in downtown Halifax.

Dozens of groups across Canada and thousands around the world united to celebrate what they say is the common heart of all religions. World Religion Day has been observed on the third Sunday of January annually since 1950, when it was initiated by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States.

The Halifax event was organized by the Baha’i community.

"In the Baha’i writings, it talks about all religions being equal and that the purpose of religion should actually be to unite the human race," said Ariel Borden, a dancer in the Baha’i Army of Light Dance Troupe.

"I think that it’s been really inspirational, in the sense that in this day and age, a lot of us see religions as dividers of humanity."

Sunday was a sort of variety show from faith groups. The Baha’i started things off with the dance troupe’s stomping presentation of the words of Baha’u’llah, the Baha’i founder, who said that world peace was not only possible, but inevitable. Billy Lewis then led the Mi’kmaq Kitpu Youth Drummers and Dancers in a smudge ceremony. A youth group from Beechville Baptist Church presented the word of God through interpretive dance, the Vedenta Ashram Society read from the Hindu scriptures and Saint Matthew’s United Church acted out the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Halifax’s Buddhist community joined in with a series of contemplative songs and the Universalist Unitarian Church added some folksy music. Brahma Kumaris captured much of the sense of the meeting with Four Faces of the Soul, a dance/spoken word piece describing the journey of the soul.

It starts off in Innocence, free and unfrightened, but is soon "protected" by Tradition. It eventually rejects those trappings and the Modern incarnation goes into rebellion. In the end, the peaceful soul enters Shakti, the face of transformation.

Ursula Johnson and Billy Lewis of the Mi’kmaq group spoke about their participation after the event. Johnson said it was the group’s fifth year.

"We really enjoy the opportunity to come and share some practices and some music and forms of celebration of our spirituality from the aboriginal culture," she said.

Lewis, an elder, explained the meaning behind the smudge ceremony. Booming drums echoed through the vast church while the Kitpu group sang high-pitched chants as Lewis fanned the smoke from burning sweetgrass onto the gathering.

Attending World Religion Day was for Lewis a sign that at root, all spiritual values are shared.

Debbie Nicholson, the main organizer from the Baha’is, said they had more than 120 participants, from babies to seniors. She was especially pleased to have the Nova Gospel Ensemble for the first time.

"It really worked well," she said of the group’s rafter-raising performance. "It’s a part of our culture in Nova Scotia, that kind of gospel music, so it was nice to bring that element in."

She acknowledged that not all faiths were present, but said they extend the welcome as wide as they can and drew 10 different faith groups this year, plus the ensemble.

She’s got her eyes on groups like the Quakers for future years to expand the celebration.

"For once, we’re all in the same room," she said of the day.

Labels: Baha'i, Canada, interfaith, Jon Tattrie, World Religion Day

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A vaccine against terrorism - inter-faith harmony (Comment)

By M. Rajaque Rahman

One thing for which the world would like to forget 2008 is the rise of fanaticism and religious terrorism. Though the world has lived with terror for years, it became more pronounced in 2008 with acts of terror linked to religion or belief system. The perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage targeted Jews for their faith.

It's a tragedy that religion, which has been the source of superior virtues such as honesty, love, compassion, justice and peace, is being used as a motivation to spread terror and kill innocents. Though motives and reasons vary from attack to attack, religious terrorism runs on the fuel derived from a misplaced belief that "my way is the only way" and it's God's ordained duty to take up arms against those who have gone astray.

What can prevent fanaticism and religious terrorism in the New Year? Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel as religious leaders are coming out against terrorism and pushing for inter-faith harmony.

In November, over 6,000 Muslim clerics gathered in Hyderabad to denounce religious terrorism and tell the world that there is no place for extremism in Islam. Earlier, the orthodox Islamic seminary Darul Uloom at Deoband issued a fatwa against terrorism. More importantly, leaders from other religions were roped in for the Hyderabad meeting of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. A positive signal to unitedly fight terrorism is being sent to the larger community.

Taking the call for inter-faith harmony a step further, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of Art of Living, who was chief guest at the gathering of the most influential body of Muslim clerics in India, offered to work with them to isolate fanatical elements abetting terrorism.

A month later, over 500 imams and rabbis gathered in far away Paris for the 3rd World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace where they searched for ways to resolve differences between Islam and Judaism, the main cause of violence and conflict in the Middle East.

These events may not immediately make religious fanatics desist from doing what they are doing in the name of religion. Yet they represent a serious attempt to find an alternative solution to religious terrorism.

While religion seeks to bring uniformity in a multi-faceted world, the goal of spirituality is to celebrate the diversity. To save the world from this pitfall of religion, the time has come to spiritualise religion.

One of the most notable aspects of contemporary spirituality has been its accent on educating people to a proper understanding of religion.

This is vital as the wrong understanding of the verses of scripture has caused upheaval and is used to justify narrow-mindedness. Religious terror arises when someone reduces his or her identity to a single affiliation based on a religion and a sense of victimisation.

The events of the last few years have shown that stringent laws and rules of society can go only so far in containing fanaticism in a society that loses spiritual values. The approach of offering spirituality as the only sensible response to terrorism addresses the problem at its roots.

