Chicago Council on Global Affairs Examines “Crossroads of Faith”
From The Chicago Council
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2010
PUBLIC PROGRAM
CROSSROADS OF FAITH: BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
Eliza Griswold, Writer and Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation
The tenth parallel is the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator at which Christianity and Islam intersect—a profound encounter that shapes the lives of more than a billion people. Of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, more than half live along the tenth parallel, as do roughly sixty percent of the world’s two billion Christians. Join us for a conversation to examine the complex relationships at play along the tenth parallel, an ideological front line stretching across two continents and nineteen countries, that evinces the interaction of religion, both Christian and Islamic, with local conflicts, global ideology, politics, martyrdom, and the struggle for natural resources in the contemporary world.
Eliza Griswold, award-winning investigative journalist, poet, writer, and now Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, has spent the past five years living and researching along the tenth parallel. A recipient of the 2010 Rome Prize from The American Academy in Rome, Griswold has won awards for both her non-fiction works and her poetry. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, she reports on religion, conflict, and human rights. Her first book of poems, Wideawake Field, was published in 2007. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, and The New Republic, among other publications.
Her latest book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, will be available for purchase and signing following the program.
