Click here for more information

StateofFormation.org

Current American discourse on religion and ethics is primarily defined by established leaders—ministers, rabbis, academics and journalists. There is an entire population of important stakeholders without a platform: the up-and-comers.

To remedy this, the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, Hebrew College, Andover Newton Theological School, and the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions have joined forces to create State of Formation, a forum for up-and-coming religious thinkers to draw upon the learning that is occurring in their academic and community work, reflect on the pressing questions of a religiously pluralistic society, and challenge existing religious definitions.

State of Formation is a community conversation between leaders in formation. Together, a cohort of seminarians, rabbinical students, graduate students, activists and the like—the future religious and moral leaders of tomorrow—are working to redefine the ethical discourse today.

Writers for State of Formation will demonstrate candor and respect, and State of Formation’s content will reflect the diversity of budding religious and ethical leadership in America and the particular learning that only occurs in religious and philosophical education. Above all, its contributors will address the pressing ethical issues of our pluralistic world.

The Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, the parent publication of State of Formation, is a program of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.

State of Formation: www.stateofformation.org

From Religion Link

he new movie The Social Network focuses on the drama of how Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, the online community that has exploded in popularity and, some say, transformed social interactions. But are virtual networks deepening or undermining interpersonal relationships — and our spiritual lives?

The question is a critical one for religious groups, since they have been eager adopters of this new technology.

Many ministries, religious nonprofits, houses of worship, clergy and small-group ministries now routinely maintain pages on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or other secular social networking sites, and many more religious groups and individuals have established presences on religion-oriented sites, such as ChristianNetwork and Muslimsocial.com. Twitter, too, is having an impact, as some clergy and laypeople tweet prayers, meditations and even entire religious services or the whole of the Bible in the 140-characters format.

In many respects the migration to the world of tweets and virtual communities is inevitable. Some 500 million people are on Facebook, for example, and the number is growing exponentially.

But some religious leaders express growing concerns about putting their faith in Facebook. They worry that religion and spirituality are being reduced to bytes and instant messages – mere blips on a screen – and that something crucial to faith, like a concrete sense of community and the experiential aspect of religious practice, is being lost. Others say not so. They hail social media as an effective way to attract new followers and keep them connected at all times.

This edition of ReligionLink explores the ongoing debate over faith and social networking.

…

INTERFAITH

• Beliefnet’s Community is the social networking area of the largest interfaith website.
• PeaceNext is the social networking site of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Click here to read the entire article.

PARTNER CITIES NETWORK

LAUNCHES PEACE CITIES INITIATIVE IN CONJUNCTION WITH

UN INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE

September 1, 2010

Chicago, IL – September 1, 2010 – The Partner Cities Network of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions is pleased to announce the launch of Peace Cities, a city-to-city interfaith networking opportunity for self-organized grass-roots interfaith groups, made available through PeaceNext.org.

The Peace Cities program recognizes the on-the-ground work of over 70 partner interfaith communities and their leaders who work to foster interfaith cooperation, peace, and social cohesion.  It serves to connect cities around the world that have hosted interfaith events in cooperation with the Partner Cities Network and the Parliament of World’s Religions (Chicago, USA 1993; Cape Town, South Africa 1999; Barcelona, Spain 2004; Monterrey, Mexico 2007 and Melbourne, Australia, 2009.)

Cities that have earned the designation of Peace City are able to post news about local interfaith events and to share resources with other Peace Cities through PeaceNext.org.  Peace Cities are eligible to apply to join the Partner Cities Network through a fast-track application process. 

The Peace Cities launch coincides with PeaceWeek, a global telesummit for building a culture of peace. A co-production of The Shift Network and The Peace Alliance, PeaceWeek is being held in conjunction with the UN International Day of Peace on September 21. This conference will feature over 50 leading international peacebuilders, pioneers, and innovators, and offer opportunities for personal growth and collective change.

The Peace Cities program of the Partner Cities Network invites all to participate in PeaceWeek, a global telesummit for building a culture of peace. A co-production of The Shift Network and The Peace Alliance, PeaceWeek is being held in conjunction with the UN International Day of Peace on September 21. This conference will feature over 50 leading international peacebuilders, pioneers, and innovators, and offer opportunities for personal growth and collective change. To join the PeaceWeek global conversations, please visit, www.peaceweek.info. Registrants will be able to participate for free in an unlimited number of live discussions and receive free access to the full library of event recordings.

The Partner Cities Network is also proud to partner with Odyssey Networks in “A Million Minutes for Peace” campaign. Our goal is to collect one million pledges to pray for peace for one minute at noon on the UN International Day of Peace. Please watch the 60-second video, and join us by pledging your prayer for peace.