Terrorism stems from wrong ideas and the struggle against it should be fought on the level of ideas. It's essential that people's consciences against terror are enlisted as a vital arsenal in the fight against it. For this, a mass spiritual awakening is imperative.

Spirituality nourishes the human values of compassion, love, caring, sharing and acceptance and honours the values found in all religions. This explains why spiritually-evolved people have never been at odds.

The time has come for people of all faiths to unite against terror and educate people against misinterpretation and misuse of religion. This can happen only when people are made to realise that God loves variety and diversity and that many different schools of thought exist in this world. This can happen only when people remember that truth is multi-dimensional.

Labels: interfaith, M. Rajaque Rahman, Muslims, religion, terrorism

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Jews, Latino Pentecostals together

12/12/2008
By Christina Hoag
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- When Randy Brown visited Hispanic Pentecostal congregations in Southern California, he was stunned by displays of Star-of-David flags, fervent prayers for peace in Israel and Hebrew words in their church names.

Brown, an executive with the American Jewish Committee, saw an opportunity to build Jewish-Latino relations and combat anti-Semitism among the immigrants, who generally have little exposure to Jews in their predominantly Roman Catholic native countries.

The Los Angeles office has since worked to forge new bonds: They have taken groups of Pentecostal Hispanic pastors to Israel, offered a course called "The Essence of Judaism" at a Southern California Pentecostal seminary, and invited Hispanic pastors and their families to Passover seders and Sukkot harvest celebrations.

While Latino immigrants in the U.S. are mostly Catholic, evangelicals comprise a notable 15 percent of the population, according to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Many are Pentecostal, one of the fastest-growing streams of world Christianity, known for spirit-filled worship and speaking in tongues.

A 2007 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found a higher-rate of anti-Semitic views among foreign-born Latinos than among U.S.-born Hispanics. Twenty-nine percent of Latinos born elsewhere harbor anti-Jewish views, while the rate for Hispanics born in the country -- and for the U.S. population in general -- was 15 percent, the study found.

The 2007 numbers are slightly lower than those in a 2005 survey, but Jewish leaders are worried all the same, especially as Latin Americans are expected to become 29 percent of the national population by 2050.

Latin American countries are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and are steeped in a five-century-old tradition of a church that wields much influence. With the exception of Argentina, Jewish communities in Latin America are tiny and tend to keep a low profile.

By contrast, U.S. Jewish and Catholic leaders have held high-level interfaith talks for years. Several Catholic colleges in the country have centers for Jewish-Catholic understanding, and U.S. bishops heavily emphasize the Second Vatican Council teaching that Jews are not collectively responsible for the Crucifixion. That outlook influences not just Catholics, but also other Christians in the U.S.

Pastor Tony Solorzano, who heads the Iglesia Llamada Final, a 5,000-member congregation in Downey and Inglewood, said some Latinos simply need more education about Judaism to dispel stereotypes. Some consider Jews "Christ-killers."

Pentecostals, who interpret the Bible literally, believe God promised the Jewish people the historic land of Israel. Many consider the modern state of Israel a fulfillment of biblical prophecy -- and a precondition of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

They often cite a passage from Genesis where God makes a covenant with Abraham that those who bless Abraham's people will be blessed, those who curse his people will be cursed.

Jewish leaders are building on Pentecostal pro-Israel sentiment to dispel stereotypes between both groups. Many Jewish groups in recent years have accepted such support without questioning the theology behind it, which says that all people, including Jews, will ultimately accept Christ.

Pentecostal congregations, often housed in storefronts filled with rows of folding chairs, have become fixtures in Latino neighborhoods across the United States, as well as Latin America. Pastors tend to be influential opinion-makers in their congregations and some, like Lopez, have radio programs or stations, expanding their reach.

At the Latin University of Theology in Torrance, which trains Pentecostal pastors, many of the students in Brown's Spanish-language "Essence of Judaism" course hail from Latin American countries. He hopes they'll return home with new knowledge about Jews and Judaism to change negative images and misperceptions.

Nationally, the American Jewish Committee has formed a Latino and Latin American Institute, and in 2001 convened the first Latino-Jewish Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss common policy concerns such as immigration.

Labels: Anti-Defamation League, Catholic, Christina Hoag, evangelicals, interfaith, Jews, Latinos, Pentecostalism

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Friday, December 12, 2008

God and man at Yale

Eboo Patel

Chicago, Illinois - The Commons at Yale University looked like a cross between Hogwarts and Medina. Over 500 students, staff and faculty had gathered for a university-wide iftar, the meal where Muslims break their dawn-to-dusk fast during the month of Ramadan. Linda Lorimer, Yale’s Vice President, gave an opening talk, expressing the University’s commitment to religious inclusivity and interfaith activity.

Omar Bajwa, the University’s recently-hired Coordinator of Muslim Life, thanked Yale for its efforts to accommodate the unique dietary and prayer needs of Muslim students.

