Posts Tagged ‘ Interfaith ’

Interfaith Dialog: Respect is Key

December 24, 2011
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Tiffany Buchanan, State of Formation, Dec.17, www.stateofformation.org/2011/12/interfaith-dialog-respect-is-key/

This semester I had the honor and pleasure to work as the educational assistant for a course, “Religious Pluralism” at McCormick Theological Seminary under the leadership of Dr. Robert Cathey and Janaan Hashim, Esq.

The core of this class exposed seminary students to five different faith traditions. Each week students read a chapter and supplemental materials on the differing faith traditions and then the following week as a class we took field trips to the differing temples of worship that corresponded with the previous week’s readings.

“Religious Pluralism” is a religious and cultural immersion experience for McCormick seminary students. As a sociologist and mother, I think that immersion and exposure is one of the best teaching methods for students and children to truly learn, thus I promote it in the classroom, as well as my own personal life.

As I visited the Synagogue, the Mosque, the Sikh temple, the Buddhist temple and finally the Hindu temple I learned more completely how not to judge other peoples faith and worship as lower than my own. I do not feel challenged about my own faith by being respectful of other people’s faith traditions. I do not feel compelled to “make” other people believe my religion is better or more right.

Read the complete article here.

Interfaith Mom Is Wrong About Chrismukkah

December 24, 2011
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Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Jewish Daily Forward, Dec.19, blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/148176/

Most of the points you make in your recent HuffPo piece, “8 Reasons My Interfaith Family Celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas,”make so little sense, from where I sit as a Jewish mother, that I feel compelled to respond. I am aware that by doing so I am wading into the roiling waters of touchy issues around intermarriage and the choices interfaith families make.

Read the complete article here.

8 Reasons My Interfaith Family Celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas

December 24, 2011
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Susan Katz Miller, Huffington Post, Dec.13, www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-katz-miller/interfaith-family-christmas-and-hanukkah_b_1133561.html

At this time of year, a blizzard of articles about the so-called December Dilemma swirls up like snowflakes rising from the floor of a snowglobe. Every year, I take calls from journalists looking to, perhaps, shake things up: to dramatize what they are sure must be a conflict between Christmas and Hanukkah, and between interfaith parents. And yet, having chosen to fully educate our children about both family religions, the dilemma essentially disappears and December becomes primarily a delight. We celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, with all of the trimmings, and seek to help our children to understand the religious meanings of both holidays.

Our pathway is controversial: not every interfaith couple can or should choose both religions for their children. For many families, choosing one religion makes sense, and there is a vast literature out there to help these families negotiate the holiday season. But in our local community of more than 100 interfaith families, we believe that both Christian and Jewish stories and rituals can be inspirational, are essential to literacy in Western culture, and are part of the heritage of our children.

Read the complete article here.

Finding Common Ground

December 20, 2011
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CBS News, Dec. 18 , www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7392008n&tag=cbsnewsLeadStoriesAreaMain

CBS News Religion & Culture looks at the history of the interfaith movement and what interreligious cooperation looks like in Reading, Pennsylvania.

This link will take you to a very interesting 27 minute video clip.  Well worth watching!

Reflections on an interfaith service in Zuccotti Park

November 20, 2011
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Katherine Clark, Reuters, Nov.16, blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2011/11/16/occupy-sacred-space-reflections-on-an-interfaith-service-in-zuccotti-park/

A small group of diverse religious and community leaders gathered in Zuccotti Park this past Sunday to lead an interfaith service at Occupy Wall Street. Organized by staff at the Interfaith Center of New York, we had asked the participants – representing Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh traditions — to meet on Zuccotti’s northeastern steps for the afternoon service. These services have been taking place at the park in Lower Manhattan every Sunday for the past few weeks, so we thought we could easily meet up by the Interfaith Center sign there.

It was not so easy after all. Upon arriving, we saw tha t claiming a spot amidst the abundance of tents and other Occupy activities would require a tremendous amount of patience and creativity. Our sign was lost amidst notices for the community library, the “basics of anarchy” pamphlet table, a laughter yoga session and a gentleman sporting a multi-colored outfit and sign proclaiming, “Outer Space or Bust; Goodbye Earth People.” Eventually, however, we found one another. Within a few minutes, an interested crowd gathered on the steps. Our makeshift sacred space began to take shape.

Hindu monk Rasanath Das opened the service with a standing meditation, providing a rare moment of peace amid the clamor of surrounding mic checks, drums, chants and street noise. The meditation set the tone for an inspiring service that featured leaders from a variety of faith traditions – Rev. Dr. Traci West (United Methodist), Dr. Tejal Kaur (Sikh), Rev. Earl Kooperkamp (Episcopalian), and Annie Rawlings (Presbyterian) — each of their messages being amplified through the “human microphone.” Since real amplifiers aren’t permitted in Zuccotti Park, speakers at Occupy Wall Street to deliver their message in succinct sentences that the surrounding crowd repeats, allowing a wider audience to hear.

Some 36 hours after our interfaith service had concluded, the New York Police Department (NYPD) evicted everyone from Zuccotti Park. The space was vacant for the first time in two months. There are those who hope that this movement is based solely on geographical location and that dispersing protesters and dismantling their tents will have the same effect on their ideals.  This is not the case for the Occupy movement, or for the multi-faith leaders who stand in solidarity with it. To quote countless Twitter feeds since Tuesday morning, “you cannot evict an idea whose time has come.”

