from CBS News Religion and Culture

This program airs throughout December and will be online after Dec 18.

FINDING COMMON GROUND: TODAY’S INTERFAITH MOVEMENT looks at how the interfaith movement has evolved over the years.

The program visits with Rev. Dirk Ficca, Executive Director of the Chicago-based Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.  The Parliament hosts the world’s largest interreligious gathering, meeting every five years in a different part of the world. People of every faith are invited to share their religious identities, dialogue and voice their hopes and concerns for the future.

One of the most interesting things about the modern interfaith movement, according to Rev. Ficca, is that cooperation among people of different faiths is more mainstream than ever. He says, “For me, it’s when a local imam and rabbi and Catholic priest in Downers Grove meet every Thursday for lunch and talk about how to get their three communities to know each other, and somehow replicating that all over the United States, all over the world. That’s where I put my hope.”

We also hear from Dr. Eboo Patel, founder and president of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) based in Chicago, Ill. This nonprofit organization was founded in 2002, based on the idea that the most powerful common ground between all faith traditions is the inspiration to serve others. Dr. Patel and his organization are working with the youth of today as a means to thwart religious extremism and encourage interfaith understanding and leadership. “I think the world looks different,” Dr. Patel says, “if America’s college campuses become models of interfaith cooperation and graduate a critical mass of interfaith leaders.”

When the White House announced the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge in March of this year, IFYC worked as an advisor and partnered to craft the nationwide program.

One of the schools participating in the President’s challenge is Albright College, a private liberal arts school in Reading, Penn. Rev. Paul Clark, the school’s chaplain, will be shepherding the project with a group of interfaith student leaders.  He says, “If we can apply this kind of model of talking to one another, and then reaching out to the larger community, then something really important could happen here.”

Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Reading, Penn. has the largest share of residents living in poverty per capita. In an effort to help the marginalized, the religious community of Reading has come together and worked in partnership to help alleviate the symptoms of poverty.  We hear from Rabbi Brian I. Michelson, Rabbi of Reform Congregation Oheb Sholom; Elsayed [Steve] Elmarzouky, President of the Islamic Center of Reading, and Michael J. Kaucher, Executive Director of the Reading Berks Conference of Churches, about how working together to serve their community has reinforced their belief in the need for interreligious dialogue and cooperation at the local level.

John P. Blessington is the executive producer and Liz Kineke is the producer.  FINDING COMMON GROUND is produced in cooperation with the National Council of Churches, Consortium of Roman Catholic organizations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Union of Reform Judaism and the New York Board of Rabbis.

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Click here to watch online (after Dec 18)

by Bud Heckman

How do we know when we have arrived in the interfaith movement?  When religious pluralism is normative?  When religious differences don’t cause conflict or even concern?

Things have been changing rapidly in the expanding field of interfaith relations. Therefore, it may be worth measuring our progress by some milestones of our achievement rather than by an elusive final destination.  I want to suggest six different markers of hope which I see, and I want to invite you to share your own markers of hope and stories of success.

I see great progress in: academic legitimization, institutional development, research expansion, intra-field cooperation, government partnerships, and specialization of work.  A brief example on each milepost:

Academy – When Diana Eck addressed the American Academy of Religion (AAR) as President five years ago, I glumly noted to her that, out of the hundreds and hundreds of workshops at the AAR, only two referenced “interfaith.”  Through the Pluralism Project, Diana built an entire industry out of the study of religious pluralism with dozens of scholars and researchers in her network. Yet the academy was largely stuck in the dry approaches of comparative religion and history of religion. This year’s AAR program, however, is so chock full of practical “interfaith” things that a person could go to just such workshops for the full five days.

At the same time, seminaries are re-inventing their approaches to the religious “other,” following the groundbreaking lead of the folks at Hartford, Auburn, and Claremont Lincoln.

Colleges and universities are similarly signing up wholesale for the array of services of the Interfaith Youth Core to transform their campuses and tomorrow’s leaders.