And when the Muslims left the dining area for the evening prayer, most of the seats were still occupied. Hundreds of Jews, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, agnostics, Unitarian Universalists and others had come to support their fellow Muslim students, partake in some excellent South Asian food and celebrate the religious devotion and diversity that are increasingly a part of campus life at Yale.

It is a remarkable shift from when I was a student 15 years ago. Identity politics were all the rage then, but they were almost always about race, class, gender and sexuality. Academic departments, leadership programmes and residence halls – prompted by the Los Angeles riots [sparked by the acquittal of police offers charged with beating African American motorist Rodney King] – put on hundreds of diversity programmes every year intended to create a more inclusive campus environment.

Faith might play a role in some people’s private lives, we figured, but it barely registered in our campus discourse. Even as newspapers told of strife in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, South Asia, the Middle East, West Africa, the multicultural movement hardly turned its head. As Harvard professor Diana Eck wrote in Encountering God, “Religion (was) the missing ‘r’ word in the diversity discussion” at universities.”

This is the result of what I call secularisation theory hangover, a condition that afflicted universities long after the rest of society recovered. Secularisation theory emerged from lecture halls in the 1960s, advanced by scholars like Peter Berger and Harvey Cox who stated that as societies modernised they would necessarily secularise.

But an important segment of student life on college campuses was actually heading in the opposite direction. Groups like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ continued to grow, bolstered by a powerful Evangelical movement in the broader society.

Finally, the past two decades have seen the American-born children of the 1965-era immigrants arrive on campus in significant numbers and bring their Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist faiths with them. Sharon Kugler, the Chaplain at Yale, told me that the number of religious organisations at her previous post, Johns Hopkins, skyrocketed from eight to 27 during her 14 years there.

This combination of devotion and diversity occurred on campus just as religion emerged as a central force in the broader culture. 9/11 has done to religion what Rodney King did to race – put it front and centre on the campus agenda.

One way that universities are responding is by hiring leaders like Sharon Kugler – the first lay, Catholic woman in her position at Yale – to transform their historically liberal protestant chaplaincies into fully-fledged multi-faith programs. This means working with the existing Jewish, Catholic and Protestant (both evangelical and mainline) ministries, hiring new staff to work with Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu students, and organising interfaith service projects and multi-faith student councils.

We live in a society starkly polarised around religion. A 2007 Pew Survey found that twice the number of respondents had a negative view of Muslims than a positive view. If the colour line was the problem of the 20th century, as W.E.B. DuBois famously observed, it appears that the faith line will be the challenge of the 21st. And just as decades of campus activism on the issue of the colour line has helped to produce a more racially inclusive society, so will initiatives like Yale’s Ramadan Banquet ultimately produce one characterised by religious pluralism.

Labels: college, diversity, Eboo Patel, God, interfaith, religion

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Monday, November 17, 2008

Muslim scholars hail interfaith harmony

By Taleb Bin Mahfooz

JEDDAH – The speech of King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, at the UN interfaith conference in New York on Wednesday has underlined the importance of promoting dialogue, understanding and tolerance among human beings, as well as respect for all their diverse religions, cultures and beliefs gaining the appreciation of Muslim scholars. The speech further advances the true cause of Islam to promote dialogue, rejecting the use of religion to justify acts of terrorism, the killing of innocent civilians, violence and coercion, they agreed.

At uncertain times of war and political conflicts wrapping the world, the King has managed to disseminate the culture of dialogue across the globe through the UN based on common values among religions and cultures.

In his speech, King Abdullah showed the world the pure and true image of Islam that calls for peace, tolerance, human rights, and justice, said Saleh Al-Bugami, general secretary of Islamic Society of Jurisprudence and member of the Shoura Council. By “bringing adherents of different sects and religions together,” the King has taken a giant stride to place the issue on the international front at such a difficult time in human history, he added. The dialogue initiative is clearly a message of peace based on common human values without any compromises on the basics of creeds.

Labels: creeds, faith, interfaith, Islam, King Abdullah, Taleb Bin Mahfooz, United Nations

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Monday, September 29, 2008

Faiths unite for peace

by Millie Willis

Most of the news we hear out of the Middle East usually describes the violence among Israelis, Palestinians and Muslims. We seldom hear about, and often are unaware of, the heroic efforts among those citizens who are saying "Enough!" and are creating numerous interfaith groups working together to bring peace to the Middle East.

The Jerusalem Peacemakers is one of those groups. It is a network of independent interfaith peacemakers. Their purpose is to inform others about their work; encourage peace and healing in the Holy Land; nurture forgiveness, justice and collaboration, so that all people in the Holy Land may build a new future.

The Peacemakers are increasing in numbers, and include Christians, Muslims, Jews and Palestinians, men, women and children of all ages throughout the Holy Land.

On Sept. 7, we were invited to hear two representatives from the Jerusalem Peacemakers at an Interfaith Forum, held at the Antrim Chapel at Roanoke College. They were brought here by Sam Rasoul, a candidate for Congress and a member of the local Valley Character Interfaith Committee.

