by Maij Vu Mai
What is religious pluralism to the Survivor? To the one who’s lost faith in themselves? Lost faith in other people? Lost faith in humanity? To the one who’s lost faith in their ability to connect because…
by Miranda Hovemeyer
I’ll be honest. I haven’t felt at home in the field of interfaith work for quite a while. During one of the last interfaith conferences I spoke at, I was asked by an older white gentleman why I was there, then insisting…
by Sable Manson
n the spring of 2020, I was working with my higher education colleagues to prepare for an interfaith retreat set on Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California. We had planned numerous…
by Najeeba Syeed
I’ve written about “casserole” hospitality, an ethic of care demonstrated in America’s Heartland found in communities of various traditions who welcome…
What is religious pluralism? The Aspen Institute defines it as “the state of being where every individual in a religiously diverse society has the rights, freedoms, and safety to worship, or not, according…
From Sudan to Chicago or Shanghai, defining, enjoying, and sustaining a blessed community is a tough assignment. Since humans became human, we’ve hungered for a thriving, protective community…
In the two years we’ve been gone, the challenge in developing interfaith relations has received a body blow through the accelerating corruption of language and communication…
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
The original impulse to create TIO nine years ago came from realizing how very much interfaith activity was sprouting up in the world and how very little most people knew about it, local interfaith activists included.
What does it take to create and nurture healthy interfaith culture? Good intentions and an open heart are surely necessary.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Hundreds of thousands of pages have been written detailing the history and doctrines of our particular religious traditions, most of them demonstrating how different we are from each other.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Eight years ago, on September 15, 2011, TIO was launched. That makes this the 89th monthly issue. (We skip August.) Since then this publication has featured more than 1,000 interfaith stories along with…
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Some of you may not know that TIO takes August off, so we wanted to drop this note. Meanwhile, month by month the case gets stronger that our communities, the nation, and the world are in dire need of the art of building friendly relations regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or culture.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
The most important shift in the world of disaster response today relates to our communication capabilities.
by Paul Chaffee
Safety is already on the agenda of most of the hundreds of interfaith nonprofits across the US and globally.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
I’ve been asked why TIO would devote an entire issue to one organization – the United Religions Initiative (URI). That’s a fair question.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is a military term referring to opposing nations each having nuclear weapons. The argument for maintaining nuclear weapons is…
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Drums and flutes are among the oldest tools empowering human beings to explore who we are. We have historical evidence that drums go back at least 7,500 years and probably much earlier.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Historians looking back at 2018 will have little difficulty describing the mayhem and trauma the world was facing.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
In preparing each month’s TIO, we typically invite two or three more contributors than we usually publish, on the safe assumption…
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
A strong case can be made that humankind is approaching a tipping point, a time and place where we fall off the edge of the cliff, victims of our own greed and need to exploit a weary, wounded, and depleted Earth.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Nineteen years ago … but I remember it vividly. Stepping onto a crowded hotel elevator, I encountered interfaith luminary Huston Smith and a group of American Indian leaders in their full tribal vestments
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
The digital world has become so enmeshed into our daily lives that it’s difficult to isolate and define it, much less critique it.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
TIO marks its own birthday this month, seven years after the first issue posted.
by Paul Chaffee, Editor
Truth be told, every issue of TIO is a celebration of interfaith story-telling. This month, though, we wanted to focus on the subject itself – telling stories – and the special power they have, particular when interfaith realities are addressed.
