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Meaning Making, Environment/Climate, Coexistence
Sofia Sayabalian
Among Ice, Lichen, and Light

by Sofia Sayabalian

Having the opportunity to visit Reykjavík, Iceland was a special one. I always thought of Iceland as an isolated place–far, freezing, and frosted with whispers…

Among Ice, Lichen, and Light
March 2025, Inclusivity, Meaning Making, Ethics
Frank DiGirolamo
Authoring our Shared Story

by Frank DiGirolamo

“Wow! … You just listened to my whole anthem.” It was late at night, years ago, on North Broadway in Capitol Hill. “Miguel” had just recited his life story to me for a good 20 minutes…

Authoring our Shared Story
March 2025, Family
Camila Torres
Echale! The Story of Generations Past

by Camila Torres

When I was a child, I was terrified of the dark. I hated going to sleep, because, once the lights turned off, the sheer possibility of encountering a monster kept me awake…

Echale! The Story of Generations Past
Judaism, Family, March 2025
Amina Malkin
An Inheritance of History

by Amina Malkin

When talking about religion, my father will sometimes talk about “the chosen people,” a title that Jewish people have historically adopted as a way to reference being descended from…

An Inheritance of History
March 2025, Family
Gabby Prado
An Ongoing Legacy of Faith and Family

by Gabby Prado

Throughout my life, I’ve lived by the belief that my success and achievements are not solely mine but are deeply connected to the generations of my family who came before me…

An Ongoing Legacy of Faith and Family
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Doctrine, Ritual, and Spiritual Development

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Doctrine, Ritual, and Spiritual Development

Doctrine – the codification of beliefs, teachings, and practices – is an important element for established institutional religions. It clarifies what a religion expects of its followers, how to behave toward one another and…

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When Nature Talks Back

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Several years ago, I attended a North American Interfaith Network (NAIN) “Connect” in Las Vegas. The program was organized in three tracks, including one called “Caring for Creation.” As might be expected, all of the Pagans and indigenous people gravitated towards that track.

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What Is Indigeneity?

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Can indigenous peoples not practice indigenous religions? What if a non-indigenous person claims to practice their religion? Can people normally not considered indigenous have an indigenous religion? What if they claim they are reconstructing a tradition that died out? What does “indigenous” actually mean, and how does it relate to both people and religion? While I will offer some general suggestions of my own, the most important part of this essay explains why these apparently simple questions are so complicated.

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Struggling to Keep the Cosmovisión Alive

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Every town, every culture has a concept of reality which accords with their life experience. The Aztecs, Mayan and Incas, peoples indigenous to Central and South America, created their own cosmovisión, as a way of conceiving the universe.

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Renouncing the Doctrine of Discovery/Reclaiming Mother Earth

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Hidden Seeds of Natural Healing & Curing was held last July, a gathering of 33 indigenous representatives from six continents, including two youth, ages 13 and 14, a council of leaders gathered to reflect on the global situation they and their peoples face. Hosted by United Religions Initiative’s Global Indigenous Initiative, participants met for three days near Napa Valley in Northern California.

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The Invisibility and Inevitability of Polytheism

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The books you read can often illuminate patterns within the culture and society that you may not have noticed, or re-contextualize thoughts you’ve already had. Such is the case with A Million and One Gods: The Persistence of Polytheism (2014, Harvard University Press) by Page duBois, a Distinguished Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego. For the well-read Pagan or polytheist, much of what duBois says regarding the worship of multiple gods and powers won’t be all that new, but the cumulative goal to advocate for a course-correction within academia regarding the concept of polytheism underlines just how pervasive monotheism is within Western culture’s assumptions and thinking, even from the scholars who are supposed to be dispassionate observers and analysts.

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Saving Pagan Lives

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Serving on the global council of the United Religions Initiative (URI) for 15 years has given me a new perspective on my own spiritual family. URI has grown to become the largest grassroots interfaith organization in the world, with more than 650 local groups in over 85 countries. Through URI, I have seen the power that comes with the “indigenous, tribal, polytheistic, Nature-based, Earth-centered, and/or Pagan religions” being understood as a single group. One story makes the point.

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Opening the Indigenous Door

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Opening the Indigenous Door
Full Disclosure – Don Frew and Paul Chaffee have been friends and colleagues in the interfaith vineyard for more than 15 years, and Don has been a TIO supporter from the time the idea first glimmered. However close this association, though, devoting a credible exploration of “Indigenous Traditions in the Modern World” and leaving him out would be impossible. For 30 years Elder Don Frew has been the official interfaith representative of Covenant of the Goddess, the world’s largest Wiccan tradition. Don is a witch, a misunderstood word which can repel those unacquainted with paganism. But his relations with leaders from all traditions, established and indigenous, and within his own community are a perfect antidote to that discomfort. A grassroots bridge-builder with a global reach, he has championed indigenous, Earth and Nature-based traditions around the world, developing ways for them to be in dialogue with the rest of the global interfaith/interspiritual community. If you are interested in pagan and indigenous interfaith relations, you need to know about Don Frew. Ed.