Rasoul introduced the two guest speakers to a sparse audience and moderated the forum. Eliyahu McLean and Ghassan Manasra represented the Jerusalem Peacemakers. Their topic was "Reclaiming Religion as a Source for Peace: Tools for Peacemakers in Judaism and Islam."

We learned that McLean was born in California and 10 years ago moved to Israel. He lives in Jerusalem and his faith is Judaism. He is active in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in Nablus and Eilat. Until 2003, he was director of the Israel Chapter of the Peacemaker Community, Mevakshei Shalom, which serves as an umbrella for many projects integrating spirituality and reconciliation efforts.

Manasra is a Sufi Muslim. He is the director of Anwar il-Salaam, a Muslim peace and dialogue center based in Nazareth under the guidance of his father, Sufi sheikh Abdul Salaam Manasra. His father serves as the head of the Qadiri Sufi order in the Holy Land. He is currently running a project that brings together Jewish and Muslim high school principals and educators for study and training in religious sources for peace.

This year, Ghassan Manasra was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

They told their stories of their struggles and successes of meeting together with rabbis, sheikhs and priests and the many citizens from these areas of unrest. The Jerusalem Peacemakers' efforts to bring peace include interfaith camps and meetings where they try to understand each other and build respect through interfaith dialogue. Some Jewish, Palestinian and Muslim women leaders are working with their counterparts to initiate various movements, i.e. The Women's Partnership for Peace in the Middle East, Women's Interfaith Encounter Association and Culture of Peace Educational Program for schoolchildren.

These efforts are reminiscent of the heroism in the biblical battle story of David and Goliath. They are all working against great odds and with no support from their own governments.

The forum was uplifting, hopeful and educational. It is reassuring to learn that individual of different faiths are working together for peace in their part of the world. My appreciation to Rasoul for his great effort in bringing these two Jerusalem Peacemakers to Roanoke.

Labels: Christianity, Holy Land, interfaith, Jerusalem Peacemakers, Judaism, Millie Willis, Muslims, Palestinians

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Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Former New York Times reporter looks at growth of interfaith movements

Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

Page one of two: Please click on "external link" for complete article

INSIGHTS: Arguing that interfaith understanding is crucial, Gustav Niebuhr says: "Religion is to the 21st century what ideology was to the 20th."

In 'Beyond Tolerance,' Gustav Niebuhr examines the ways various religions are reaching out to one another. But obstacles remain as many faiths preach that they are the one true way.

By Steve Padilla, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 30, 2008

Conflicts between religions continue to rock the world, but when Gustav Niebuhr looks out on the religious landscape, he sees what he calls the "possibility of community."

Niebuhr, an associate professor of religion at Syracuse University, detects an encouraging (he calls it unprecedented) trend: people of faith reaching out to those of other faiths.

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This is not to suggest conflicts between religions will end soon, if ever. Just this week, Hindu mobs destroyed more than a dozen churches and attacked Christians in India.

But in Niebuhr's work as a professor and, before that, a reporter on religion for the New York Times, he began noticing that, bit by bit, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims were making efforts to learn about other faiths. Niebuhr explores the trend in his new book, "Beyond Tolerance" (Viking), and came to Southern California this month as part of a book tour.

He argues there is urgent need for interfaith work, given the way religion now sometimes splits, and endangers, the world in the way the Cold War once did. "Religion is to the 21st century what ideology was to the 20th," Niebuhr said.

The title "Beyond Tolerance" conveys one of Niebuhr's principle themes, and he discussed the work on a recent weekday before he spoke at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Groups can tolerate one another, he noted, without really getting along. A lack of conflict doesn't necessarily mean cohesion.

"Tolerance is not enough because there's no educational component to it," Niebuhr said. "Tolerance doesn't bust down stereotype. Tolerance doesn't put a face on faith."

Niebuhr argues, with anecdotes and statistics, that thousands of believers from a wide variety of faiths are trying to reach across religious divides. He cites a 2000 study of 14,000 U.S. congregations by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

The report, "Faith Communities Today," found that 7% of American congregations had participated in some interfaith activity, such as holding a joint religious service. It also found that 8% had collaborated with another congregation on a community service project.

That may not sound like much, Niebuhr writes, but with an estimated 335,000 churches in the United States, that translates to 20,000 to 25,000 congregations teaming up for such work.

"But the original survey provided a baseline for a second, more intriguing one five years later," Niebuhr writes. "This time around, the institute reported that the number of houses of worship participating in inter-religious worship had tripled to more than 22%, while the number that joined in community service had risen more than fourfold to 38%."

Niebuhr concludes: "A cultural shift had taken place." In the interview, he put it this way: "People are not beyond redemption. People can learn. People can cooperate."

What's prompting the shift?

Mass communication has made it easier to reach out beyond one's own group. He notes that in the 1990s, Hindu temples on the East Coast began holding open houses so their neighbors could learn about them.

This practice has been taken up by many mosques and for some has become a yearly event. This month, "Open Mosque Day" was observed by many Islamic congregations in Southern California. Look at many mosque websites, Niebuhr said, and you'll often find an option called "take a tour."

