One day she woke up and said to herself, “Enough is enough.”
What It Is Like to Have Interfaith Dialogues
I have been an active member of Multi-Faith Student Council at the University of Minnesota for two years now. I have been fortunate to learn so much about other people and their faith. I am no expert on interfaith dialogues but did pick up some things along the way. The beginning can be awkward because you don’t want to ask dumb questions or seem ignorant. The truth is, there is no such thing as a dumb question.
Planning this Year for TIO 2.0
This month marks the fiftieth issue of The Interfaith Observer (TIO), and the time has come to take a breath and a break from ‘business as usual.’ For the next five months, from March through July of 2016, TIO will look back and gather the work by and about five of our most prolific writers, one a month. Next month, we will feature the work of Marcus Braybrooke.
Sweden’s Religious Community Responds to Flood of Refugees
During the autumn and winter of 2015 Sweden has had a great influx of refugees, mainly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. More than 250,000 men, women and children have arrived in Sweden in recent months. Sweden, a nation of nine million inhabitants, has been caught unprepared. Sweden and Germany are the two countries in Europe that have received the largest number of refugees. Södertälje, a small town south of Stockholm, has received more refugees from Iraq than all of the United States. The comparison between Europe and the U.S. in receiving refugees is stunning. The U.S. has received a total of 2,000 refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Europe has received around two million people from these countries during the last six months!
Huston Smith and the Parliament of the World’s Religions
All of us can look back over our lives and identify people who have been significant role models. One of those persons for me has been Huston Smith. Perhaps the most important American scholar of religions for five decades, Smith was born the son of Methodist missionaries in Dzang Dok, China, where he spent the first 17 years of his life. Now 96 and confined to a favorite chair in an assisted-living apartment in Berkeley, California, the old gentleman – eyes sparkling – still “banters in Chinese with his friend, Mr. Lin, the maintenance man” (Lisa Miller, “Huston Smith’s Wonderful Life,” The Daily Beast, 2009).
Interfaith Generation Emerging
We are still fighting the myth that interfaith children grow up to be lost and confused. Rev. Erik Martínez Resly is an interfaith child who grew up to become an inspired community leader. I met Erik at the Parliament of the World’s Religions this year and later interviewed him about his work as lead organizer of The Sanctuaries, a racially and religiously diverse arts community in Washington, DC. — SKM
Serve2Unite Takes on Violence Fearlessly
“We defy hate and violence with peace and love. We bring people together. We celebrate the positive global human qualities that everyone shares, and no one can stop us.”
A Bold Vision
Until recently becoming the executive director of Religions for Peace-USA, Robert Montgomery directed the Faith and Culture Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Its mission is to build community and work to foster greater understanding and appreciation of Middle Tennessee’s diverse faith traditions and cultures. Its vision is to transform its local community into one where all people embrace humility, understanding, respect, empathy, and compassion.
Pope Fancis’s New Interreligious Dialogue of Action
The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID), in collaboration with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and Religions for Peace, held the Vatican’s fifth Buddhist-Christian Colloquium February 12-13, 2015 at Bodh Gaya in India. Bodh Gaya is the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment and was chosen for a dialogue since it has temples and monasteries from many different types of Buddhists.
Obama’s Interfaith Vision and the Restlessness of Our Wretched Refuse
Many people are very discouraged by the current climate of anti-Muslim and anti-“other” rhetoric that so fills the airwaves. However, the larger reality is that we are progressing as a nation towards a more positive appropriation of our rich religious diversity. It comes with fits and starts, albeit. But don’t be fooled to think otherwise. It is the way human social progress works.
“I’d Like to Help” – A Conversation with Charles Gibbs
What can we learn from a pioneer who co-created the largest grassroots interfaith organization in the world? A conversation with Charles Gibbs gifted us with answers to this question.
C. F. Andrews: Gandhi’s Friend
Often the friendships made at a conference are remembered long after the keynote speeches are forgotten. In the ancient and mediaeval worlds, friendship was very highly valued. For Aristotle, friendship was the very fabric of a healthy society, and Cicero stressed the importance of friendship. The mediaeval monk Aelred even translated the Biblical verse “God is love” as “God is friendship.” (1 John 4: 8).
What is Islamophobia?
The following essay is reprinted from the introduction to a new Islamophobia Guidebook in the making. You can download the whole Guidebook here today, but it is still being assembled, so a download next month might be even better. Here is what the book sets out to do:
Review: How’s Your Faith? by David Gregory
I don’t watch Meet the Press or television journalism, so I didn’t recognize David Gregory’s name when his memoir appeared on my desk. The title, however, caught my attention. How’s Your Faith? – An Unlikely Spiritual Journey is a courageous testimony by an adult child of intermarriage, whose own interfaith marriage sparks his spiritual journey. Raised with a Jewish identity, he marries a devout Christian only to realize that his relationship with religion, and ultimately, with himself, needs attention.
Winter Light
Bittersweet may be the best word for the final months of 2015. The international gathering of leaders in Paris took climate change more seriously than ever before, a major step forward in terms of what is required. But the climate agreements were punctuated by violent massacres in Paris and San Bernardino and by the ongoing chaos in the Middle East, which has never been more toxic.
The History of American Pluralism
This speech was delivered at a White House gathering celebrating and protecting “America’s Tradition of Religious Pluralism.” The speaker was Vanita Gupta, the head of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Kindling Love”
Local Communities Affirm Solidarity with Muslim Neighbors
Last month, December 2015, in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, with Donald Trump threatening to close American borders to Muslims, and increasing incidents of Islamophobic violence, the major media barely noticed one of the most important stories.
Sri Ramakrishna: A Profile
Except for students of Hinduism, Sri Ramakrishna is a largely unknown figure in the West. Yet his teaching and influence have helped shape the global interfaith movement. His vision, if not his name, came to Europe and America through his student and devotee, Swami Vivekananda, whose electrifying contributions at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions are invoked as the beginning of the interfaith movement. Marcus Braybrooke’s profile is so carefully researched that TIO is breaking its long habit of not using footnotes. For those who want to study Ramakrishna, they point the way.
Unpacking Pluralism
“Remember that words have usage, not meaning.” This off-the-cuff remark from Dr. Frank Stagg in a seminary classroom more than thirty years ago has repeatedly helped to clarify my thinking. I might modify the statement, saying that “words have usage, not inherent meaning” or “the meaning of a word is shaped by usage and context.” But the point is, nonetheless, well-taken. Words have usage, not meaning.