Contact: Zabrina Santiago

Deputy Executive Director & Partner Cities Director

Phone: (312) 629-2990 x. 235

zabrina@parliamentofreligiong.org

_________________________________

About the Partner Cities Network

The Partner Cities Network seeks to build and connect the interreligious movement worldwide. It serves to create a global dynamic that will bind cities together and facilitates the sharing of best practices to inspire opportunities for cooperative action among cities. Partner Cities will soon launch collaborative programming and innovative resource sharing through online resource centers, quarterly webinars, and regional gatherings.

Currently six international cities form the growing network, with eight cities completing the application process in 2010. Cities currently designated as Partner Cities are Chicago, Illinois, USA; Cape Town, South Africa; Barcelona, Spain; Monterrey, Mexico; Melbourne, Australia and San Jose, California, USA.

About Peace Cities

Peace Cities is an initiative of the Partner Cities Network.  It seeks to bridge self-organized grass-roots interfaith initiatives in cities around the world through the Council’s social media platform, PeaceNext.org.

The following is from a blog posted to PeaceNext, the official online community of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions,

From June 21 to June 23, a large collection of religious leaders representing the world’s faiths will meet at the University of Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The World Religions Summit will be held concurrent to the G8 Summit in Huntsville, Ontario.

The purpose of the World Religions Summit is to encourage the nations represented at the G8 Summit to remain committed to the UN Millennium Development Goals, enter into dialogue from a multi-faith perspective regarding these Goals, and further press the issues of poverty, environmental degradation, and international cooperation.

These events mark an important occasion for the cooperative goals shared between political and religious leaders. Not only that, the World Religions Summit further expresses the need for interfaith cooperation in addressing the most pressing issues facing our planet today. James Christie, Secretary General of the 2010 G8 Religious Leaders Summit and Dean of Theology at The University of Winnipeg stated, “For the first time in recorded history, the religious and political leadership of G8 nations have a common language, for a common agenda, for the advancement of the whole human community rather than for sectarian or political goals. This is extremely encouraging as we move from theory to practice in attaining the Millennium Development Goals.”

Click here to read the blog and find links related to the Summit.

From a recent e-mail sent to all members of PeaceNext.org,

Dear PeaceNext friend,

We’d like to thank you for strengthening the interfaith movement through your
presence on PeaceNext. We are happy to share the release of Desmond Tutu’s 2014 Parliament Bid address – made first available here to our PeaceNext community.

Now on to the video… on May 20, Archbishop Desmond Tutu shared an inspiring message with the 2014 Parliament Bid Teams. He addressed the 10^th Anniversary Celebration of the 1999 Cape Town Parliament and also recognized the Cape Town Interfaith Initiative’s celebration of the official launch of the Charter for Compassion in South Africa. To begin the celebration, Karen Armstrong, a featured speaker of the 2009 Parliament also delivered a compelling message. Representatives from the Bid Cities, now narrowed down to Brussels, Belgium; Dallas, Texas, U.S.A; and Guadalajara, Mexico, were in attendance at the Chicago viewing along with friends and Council Trustees.

Click here to watch the video. The video is also being featured on PeaceNext‘s main page.

From a blog entry posted on PeaceNext,

On Tuesday night, June 10th in Chicago, Dirk Ficca, Eboo Patel, and Afeefa Syeed convened as part of a panel discussion moderated by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs entitled, “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: One Year Post-Cairo”.

For those unfamiliar with these speakers, Dirk Ficca is the executive director of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, Eboo Patel is the executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, and Afeefa Syeed is a
senior advisor at the USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) Middle East and Asia sectors. The panel marked the anniversary of U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo one year ago, wherein he made it an agenda of U.S. foreign policy to understand and promote religious diversity in its interactions with other nations. This would turn out to be an historic moment in U.S. foreign relations, as it admitted to its failure to adequately address the dynamics associated with an increasingly pluralistic world, as well as raising awareness of an inherent respect owed to religious and spiritual beliefs that had hitherto been, for the most part, ignored by the U.S. government.

The discussion was insightful and enlightening for those in attendance. It highlighted the great need for an appreciation of religious and spiritual life in foreign policy as well as society in general. Considering that each speaker is affiliated with different social and government agencies that do very different work, they were able to offer perspectives that allowed for a more comprehensive vision of what it means to promote public engagement of religious beliefs within a broad social context. Dirk Ficca noted the salience of religious and spiritual values in the human condition, its great contributions to political and social changes for present and past cultures, as well as the crisis it sometimes presents when a religion becomes embedded in political norms. Eboo Patel added to these comments by stressing the realities of a world becoming ever-more populated by youth who possess a power and presence in the global marketplace of ideas. Not only that, he appreciated the sensitivity of late adolescents and young adults who are searching for a sense of identity and a means for affecting a change in the world, all the while being influenced “by the winds of religion”, as he put it. Lastly, Afeefa Syeed added to these thoughts by offering her experience within a U.S. agency that is in the midst of a transition. This transition is intended to acknowledge religion as a major influencing factor in the areas U.S. representatives are working, and the ways in which the USAID is functioning more as a partner or mediator in communities, rather than as an authoritarian entity. One poignant description she had of this was working with a economically deprived community in Karachi, where her function was to ask the community leaders what was RIGHT or GOOD about their community, and working from that point forward in developing a plan to help.