Read the complete article here.

The Big Interfaith Tent at Occupy Oakland: Faithfully Engaging the 99%

November 20, 2011
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Laura Rose, Huffington Post, Nov.18, www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-laura-rose/interfaith-occupy-oakland_b_1101997.html?ref=religion

Fourteen members of the Interfaith Tent at Occupy Oakland locked arms in front of the tent and were arrested early Monday morning as the police raided the encampment. It is not surprising that our words and actions have been reduced to a few sound bites and fleeting images by the mainstream media, but there is a deeper, better story to be told.

Our Interfaith Tent is Big — spatially and spiritually. The tent has been a sacred space of solace at the encampment, but it has also provided a spiritual canopy for an interfaith coalition of Indigenous Elders, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Jews in solidarity with the Occupy Movement, locally and globally.

One sure sign that people of faith are called to create a sacred space is that after the police raid on the Oakland encampment, the only tent standing was the Interfaith Tent. It stayed until noon, the hardest to tear down.

Read the complete article here.

Interfaith gathering for world peace at Assisi

November 1, 2011
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Eric Lyman, ENInews, Oct.27, www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5244

In the Vatican’s most wide-scale effort yet to reach out to other faiths, Pope Benedict XVI today welcomed Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, African tribal faiths, and even atheists and agnostics to call for world peace.

Benedict presided over a meeting of more than 300 religious leaders in the Umbrian hilltop town of Assisi, the birthplace of Saint Francis, timed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a one-day prayer for peace that took place at the same spot, called by Pope John Paul II amid the tensions of the cold war.

The meeting had more participants and was more inclusive than the earlier event; the participation of monks from mainland China and four non-believers was part of Benedict’s effort to reach out to atheists and agnostics. But it featured fewer recognizable faces than the 1986 gathering, during which the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa joined John Paul in prayer.

Read the complete article here.

Interfaith group seeks help from banks in housing crisis

November 1, 2011
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Jeremy Borden, Washington Post, Oct.31, www.washingtonpost.com/local/interfaith-group-seeks-help-from-banks-in-housing-crisis/2011/10/30/gIQAhPAzZM_story.html

Members from more than 40 religious institutions across Northern Virginia are asking some of the country’s largest banks to commit to helping rebuild neighborhoods that have been devastated by housing foreclosures.

Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE) drew a crowd of about 900 congregants, political leaders and representatives of two major financial institutions — Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase — to Freedom High School in Woodbridge on Sunday to discuss the issue.

Leaders of the two-year-old interfaith group — representing every major religion — say they hope that pressure on banks from area congregations helps struggling homeowners and assists in rebuilding neighborhoods.

Venus Miller, a VOICE leader who attends Mount Olive Baptist Church in Woodbridge, said she hopes the banks agree to help because it is the right thing to do. “But wouldn’t that be great to put the fear of God in them?”

Read the complete article here.

Speed-faithing: speed-dating from a religious point of view

November 1, 2011
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Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune, Nov.1, www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-speed-faithing-20111101,0,5799441.story

For those who want to hook up with a Hindu, there is speed-dating at an Old Town neighborhood lounge on Wednesday.

But for those who want to meet a Muslim, Buddhist, Christian or Hindu and get to know a little about their faith, there will be a speed-faithing event Tuesday at Dominican University in River Forest.

Designed by students, the event which follows a public lecture by Interfaith Youth Core founder Eboo Patel, will rotate participants through five-minute conversations about their beliefs. Long enough to establish common ground, short enough to avoid offense, said Cassie Meyer, director of content for the Interfaith Youth Core who co-teaches a course on interfaith literacy with Patel.

“You’re not trying to say everything about your religion before you switch,” she said.

Nor should you, she said. Just like speed-dating, talking about religion can be scary.

“The stereotype of speed-dating is you have two minutes to judge someone,” she said. “There’s something to be said for speaking really quickly off the cuff about something. You’ll have a chance to be thoughtful, but you don’t have a chance to obsess about it.”

Instead of seeking particulars, participants will be urged to ask more general questions: Do you think interfaith cooperation is important? What compels you to serve others? How and when do you pray, reflect or meditate?

Read the complete article here.

Jerusalem interfaith dialogue sees increased participation

September 19, 2011
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Judith Sudilovsky, ENInews, Sep.14, www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5146

Religious leaders in Jerusalem are more willing than ever before to take part in dialogue with members of other faiths despite growing political turmoil in the region, said Daniel Milo, the director of the Jerusalem Center for Ethics, prior to the start of the third annual Interfaith and Ethics Symposium on 14 September.

Religious leaders now realized “that the alternative to dialogue is not acceptable,” Milo said, noting that attendance at the annual symposium, which delves into interfaith challenges, has grown over the past three years. Still, he admitted, some Palestinian religious leaders from East Jerusalem declined an invitation this year, largely due to internal community pressures.

The modern global era is forcing religious leaders to face challenges in maintaining influence on their followers, Milo said. “Religious leaders can’t keep their communities closed in anymore” and people are exposed to different views and ideas, he said.

Read the complete article here.