For more than 100 years Hartford Seminary has been a pioneer in establishing interfaith engagement between Christians and Muslims, developing Abrahamic curricula and a Muslim chaplaincy program. Most recently the school has begun to include the study of Dharmic faith traditions. This interfaith commitment is a sign of the times, no doubt, but also reflects the worldview of the woman who has served as Hartford’s president for the past 15 years, Professor of Social Ethics Heidi Hadsell.
Finding Reliable Interfaith Educational Resources
Scarboro Missions is a Canadian Roman Catholic Mission Society located in Toronto. Its Interfaith Department published a Golden Rule poster 15 years ago, which included versions of the GR from 13 religious traditions. To date, the poster has been translated into more than 20 languages and imitated by numerous groups. The most recent translation is into the ancient language of Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, spoken by 17.5 million. It was translated by Mussie Hailu, who is circulating 200,000 copies of the poster. Mussie, a leading interfaith activist in Africa, has circulated half a million English-version Golden Rule posters throughout the continent. Around the world, Golden Rule posters can be found posted in school rooms, community centers, sanctuaries, internet sites, and homes around the world – a clear candidate for the most useful interfaith resource ever published.
The Parliament of the World’s Religions: 1893 and 1993
Contemporary reflections about interreligious institutions and practices commonly highlight an ambitious meeting in Chicago in 1893, termed the World’s Parliament of Religions, as a starting point of the modern interfaith movement.
Storytelling – It’s Not Just for Grown-Ups
Everyone loves a story. A child, recently-bathed with teeth brushed and damp hair drying into awkward tufts on a bedtime pillow … a professional, dressed in business casual at a boring conference presentation in a midtown hotel … an aging parent, lying in a nursing home bed no longer able to walk easily or remember the date. Age, disposition, and the surrounding context are irrelevant. Human brains perk up as soon as a narrative begins. Stories fascinate and engage, transcending time and place in way few other mediums can. Maybe this is why myths and legends hold such a special place in all faith traditions and why story-sharing has become an important component of multifaith exploration.
A Bible-Based, Interfaith Sunday School Curriculum
Faith, then, is a quality of human living. At its best it has taken the form of serenity and courage and loyalty and service: a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe, and to find meaning in the world and in one’s own life, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and is stable no matter what may happen to oneself at the level of immediate event.
Grassroots Interfaith Education Goes Global
The boarding school for missionary children in northern India that I attended 50 years ago was about seven miles across mountain roads from a new school for refugee Tibetans streaming out of their war-torn homeland. The Indian government provided the buildings, CARE packages helped clothe the kids, and food was found. But they had no teachers. So, as young Tibetan Buddhists who had lost their parents, they used the tools at their disposal to start their education.
A New Model for Teaching Children Religious Tolerance
Every morning at the Kaleidoscoop School (“kaleidoscope” in English) in the small town of Zeewolde, The Netherlands, children gather to light a candle and pray, or not, for themselves, those close to them, and the world. There is no compulsion or exclusion when it comes to prayer or belief in this interconfessional school, with roughly a quarter Protestant, a quarter Catholic, and half atheist, agnostic, or non-denominational students. While the school teaches children ages 4 through 12 the basic subjects as its first priority, it is within an open and non-dogmatic environment.
The Top Five Reasons to Study Religion
It’s not easy being chair of a religion department. August is an especially cruel month as we close out one academic year and start up a new one, and begin again to struggle with an increasingly vital challenge: recruiting and keeping more majors. I’ve been teaching at Emory University for over 20 years, and every August I begin to obsess about a question (mostly as I’m frantically trying to get my syllabus together for the new term) that’s at the center of my intellectual passion and personal livelihood: how do you convince people to study religion?