Institution Building – Interfaith organizations are growing like spring grass.  In 2003, I started research with a team of interns at Religions for Peace USA to count and categorize interfaith organizations.  We took Chris Coble’s earlier research and expanded it to find 17 different kinds and more than 1,000 interfaith organizations in the US.  Eight years later, a new breed of taxonomers is telling me they have more than 25 categories.  With my colleagues at Coexist Foundation USA, we just catalogued nearly 2,000 interfaith entities.

Research – The Coexist Foundation has invested a great deal in research through Gallup on perceptions of Muslims and the global success of interfaith relations.  But our research is just one of dozens of efforts.  The researchers at Hartford Institute for Religion Research have had a decade-long look at interfaith relations and are showing from 2 to 4 fold growth in shared experiences of “worship” and common action across faith lines.  ARDA, Glenmary Research Center, Public Religion Research Institute, and many others are producing equally important data.

Cooperation – In response to the public relations disaster of Park51 last summer, six New York-based interfaith organizations worked together this year under the umbrella of Prepare NY.  This first-ever multi-organizational interfaith effort has resulted in hundreds of dialogues and in a more peaceful, constructive, and meaningful celebration for the 10^th Anniversary of 9/11.  Religions for Peace USA joined with Groundswell, Hebrew College and other institutions to release a statement together about our shared focus after 9/11.

Government Partnerships – Religions for Peace has pioneered fostering government-religious community partnerships, which hold much promise for scaling interfaith relations.  Recently , I had the pleasure of serving on the Interreligious Cooperation Task Force of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and had the pleasure of seeing the new ways in which government is becoming responsive to religious communities. The US Government is just one among many governments who have taken a unique interest in advancing interfaith relations.   Qatar, Norway, Indonesia, Finland, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia are but a few of the countries doing creative new things to foster multifaith cooperation.

Specialization – The waters were much murkier twenty years ago, before the resurgence of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and even ten years ago, before the 9/11-inspired surge of interfaith growth.  Organizations were less clear about their niches, their unique value added.  With today’s clarity and specialization of mission comes better funding, cooperation, and focused impact.

No longer the infant, the interfaith movement is more like the awkward teenager, showing signs of becoming a promising adult, but not there yet.  What is next?  We have room to grow.

Funding is one of the most critical areas that must come along further, if we can say we have succeeded.  My recent research shows an array of new funders starting to test the waters of supporting interfaith relations.  While the continued down global economy and shifts in focus for a handful of the original funders for the movement may give some pause, The Coexist Foundation has been working hard to be one of many in a hopeful countercurrent of support at this critical hour.

The Coexist Foundation is awarding an endowed annual US$100,000 Coexist Prize for an unsung hero/heroine in interfaith relations, and we wish to celebrate the stories of your success that are worthy of being told.  Video stories will be made of the finalists and shared at the announcement of winners next Spring.

We have to continue to progress along the above lines and make advancements in other areas.  For instance, we have to: more effectively engage traditional and new media, articulate standards and measurable outcomes, and help a new, forward-looking generation come into mid-life leadership roles in the movement.

With our common efforts, religious pluralism can become the norm.

____________________________________________

Rev. Bud Heckman is the Director of External Relations at the Coexist Foundation and the Executive Director of Religions for Peace USA.  Your comments are welcome:  bud@coexistfoundation.net.

by Eboo Patel from Huffington Post

What’s the Dalai Lama’s secret? He’s got over two million Twitter followers, people buy his books in droves, his speeches sell out stadiums. In a highly cynical age, he’s held the public’s attention for over two decades with some pretty elementary ideas: the essence of human nature is to be happy, human beings are happiest when they help others attain happiness, all major religions nurture the most basic ingredient of happiness, namely compassion, but you don’t have to be religious to be compassionate, you just have to live up to the basic goodness of your human nature.