The interfaith movement -- and "Beyond Tolerance" -- were not prompted by 9/11, but the terrorist attacks helped shape them. Niebuhr was in Manhattan that day and reported on the World Trade Center attack for the New York Times. "You were in the presence of a crematory," he said.

He found himself thinking of religious tolerance and acceptance -- ideas already brewing for years -- and decided that if "tolerance is all we can manage," the victims of 9/11 deserved better.

As Niebuhr researched his book, he encountered a variety of efforts to reach out. He ran across a nun who organized discussions of about six people from different faiths; it was a small effort, but it was her way of building understanding.

He also frankly describes the difficulty of reaching out. Niebuhr writes of an effort by a group of Buddhists and Roman Catholics to forge ties in Los Angeles.

He quotes from a report by the group: "It challenged us to articulate to one another what we took for granted among ourselves."

Labels: 9/11, Gustav Niebuh, interfaith, religion, Steve Padilla, tolerance

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Holy-Stir happens in Hollister

Jul 24, 2008
By Chuck Flagg

Some people think religion is a competition. They think that pastors, congregations, even parishioners are rivals, competing against each other to have the largest membership, most elaborate building or largest budget in town.

Hollister, the county seat of San Benito County and best known for its annual motorcycle rally, seems to belie this idea. There a heterogeneous group of pastors who are combining their efforts and are working together to show unity of spirit among Christians of different faith traditions.

Five pastors regularly meet in a back booth of a local diner on Wednesday mornings:

- The Rev. Bob Rufener, Abundant Life Four Square Church.

- The Rev. Ardyss Golden, Hollister United Methodist Church.

- The Rev. Matthew Trasek, Trinity Lutheran Church.

- The Rev. Jonathan Hughes, First Presbyterian Church.

- The Rev. Rudy Ruiz, St. Benedict-Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church.

Although not every minister attends every meeting and others sometimes attend, this is the core membership for Hollister's "Holy-Stir."

The group began meeting about two years ago when the pastors noticed that the anxiety level was rising in the community. One response was to inaugurate a series of ecumenical worship opportunities, bringing together as many residents as possible around various aspects of the theme of "peace."

These services have been held at many churches in a rotating schedule following the same format:

- Scripture readings

- Music

- Brief talks by all the clergy in attendance

- Prayer

The clergy involved in this endeavor have gained much from belonging to the group. They consider it a support mechanism, a place to share confidentially the struggles and concerns in their own lives. Sometimes good advice is the result, but often just having a caring listener can ease burdens.

Holy-Stir has also broadened the perspective of these clergy. They have been exposed to a wider range of spirituality than is present in any one denomination. They stretch each other to appreciate and recognize aspects of their common faith that could be barriers in other contexts.

Even these joint services have served this purpose. Pastor Rufener gives the example of an Ash Wednesday service in which he participated. Ashes were applied to the foreheads of worshippers, and he observes, "At first I didn't feel comfortable with this, and it's not something I would do in my church. But I gained an understanding of how such an ancient rite could have deep meaning for some people."

Other pastors mention the differences in music among the churches or even how building architecture influences worship in different churches.

Jesus of Nazareth famously prayed that all his followers "would all be one." In Hollister it appears that many people are striving for that spiritual goal.

Labels: Chuck Flagg, church, interfaith, religion

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Valley's religions seek 'common good'

By Jason Monaco, Robert B. Lennick and Sharon Joseph
July 25, 2008

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Every major religion in the world has this concept among its teachings. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and other faiths share this imperative. At its heart, this teaching is about finding the common good.
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Working together for the common good promotes ethical, moral, and spiritual values into all areas of our common lives -- economics, commerce, trade, and international relations -- as well as personal virtues, to advance understanding and action on major local and global issues by civil society, private enterprise, the public sector, governments, and national and international institutions, leading to the promotion of collaborative policy solutions to the challenges posed at the present times to all of the humanity.

In Islam, you can find volumes upon volumes of practices, laws and recommendations, the application of which perpetuate and enhance the common good of all, as is commanded by Allah (God) in verse 104 of chapter 3 of Holy Quran: ''Let there be among you a community who enjoin good and forbid evil; it is they that shall be successful.'' That is further emphasized by the Prophet Mohammad in a narration reported by Jabir bin Abdullah in Sahih Bukhari: ''Enjoining all that is good is charity.''

Among Christian teachers, perhaps it was the great St. Paul who best described the common good. In his letter to a young church in Corinth, he talked about working together as different parts of the body -- each part being important, each part having a job to do, each job essential to the body working as a finely tuned instrument. And, he reminds us that no one is left out: ''To each is given a gift of the spirit for the common good.''

In Judaism, we find a living ethic of social justice where the verse, ''Remember the heart of the stranger,'' is repeated no less than 36 times in the Torah. The common good begins with empathy for others and a recognition that unless each individual internalizes the challenges of others we become a collection of private experiences, rather than a caring and committed community.

We must step outside of our comfort zone. We must join hands with others and develop systems that ease the pain and suffering of those facing hardships. What purpose does religion serve if it does not awaken an individual's concern for all human life; for the ''common good?''