Elizabethtown Initiating a Major in Interfaith Leadership
Inspired by a national call from Interfaith Youth Core founder Eboo Patel, Elizabethtown College is the first in the United States to offer a major in interfaith leadership studies (ILS). The major, confirmed by Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core to be the first, is heavily supported by Patel, who has been a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
Exploding the Myths
by Victoria Furio
Using common sense to halt our perilous drift, Pope Francis snaps us back to our senses with a stunning reality check. His pointed comments in the encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home, pierce the bubbles of…
Report: NAIN Goes to Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Regina is a community of 210,000 set on the vast prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada nearly 500 miles from the nearest big city. To call it a hotbed of interfaith activity would court disbelief if you didn’t know better. But on July 19-22, Regina hosted the North American Interfaith Network’s 2015 NAINConnect, an annual event begun in 1988 that brings together grassroots interfaith activists deeply engaged in their local communities. Small communities like Craik, in Saskatchewan, population 453.
From Mono-religious to Multi-religious in England’s Schools
For centuries, education in England was provided by the Church of England and therefore included instruction in the Christian faith. The rapid growth of the urban population in the nineteenth century caused by the Industrial Revolution meant there were not enough schools. By 1850 only a third of the country’s children were receiving regular education. The Church and Voluntary societies built more schools, but a Board of Education was set up to provide additional schools from public funds. By 1882 school attendance became compulsory for children between the ages of five and ten. All schools had daily prayers and provided instruction in the Christian faith, although in state schools no ‘denominational teaching’ was allowed. A conscience clause permitted Jewish and other parents to remove children from such religious conditioning. Public or fee-paying schools also had a Christian ethos with daily chapel, divinity lessons, and often a clergyman as headmaster.
Sikh Studies Come to the GTU
The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) and the Sikh Foundation International have entered into an agreement to sponsor the teaching of Sikh Studies at the GTU beginning in the fall semester 2015.
Finding Meaning in the Mess
Environmental degradation, air pollution, animal extinction … how can we be good caretakers of our planet without becoming overwhelmed by the magnitude of these issues? How can scholars and religious communities respond to the call issued by 2014 president of the American Academy of Religion and GTU alum, Dr. Laurie Zoloth, to help fight climate change?
A Chinese Cong
The object in the photo is a Cong, which was used in Chinese burial rituals dating back to the Neolithic period. The piece is usually, as in this case, a piece of jade hollowed out in a tube or circular pattern on the inside and a rectangular shape on the exterior. “The circle comes close to the edges of the squared enclosure. Seen from above, the view of a Cong is that of a circle-in-a-square, or a mandala.”
Why is the Parliament of the World’s Religions Important?
Anyone who has attended one or more of the modern Parliaments (starting with the 1993 centennial celebration in Chicago) comes away with a multitude of stories and new friendships. Being with thousands of interfaith activists, by itself, tends to change your perspective on the world. TIO asked leaders from the interfaith movement to share with us briefly what they think is important about the Parliament of the World’s Religions. For a longer response, see Marcus Braybrooke’s reflection in this TIO on attending all the modern Parliaments.
3rd Annual Community Iftar in Nashville Community
Over 300 people from the Middle Tennessee community gathered at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee as a part of the Our Muslim Neighbor initiative’s 3rd Annual Community Iftar, an evening meal that ends the daily fast during Ramadan.
Religion in the News
As the one who compiles the “Interfaith News Roundup” (the stories of note found in TIO’s monthly aggregation), my sense is that mid-year 2015 is actually a relief, better than we have any right to expect. Bad news still abounds, particularly religiously related conflict and severely constricted religious freedom for millions. But a new cascade of nightmare stories didn’t show up again this month. The tragic exception was the terrible murder of nine people attending Bible study at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, casting the shadow of racist terrorism across the year. A silver lining was how it evoked one of Barrack Obama’s most powerful speeches, one that will go down in American history. (You’ll find text and video links in the Roundup.)
A Brief History of the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions
This brief history is reprinted from the Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology edited by William Wildman. This excerpt is the opening section of an entry that also surveys the themes of the Parliament and its legacy. You will find a bibliography there and footnotes for the various quotations.
A Green Pope? And Why Not?
Rush Limbaugh, conservative American radio star, cries: “This Pope is a Marxist!” Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, claims: “The Church is making the same mistake now that it made with Galileo 400 years ago.” Greg Gutfeld, of Fox News, calls the Pope “the most dangerous man on the planet.”