Report from Southern California
It’s Time for U.S. to End the Inhumane Practice of Torture
Religions for Peace USA’s New Webinars Series
A Salute to America
A Mystic Vision with a Social Conscience
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.
Building a Groundswell, Lighting Up the Network
When a dozen twenty-somethings gathered in my tiny living room in the fall of 2010, vexed about the firestorm of protest against Park 51, an Islamic center planned in Manhattan known as “the Ground Zero Mosque,” we had no idea that we were planting the seed for a movement.
Report – World Congress of Religions 2012
The World Congress of Religions 2012 was held in Washington, DC, November 30-December 2, 2012. It celebrated the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, honoring his legacy of peacemaking, human rights, ending poverty, and women’s empowerment. Speakers paid homage to Swamiji as a visionary spiritual leader who introduced Eastern religion to the West. His image graced every session, and according to Dr. Pradip Ghosh, chairperson of the Congress, “Swami Vivekananda’s ideals of universal acceptance go a long way to foster peace and harmony among people of different faiths.”
The Power of Interfaith-Based Community Organizing
“Community Organizing” made it into national news when Barack Obama’s work history was vetted in 2008. Though the pundits made quick judgments, precious few know about the scope and power that interfaith-based community organizing generates in America today. PICO National Network is one of the largest players. It was founded in 1972 as a regional training institute to help support neighborhood organizations in California through an interfaith congregation-community approach. Rather than bring people together around particular issues such as housing or education, one model, this broad-based approach makes values and relationships the glue that holds community together. Today PICO has 44 affiliated federations, including LA Voice, and eight statewide networks working in 150 cities and towns and 17 states. More than one million families and one thousand congregations from 40 different denominations and faiths participate in PICO.
Rio+ 20: After the Speeches, the Work Begins
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon commented that after the speeches, the work begins. He has it right: after the speeches of the Rio+20 conference, the work charges civil society to insist on changes. Governments will not solve the environmental crisis for us. This massive international conference was a once-in-a-decade opportunity. The outcome document, [Secretary General BanKi-Moon at Rio+20] a product of months of negotiations dominated by nationalistic political interests, is far from revolutionary. To change our course away from environmental devastation we need more than a revolution.
Interfaith and Peace, Social Justice, and Respect for the Earth
“War no more.” That was the hope that inspired Charles Bonney as he explained in his opening address to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions. Bonney believed that a major cause of conflict was “because the religious faiths of the world have most seriously misunderstood and misjudged each other.”i One hundred years later, Hans Küng declared that there would be “No peace in the world without peace between religions.”ii
Social Justice as a Unifying Issue for Dharmic Communities
Religious communities are never the same once they reach America. In my view, they often become even more remarkable.
Clooney, Kony and Why Interfaith Matters
The Kony 2012 video has now amassed more than 83 million views on YouTube and triggered a response with which Invisible Children can’t keep up. To make things worse, this viral phenomenon has triggered assertions that have called the non-profit’s integrity into question on multiple levels. It sounds like a mess. But at least a significantly larger portion of the world’s population knows something about the horrors taking place in Uganda, right?
How a Samoan Mormon Became a Global Interfaith Activist
Laura Ava-Tesimale, 47, remembers the moment she became an interfaith peace activist. “When it happened, I was changed forever. I prayed fervently to God. Tell me what to do, where to go, whom to meet.”
An Open Letter to All Peoples of Faith & Practice
This is a pivotal time in the saga of human history. The human species comes in all sizes, shapes and varieties of color. All living creatures of the earth including us, the human species, are bound by the universal laws of nature. These laws will prevail over and beyond the laws created by people. I speak of the laws that challenge the balance of nature’s laws to serve the interests of one species of humanity against another and against the principles of equity and peace.
“I’ll Have a Dark Roast Mocha Latte with Social Values to Go”
Java. Joe. Brew. Whatever you call it, coffee is a fixture in American culture, a heart-warming part of our national diet. With average consumption exceeding 400 million cups a day, America is the leading consumer of coffee in the world, an $18 billion dollar market that secures 90 percent of its production from the third world. While the cost of an average cup now ranges from $1.25 to $2.50 in the US, not counting higher priced gourmet specialty brews, millions of farmers in countries like Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Sumatra, working year ‘round growing the beverage we imbibe, receive but a tiny fraction of that price for their labor. Too often, the multi-national financial machinery that grinds out our richly flavored brew leaves poverty in its dregs.
Starting with Moksha and Karma Yoga
Finding meaning in life is an age-old quest that has perplexed people across geographical frontiers and transcended religious and spiritual affiliations. It attracts the interest of sages, religious scholars, and ordinary individuals alike. From distinctions between faith traditions to individual differences within a single religion to variances in time and space, every person will answer this question their own way, uniquely. It is therefore a quintessentially individual and personal search involving a diversity of perspectives.
Rita Semel’s 90th Birthday
San Francisco’s new mayor came to the 7:00 am interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast this year. So did the city police chief, the fire chief, half the city’s supervisors, San Francisco’s own Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and 400 clergy and lay leaders. For a prayer breakfast in San Francisco?!
It was also the 90th year birthday party for the woman who made such an event possible. The theme for the day tells the story – “Healing the World: Honoring the Work of Rita Semel.”
Compassion, Charity, and Interfaith Culture
Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation (2007) suggests that compassion became a dominant theme in human experience for the first time between 800 to 200 BCE, called the Axial Age by German philosopher Karl Jaspers. Armstrong notes that over this 600-year period a religious revolution occurred in four different regions of the world: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism on the Indian sub-continent; Confucianism and Taoism in China; monotheism in the Middle East; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. In each case we discover ancient traditions calling followers to compassionate, ethical behavior.
Occupy's Sacred Mob and the Politics of Vagrancy
It is 1 a.m., 37 degrees. Between two noisy bars, twelve people are trying to sleep in their tents, four more are drinking coffee and holding watch. We talk to drunks as they pass by; sometimes we find allegiance that may or may not be remembered in the morning, and sometimes we just bore potential attackers into docility by inviting them to explain their politics. Tent-kickers are rarely brave enough to kick a person, and “Get a job!” is easily answered by “I have two, but unemployment in North Carolina is over ten percent.” This is the Occupation of Chapel Hill. It is the morning of Halloween.