Overall, each speaker agreed on the main points of their separate discussions. These points included the innate ability of religion to effect great good in the world, the increased need, now more than ever, for recognition among national and social entities regarding the value of religion and spirituality as a human quality that is neither diminishing nor able to be quenched, and the U.S.’s responsibility to respect and acknowledge this character in the myriad ways it is manifested in the world.

As with any discussion that is limited to only a few hours, however, there were several probing questions asked by both the moderators and members of the audience. One of these asked what the roles of non-profit organizations are for interfaith experiences. The moderator of the event, Rachel Bronson, asked a popular question, at least within the U.S., whether it might not be better to ignore or suppress religious identities, considering its tendency to influence violence in the world along with peace. Lastly, one question I was left with as an audience member was whether U.S. foreign policy is truly intent on becoming an active participant of religious dialogue for its fundamental worth, or whether this has simply been deemed an appropriate means for securing its own interests in a world it now recognizes as essentially religious. I leave these questions for you, users of PeaceNext, to ponder, as well as to comment on your perceptions of the panel discussion in general.

Click here to join PeaceNext and contribute to the conversation!

Bridging Babel: New Social Media and Interreligious Dialogue and Intercultural Understanding explores how social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube connect users with a culturally diverse audience, allowing for communication at an unprecedented level of speed and accessibility. This report was released by undergraduate fellows at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

The undergraduate fellows conducted 39 in-depth interviews with scholars, religious and interfaith leaders and technology experts. They also conducted a survey at the 2009 World Parliament of Religions in Australia and online through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn social media outlets.

Michael Nelson, visiting professor of Internet studies in Georgetown’s communications, culture and technology program, served as faculty advisor on the project.

“Together we’re exploring a brand new field and creating the best available source of information on how – and how not to –use Web 2.0 tools like Facebook to bridge the barriers between people of different faiths,” Nelson said.

While the interviews showed a diverse range of opinions about how to use social media to foster interreligious dialogue, with some saying that only face-to-face dialogue is useful, the report notes that online interaction is the wave of the future.

“Interfaith understanding is about communication, and communication is increasingly about new social media,” notes center director Thomas Banchoff in the report. “If we want to support dialogue across religious divides on the world’s most pressing policy challenges, we need a better grasp of how technology connects people and mobilizes them for action.”

Click here to read the full article

Launched in November 2008, the Listening Project began with a group of 15 listeners who desired to commit to being fully present through the practice of deep listening at the 2009 Parliament. Once there, members listened for the interconnectedness of life and listened in a manner that invited others to feel genuinely heard and to discover their own voices in a deeper way. Members listened for relatedness and partnership. They listened more than they spoke. When they did speak, they supported safe space and the cultivation of trust.  Members engaged without an agenda of any kind,  because they trusted that what was best would unfold naturally inside the space of deep listening. The 2009 Parliament Listening Project continues to practice compassionate present awareness in each and every moment. All are welcome to join monthly conference calls on the Second Sunday of each month. Please come and join “The Listening Project Group” on www.PeaceNext.org

Also, please join us for the rich vitality of our monthly conference calls on the Second Sunday of each month:

7 – 8 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S.)

Please call in 2 minutes ahead of the hour ~

U.S. Dial-in Number:   712-432-1600

International Dial-in Numbers
Austria: 0820 4000 1552
Belgium: 070 35 9974
France: 0826 100 256
Germany: 01805 00 76 09
Ireland: 0818 270 021
Italy: 848 390 156
Netherlands: 0870 001 920
Spain: 902 886025
Switzerland: 0848 560 179
UK: 44 (0) 844 581 9102).

PARTICIPANT CODE FOR EVERYONE: 984279#

Listening is the heart of true, loving communication. True, loving communication can solve any problem and mend any heart.

Visit www.sacredlistening.com for more information.

Delegates of the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia:

This is you!

To all sponsors, speakers, performers, organizers and delegates, we offer the heartfelt thanks of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions and all of our encouragement as you go forward to make a world of difference.

In the meantime, we hope to see you on PeaceNext, our official social network.

Please continue to visit our website, http://parliamentofreligions.org, for video, text, and photographic documentation of our Melbourne Parliament and details on developments to come!