God is the author of creation. In this life, all human beings face difficulties and hardships. We must look at the difficulties of this life as an opportunity to become better human beings; to become closer to the Creator of the heavens and the earth. We must cultivate our hearts, and by serving others, we can strive toward this end.

Jason Abdullah Monaco of Allentown is outreach coordinator for the Muslim Association of the Lehigh Valley. The Rev. Sharon Solt Joseph is pastor of Church of the Manger UCC Church in Bethlehem. Robert B. Lennick is rabbi at Congregation Keneseth Israel in Allentown.

Labels: Christianity, God, Golden Rule, interfaith, Islam, Jason Monaco, Judaism, religion, Robert B. Lennick, Sharon Joseph

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Friday, May 23, 2008

The Golden Rule is meant to be shared

May 16, 2008 - 1:50PM
Lawn Griffiths, Tribune

Cover the religious landscape for any time and it’s obvious that belief runs too deeply to suggest one group of believers found and embraced the real truth, while the rest are just lost souls, floundering in falsehood.

Lawn Griffiths on Spiritual Life

That’s why I find real hope in the ecumenical and interfaith efforts — those of faith with courage to learn from each other without any obligation or intention to abandon their own core beliefs. They welcome chances to discover the beauty and integrity of other faith systems. They find awe in the common ground. They celebrate that some from other faiths truly seek to live out their beliefs authentically no matter how radically they may differ from their own. They don’t judge, and they don’t feel that consorting with other kinds of seekers will dishonor their own religions. In their own ways, they strive to understand the mysteries of God. They balance teachings of their formal traditions with their own line of reasoning and free agency. It’s called a “faith journey.” They work cooperatively to share their best for peace and understanding.

Clearly some religions encourage open-mindedness and stretching so that a follower truly owns and embraces what unfolds and evolves in their own distinct experiences.

Other faiths, however, are far more strict and legalistic, insisting that adherents absorb their solid, historic teachings and not stray. They are warned of the dangers of what might seep into their minds from the “outside.” Orthodoxy now, orthodoxy forever.

I value people having transforming experiences that impel them to abandon bad habits, destructive behavior, self-centeredness, greed, hostility ... In truly loving Jesus, for example, they can honestly say they are new people, a new creation. I distrust, however, those so mesmerized by charismatic teachings that they cede away critical thinking.

So much of the whole discussion falls into just two areas — 1) escaping the pain and struggles of life on earth for life everlasting salvation; or 2) the social gospel that calls on the believer to love, to work for justice and to bring comfort to the poor and disenfranchised. All week, the words of theologian Brian McLaren, as expressed May 10 in this Spiritual Life section, have resonated with me. He talked about the difference between mercy and justice. We can strive to provide relief from the pain of the moment or we can make systemic changes to end injustice so that changes made for good actually last. McLaren said unjust systems keep throwing people into misery, and “mercy brings us to relieve some of their misery, but until we confront the unjust systems by doing justice we’re never going to make a change ... I think what churches in America, especially evangelical churches, are just waking up to is the way we have to deal with systemic injustice, not just charitable giving to people in misery.”

Three weeks ago, I was among 10 people and some organizations that the Arizona InterFaith Movement honored at Phoenix Convention Center with Golden Rule Awards. (www.interfaitharizona.com). The fourth annual award recipients included Arizona Cardinal Kurt Warner and his wife, Brenda (Courage in Sports award); the dean of Valley rabbis, Rabbi Albert Plotkin (religion award); and Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa (government award). I won in the media category. More than 900 folks, representing a wide range of faiths, turned out. It was fascinating to watch six-minute videos on the recipients and see authentic ways people have devoted their lives trying to bring light to the darkness.

When AFM’s executive director, the Rev. Paul Eppinger, notified me of the award in February, my immediate reaction was one of unworthiness and a realization that we media types have a too-easy opportunity to be Golden Rule-esque in simply showcasing the great good. And I realized Arizona has a shortage of media people focused on spirituality and faith and the honor may have come my way because of the small pool of media folks dealing with faith.

Then I quickly remembered the late Darl Andersen, the Mesa man who worked tirelessly to promote living the Golden Rule, giving away bumper stickers touting it and seeking religious understanding. He belonged to several interfaith groups and was famous for taking clergy of many faiths to lunch to help them understand his faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’d invite his dinner companions to educate him on theirs.

I wrote several features on Andersen, including one when he died in 2000. Andersen and I talked over lunch four or five times across a dozen years, and the one-time Mesa Unified School District governing board president was always effective in making his point and just being a smiling bundle of love made flesh.

He never lived to see the annual Golden Rule banquet with more than 900 attendees from dozens of diverse religions, nor the new Golden Rule specialized Arizona license plate, nor Arizona being declared, in 2003, the nation’s first “Golden Rule State” with a program through the Secretary of State’s office to recognize people for “good deeds and acts of kindness.”