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Collective Impact and Islamophobia

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I was first introduced to Middle Tennessee two years ago when I attended a community meeting addressing hate crimes against Muslims. What was planned to be a small group of concerned citizens turned out to be a behemoth of a gathering: more than 1,000 protestors arrived from neighboring states and beyond, led by Islamophobe Pamela Geller and her Act! for America.

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Restoring Bear Lodge’s Sacred Name

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For the many Native Americans engaged with Religions for Peace USA through the National Congress of American Indians and other affiliations, sacred spaces and certain key geographic landmarks are essential components to their spiritual practices. They serve as places of prayer and as signs of their peoples’ identity and longevity in this country.

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Let’s Get this Party Started!

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Humans may be hard-wired for collaboration. Of all the great apes, humans are the only ones who regularly collaborate in food-seeking situations. In fact, developmental research suggests that this evolutionary approach to resource gathering may underlie our tendency to share resources more equitably amongst ourselves. Even three-year-old children will share toy rewards if they are received through collaborative efforts (Nature, 2011). Despite that, interfaith collaborations that involve children are still in their infancy stage. Like the 10-month-old tentatively taking those first steps without holding on to anyone’s fingers, those of us doing interfaith work with kids are still feeling our way.

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Saying Yes to a New Kind of Collaboration

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We are living in a remarkable time for humanity. The old order is indeed crumbling around us. We are being faced daily with new and alarming consequences of our degradation of the Earth, a greed-based value system that undermines human dignity, and a culture of fear that fuels violence and hatred of the ‘other.’

A Higher Collaborative Imperative

Focusing on ‘collaboration’ in an interfaith publication may seem redundant. All interfaith activity is collaborative, you might say. Collaboration is ‘who we are’! True enough. But we need to notice how we practice what we preach. We live in the midst of siloed interfaith organizations, many of whom don’t know each other and have weak relations with faith organizations as well. Institutionally we lack the connective tissue that will give the interfaith movement its real identity and voice(s). We’re badly in need of seeing the larger picture.

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Transforming the Religious Impulse Gone Bad

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Eric Schmitt’s recent New York Times story, “In Battle to Defang ISIS, U.S. Targets Its Psychology,” was startling. You might, at first glance, call it 2014’s most hopeful story about the nightmare called the “Islamic State” and its echoes around the world. Schmitt profiles Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East. Nagata has organized a military/academic/private-sector think-tank to ask: “What makes the Islamic State so dangerous?”

Review: Spiritual Guidance across Religions

As a health care chaplain for 15 years and now director of a large and wonderfully diverse health system chaplaincy department, I was delighted to be asked to review Spiritual Guidance Across Religions: A Sourcebook for Spiritual Directors and Other Professionals Providing Counsel to People of Differing Faith Traditions (2014). The book is a 400-page tome edited by John Mabry, who invited 23 highly qualified practitioners of spiritual care from different religious, spiritual traditions to contribute.

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A Child Vows Silence for the Climate's Sake

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As noted in last month’s TIO, communities around the world gathered for prayer vigils for the climate discussion going on in Lima,Peru. They were the #LightforLima, asking for strong climate action from the world’s leaders. The Our Voices campaign, a global multifaith campaign for a strong UN Climate treaty, is gearing up for 2015. But the work we do in 2015 depends on sharing the successes of our previous work. Light for Lima has been our best and brightest action.

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From Collaboration to Co-Creation

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What’s the most exciting experience you’ve had collaborating across differences in faith, culture, and ideology? Have you ever entered into collaborative relationships and been truly surprised by the result? What enabled those experiences to happen?

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Duane Elgin – Profile of a Visionary

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Duane Elgin, who might be deemed the most important visionary alive if more people knew about him, is a man who defies attempts at ‘categorization.’ But if you are involved with multicultural, interfaith work and care about humankind’s future, you need to know about this joyfully complex thinker who is offering a vision and tools for achieving our highest goals.

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Len Swidler– the Quest for a Deeper Dialogue

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The indefatigable Leonard Swidler, now in his 87th year and best known for founding the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, is renewing two of his Interreligious Dialogue (IRD) initiatives. This good news coincides with the publication of a lively biography, There Must Be You (2014) by River Adams, and Swidler’s own Dialogue for Interreligious Understanding (2014), which summarises much of his thinking.

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Religion Inside Out: The Story of One Person Collaborating

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“Religion Inside Out” – that was the tag line the Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord, an Episcopal priest, attached to The Guibord Center (TGC), a unique non-profit organization. Less than four years old, it is making its mark on the interfaith landscape in Southern California and beyond.