What a year! 2012...
Interfaith Millennials Organize in Washington D.C.
This year is going to be a big one for interfaith collaboration in our nation’s capital. And Millennials are going to be at the forefront.
Cultivating the Next Generation of Interfaith Leaders
More than 120 students from colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada braved wintry weather to participate in the sixth “Coming Together” conference (CT6), three days of interfaith dialogue and programming. CT6 was hosted last month at the University of Chicago by the Spiritual Life Office and Rockefeller Chapel.
Boomers & Millennials Compare Interfaith Action
What does it mean to “mobilize” a movement for social justice in the Internet Age? The word “mobilization” has strong associations for the Boomer Generation, when organizing hundreds to march, rally or take part in a sit-in was the visible manifestation of social justice activism.
Listening and Achieving the Impossible Dream
Can Jews and Muslims actually get along? For the average American, plagued by widespread misinformation and skewed biases from the media, this might seem nearly impossible. In light of the ubiquitous news of conflict in the Middle East, coexistence between these two faith traditions is often perceived as a lost cause. However, here in the Southern California an number of Jewish and Muslim communities are working in harmony towards peace and understanding.
Building Community One Microblog at a Time
I first joined the interfaith movement as a precocious fifteen-year-old. With an English translation of the Qur’an in hand, I walked into a Christian Bible study at my high school and demanded that they help me get Muslims a space to pray during Ramadan. For me then, as it did throughout my time in college, interfaith activism meant something very clear: come together to build community, create safe space for meaningful dialogue, and act out the words of our scriptures to make change for the common good. Together, we squirmed at the thought of the emerging “slacktivist” movement, where activists use the internet as their main platform for their cause. The internet was just digital space, so how can it change anything?
Interfaith Young Adults in Urban Community
Seventeen young adults, mostly in their twenties, gathered in San Francisco on February 2 for an urban field trip with a unique mission: to explore what a thriving interfaith young adult community would look like in the city. Through United Religions Initiative (URI), I was organizing the trip as a part of our Bay Area Young Leaders Program.
Mobilizing TIO – Outreach & Social Networking
Over the past year more than 120 writers have made contributions to The Interfaith Observer. Their essays are being sent out to 2,200 subscribers each month in the flash of an eye – no paper, no ink or postage, no waiting, but silently delivered to electronic mailboxes around the globe. Want to make movies? Searching for Sugar Man, a deeply satisfying intercultural film playing in theaters today, was shot on an iPhone and edited on a laptop!
The Internet – A Spiritual Haven for Youth?
Nearly 20,000 spiritually minded readers this year engaged with youth-created content at KidSpirit, an ad-free online magazine and community for youth exploring life’s big questions. These readers come from India and Indonesia and Illinois and many places in between. Most read KidSpirit in English, though a few intrepid souls read it in Chinese, Filipino or Italian.
Interfaith Resources to End Bullying
According to the Sikh Coalition, one in ten young people who are repeatedly bullied drop out of school or change schools, and 85 percent of reported bullying cases go without intervention or response. Bullying has become an epidemic in the U.S. and globally, affecting communities regardless of faith. Cyber-bullying is another new phenomenon affecting youth with access to the internet and cellphones.
Talking with Tomorrow’s Peacemakers
We live in a violent world filled with conflict, and we always have. But every member of every generation has a responsibility to our world, each in our own way, to lessen the unhappiness that reigns on this planet. Our generation, like the ones before it, will grow up and lead the world. It is essential that tomorrow’s leaders, trying to fix our world’s problems, are empathetic, understanding not only their own people’s suffering, but the suffering of those on the ‘other side’ as well.
Finding Your Voice in an Interfaith World
I was sitting in my apartment in Jerusalem, hiding from the world. A war was raging a hundred miles south of me, and another seemed likely to start a hundred miles to the north. I felt unable to impact the situation at all.
Making Interfaith Cooperation a Social Norm
Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) seeks to make interfaith cooperation a social norm – a world where individuals have positive relationships across lines of faith and an appreciative understanding of the diverse traditions in our society. IFYC focuses our efforts on a mutually enriching higher education strategy working with colleges and universities. The goal is to transform their campus ecologies, making interfaith cooperation a priority and engaging students through a dynamic national Better Together campaign that trains a new generation of interfaith leaders.
“What Do You Believe?” – Teens Weigh In
Sarah Feinbloom’s award-winning “What Do You Believe?” is a one-hour interfaith video that gives voice to a new interracial, interethnic, interreligious generation. Twenty teenagers talk about God, faith, prayer, death, and their own religious experiences. Five of them, coming from American Indian, Buddhist, Catholic-Jewish, Muslim, and Wiccan backgrounds, share their lives and spiritual formation in detail.
Youth Redefining Interfaith Activism Globally
I’ve never found an easy way to explain how an evangelical Christian from rural America came to found an interfaith youth organization with chapters across the world. It began in the summer of 2006.
KidSpirit – Youth Model the Spirit of Pluralism
Take a moment to look back on your youth. Do you remember being 12 or 14? That awkward age on the cusp of adulthood, when you were neither a child nor yet an adult, but alternately identifying with both? Imagine your deepest held values and beliefs at that age; your fledgling sense of self and vulnerability. Did you have opportunities to share what mattered to you? To listen to voices different from your own and marvel at their unique worth and beauty? Flash forward a few years to your late teens and early twenties. How do you recall that sense of self now? Stronger? More settled? Perhaps a bit less open-minded than before?
Faith and the Journey towards Meaning
In thinking about this short article, I struggled with the question: How do I make meaning out of life? It can be read and answered in many ways from one person to the next. What is meaning, exactly? Still, I admit to being pleased at the invitation, but also for being acknowledged for the six-year journey since converting to Islam, the journey to find and define what brings meaning to my life.
Leaders for Tomorrow’s Interfaith Organizations
The more culturally diverse we become, the more adept we need to be in relating to people who hold profoundly different beliefs. What questions help you truly understand someone, especially someone with whom you have a fundamental disagreement? How do you engage people from different backgrounds when addressing community problems?