It is appropriate that one of the awards given was the Darl Andersen Award, presented by his son Wilfred Andersen, one-time Arizona spokesman for the LDS Church. This year, it went to Dennis Barney, who combined charity and civic and church duty with successful development work and family life.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s so simple. It’s a universal message that is said many ways in all the languages and religious creeds. If we would really live it and believe in it, justice and peace could follow.

Labels: Golden Rule, interfaith, Lawn Griffiths, religion, spirituality

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Friday, August 10, 2007

Inter-faith dialogue

LIVE’N’LEARN

Tariq Ramadan took part in a debate on inter-faith dialogue two weeks ago.
The dialogue between the panel of three (Tariq Ramadan, Soondursun Jugessur, Michael Atchia) some days ago and the audience (at Q-Bornes Town Hall under the auspices of the Conseil des religions) pointed to these:

? Inter-faith dialogue is possible and desirable;

? it is a vehicle for the spiritual and moral dimension in society, the family and an important factor for peace in the world;

? it must include everyone, even those with no declared faith and agnostics;

? it must go to villages and suburbs, to those in need, the masses, the young, and not remain among the elite and already convinced.

?Rooted in one’s own faith (which each must deepen), inter-faith dialogue enables each one to reach out, know, understand and share in other faiths, with huge results for everyone’s ability to better serve society and live in peace.

What is inter-faith dialogue?

The term refers to “co-operative and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions”. Its aim is to unite global communities by sharing common elements, while accepting the differences (in religion and culture) to achieve harmony and enable people to live in peace.

A changing world

The face of religion on Planet Earth is rapidly changing. As a result of world-wide movements of people (whether for tourism, international workforces or immigration), most cities and many countries are fast becoming environments of multicultural and multi-faith environments, not to mention multilingual, as is the case in that inner London primary school where there are kids totalling 56 mother tongues, besides English! This worldwide movement of people has provoked a meeting of cultures and religions, a new phenomenon in history.

This historic encounter of religions is accompanied by another remarkable process: the interfaith dialogue movement. People belonging to the great faiths of the world are now talking to one another and understanding one another as never before, rather strongly contrasting with the set image of religion as a source of friction, conflict, terrorism (refer to the times of conflicting relationships in history between Christians-Muslims, Muslims-Hindus, Jews-Muslims, Catholics-Protestants, Christianity and science, etc.

New visions

I will take the concept of peace as an example: a typical western definition is that peace equals “freedom from war or violence” (Oxford dictionary). Peace activists in the west (and indeed the world over) prefer the eastern view of peace as a state of accord, understanding, harmony, fellowship, tranquillity, serenity, order, a state of non violence, unaggressiveness and uncontentious behaviour, as a state of plenty, of health, of happiness, etc. That definition combines elements from different religious traditions, as a sort of inter-faith, operational and multi-faceted. The former (Oxford definition) understandably arises from the aftermath of two World Wars, at the end of which peacetime was celebrated, after 80 million unnecessary deaths!

Religion and secularism

We must differentiate here between lip-service to religion (or the blind practices of formulae/rites, whether in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism or any of the hundreds of new faiths-sects-religions) and being a true believer in search of meaning to life, essential values to live by and the intimate relationship with God. This is a paramount difference between wearers of the signs and badges of a religion and believers, who are always humble in the face of the immensity of the universe and the universal.

Modern society is fast replacing all references to revelations from sacred books or guidance for life obtained from divine inspiration by a huge set of secular laws, rules and regulations. But these belong to two different spheres, which can certainly co-exist. For example, most states are secular, meaning that affairs are conducted without reference to one or any religion. This is the case in France, India, the USSR of old, China, Mauritius, according to the Constitution. But surely and certainly those men and women elected or appointed to do the job can be (and should be) people of faith (not necessarily religious people).

The difficulty arises when a state defines itself as an Islamic State (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan), a Jewish state, a Hindu kingdom (Nepal until recently), a Buddhist one (Tibet, until 1950) or any of the numerous Christian kingdoms of Europe from the middle ages into the 20th century, with sequels showing in the struggle between Catholic and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

So, homage must be paid to movements like those of Mother Teresa or that of the Brahma Kumaris. Each is inspired by one religion (Christianity and Hinduism respectively) but are universal in their openness to all and service to all.

We therefore see the necessity of inter-faith as well as inter-cultural dialogue in modern society. This dialogue can be a determinant factor for the ability of communities to live in peace and harmony, especially important in multi-religious societies like ours and in recent years in very many societies.

As a man of science, I am searching for truth, I try to understand the mechanisms and processes operating in nature. I do this purely by using the experimental method of observation, detached, neutral objective. Such is the scientific method, the example par excellence of secularism. It is only at this price that science can produce results which can then be applied to improve the quality of life of man. As a believer, I have neither nightmares nor conflicts between my work as a scientist and the grace of God in my life. The key word that comes to mind is complementarity.

The spiritual dimension is an integral part of true and complete education, no doubt about that! How does this operate in school systems is an ongoing and difficult subject. Extremes are regrettable, such as in French state schools where religion is ”out-of-bounds” or in some religious schools where adhesion to a given faith is a must. In both cases faith (which is a way of life “proposed”, not “imposed’ ) can develop freely. The experiment conducted by some of us (including Henri Souchon) in the QEC of the 1970s is still vivid in the minds of many: side by side with sectoral religious education (each one in her own faith), we devised and proposed courses in the encounter of religions, an attempt to learn the “facts and deeper meaning” of the religions of others. This was in a small way a good beginning to inter-faith dialogue. Where has this dialogue reached now?

Labels: culture, interfaith, Michael Atchia, peace, religion, science, society

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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Geneva seminar opens global windows on 'religion'

7 Aug 2007

The chapel near Geneva, in which young adults from five continents gathered for an early morning meditation, seemed an unusual place of worship. The light through the stained glass windows shone on to a set of religious symbols as disparate as a simple cross, Orthodox icons, and a drum from an African Christian community - writes Annegret Kapp from the WCC.

The songs sung, the Bible text read by an American, and the text's interpretation by another Christian from Hungary did not link the worship to any denominational tradition.

But this ecumenical way of worshipping was not the most unusual thing about the moments of spirituality in Bossey at the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Institute in the Swiss countryside, from where Mount Blanc and the French Alps are visible from one side of Lake Geneva. The young people at worship were also more diverse than the spread of worldwide Christianity normally represented at the institute. Some participants wore scarves or kippots (yarmulkas) on their heads.

A month-long seminar in July 2007, entitled "Building an Interfaith Community", brought together 21 young Jews, Muslims and Christians from around the world. The annual seminar, hosted by the institute, the WCC's centre for ecumenical study and training, gave the participants the opportunity to get to know each other, including each other's spirituality, and to challenge and overcome stereotypes.

Not all the morning devotions took place in the centre's chapel. One conference room was equipped as an improvised mosque, another as a synagogue. While one faith group organised and led the moments of prayer each day, those from the other two groups were invited to assist and participate at the level with which they felt comfortable.

"Our goal is not to mix our religions and build a new global one but to understand each other’s identity better," said Morris Gagloev, a Russian Orthodox Christian.

For Steven Bell, who is awaiting ordination in 2008 as a Roman Catholic priest with the North American order of the Paulist Fathers, the experiencing of another spirituality helped to strengthen his own prayer life. He said he was impressed by the richness of song and chant in Judaism, and by the discipline of Muslim prayer.

Valeria Gatti, also Catholic, from Peru, had a similar view. "If you see your friend approaching God the way he or she does, that is so beautiful," she said.

Friendships forged allowed for frank discussions during lectures and workshops, even when touching on difficult issues like politics and gender.

The fact that the young adults lived together for a month, during which they shared moments at the beach down at the lake, prepared meals in the kitchen, and spent hours in the conference room, was essential to what some called "a unique experience".

In addition to personal and spiritual encounters, the students learned from each other in the seminar’s academic sessions, with group discussions often continuing until 9:00 p.m.

These gatherings drew on the presence of local religious experts from the three Abrahamic faiths, and included lecturers from the universities of Geneva and Lausanne; international specialists also took part.

The experts' diverse backgrounds shed light on divisions existing within each faith group, and introduced students to both Sunni and Shiite Islam, orthodox and reformed Judaism, and a variety of Christian denominations.

The participants themselves had a wealth of experience to share as well.

Following a presentation on "Affirming and living faith identity in a pluralistic world from a Christian perspective" by Rima Barsoum, who works on Christian-Muslim relations at the WCC, Saba Wallace, a participant from the two-percent Christian minority in Pakistan, asked, "How can dialogue happen when partners are not equal in any sense?"

Wallace, who works for non-governmental organisations in the areas of advocacy and interreligious dialogue, said she came to the seminar with many such questions, which she has no chance to raise in her usual context. With her multiple identities, being Pakistani, female and Christian, she feels frustrated and looked down upon both in the West and in her home country.

Gatti, on the other hand, came to see that her native Peru's dominant Christian context offers hardly any opportunity for inter-religious encounters. "This experience is like a pair of new glasses," she commented.

These participants' stories make it clear why Ioan Sauca, the director of the Ecumenical Institute, seeks to provide a "safe space" for young people from countries where interfaith relations are not always harmonious, to discuss their concerns.

Did participants succeed in building an interfaith community?

Eden Curtasan, a computer science student and collaborator of the Rumanian Muftiad, the traditional Muslim minority of Turkish-Tatars, was sceptical about speaking of community too fast in the way that politicians, he said, often do.

Still, Curtasan was positively surprised by the programme. "I actually came expecting some boring peace 'blah-blah' but finally I couldn’t even touch the books I brought because the programme was too interesting," he said.

The biggest surprise, said Bell, was that young people of all three religions face the same dilemma.

"They discover their spirituality but it is not played out in the religion's institutional building - the mosque, the church, the synagogue - because that is so steeped in traditional values which don't mesh with their personal experience," he said.

Annegret Kapp is the WCC's Web editor. This is an edited version of a story she wrote for the WCC. Link to original story: www.oikoumene.org/

[With grateful acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches]

Labels: Annegret Kapp, ecumenism, Geneva, interfaith, religion, youth