Like Socrates saying “I know that I know nothing”, it’s not just the simplicity of the message that attracts people, it’s the remarkable journey of the man who is articulating it. The story of his escape from Tibet into India, his successful establishment of a government in exile, his continual advocacy for peaceful negotiations with his Chinese occupiers even while the culture and lives of his people are crushed day after day — these things are well known, and more than enough to command admiration and attention.

But what is astounding about the Dalai Lama is how much more he is than the spiritual, symbolic and political (although he’s stepping down from that role) leader of the Tibetan people. For those of us who believe religion is a source of inspiration and a bridge of cooperation, at a time when people presenting religion as a bomb of destruction are ruling the airwaves, the Dalai Lama is our single most powerful example. It is this part of his mission — Dalai Lama as interfaith leader, which is also the subject of his most recent book, “Towards a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together” — that has brought him to Chicago for a set of presentations sponsored by the Theosophical Society.

Like much of what the Dalai Lama does, the book and his presentations have been deceptively simple. He states clearly that inter-religious cooperation has to be one of the central priorities for our world, and says that it is one of his three core missions in life, along with promoting the basic human values of compassion and happiness, and finding a solution to the crisis of Tibet…

Click here to read the full article

Roman Catholics decorate star and crescent of Islam for Dalai Lama's visit

The Dalai Lama’s message of compassion long has transcended Tibetan Buddhism and enchanted people of all faiths — and no faith.

It’s an ethos that blends spirituality with humanism and logic, common ground on which most religious traditions tend to agree.

This weekend, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th dalai lama and spiritual leader of troubled Tibet, will bring tidings to Chicago that address religious tensions head on and prescribe what it takes to ease them.

The anticipation of his arrival inspired a dozen religious communities to undertake an unusual artistic endeavor that will provide the backdrop to the Dalai Lama’s appearance Sunday on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Framing the Dalai Lama on stage will be a dozen towering religious icons created by artists of other traditions. Roman Catholics decorated a star and crescent of Islam. Native Americans created the nine-pointed star of the Baha’i faith. An African-American Protestant congregation on the South Side incorporated the design of the 4,000-year-old symbol of Zoroastrianism, a tradition some didn’t know existed before the project.

“It’s an amazing show of support and unity that different people of different faiths actually came together,” said Nina Norris, a member of St. Matthias Catholic Church in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. “The fact that it’s guided under the Dalai Lama is maybe the only way it could happen.”

Invited by the Theosophical Society in America, the group that hosted the monk’s first visit to the Chicago area in 1981, the Dalai Lama will present a public talk Sunday at the UIC Pavilion.

On Monday morning at downtown’s Harris Theater for Music and Dance, he will join a rabbi, a pastor and a Muslim scholar for a panel discussion titled “Building Bridges: Religious Leaders in Conversation with the Dalai Lama.” The panel will be moderated by Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core.

Tim Boyd, president of the Theosophical Society in America, which is based in Wheaton, said the Dalai Lama thought for three seconds before he accepted his invitation during a private audience last year. After all, it was his introduction to the Theosophical Society in India 55 years ago that opened his eyes to the plethora of world religions beyond his own, Boyd said.

“It was the first time he had met people who believed there was value in the religions of the world and there was a certain essence they all shared,” Boyd said. “At that time, he was a 21-year-old monk. To him, Buddhism was all that he knew and all that he thought was appropriate. After that meeting, he left there a changed man.”

by Peter Laurence

With religious and spiritual diversity increasingly present at colleges and universities around the world, there is a great need—and increasing recognition of that need—for new resources and collaboration to address these issues and prepare students to live and work in a religiously diverse world.

Toward that end, Education as Transformation (EasT) was formed as an international project of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. It was launched in 1998 with a conference that was attended by over 800 people from colleges and universities throughout the United States and beyond, and has worked since then to provide educational institutions with the means to develop their religious life programs, staffing and facilities.

EasT works to explore the impact of religious diversity on higher education and the potential of religious pluralism as a strategy to address the dramatic growth of religious diversity in American colleges and universities.

EasT also examines the role of spirituality at colleges and universities, and particularly its relationship to curriculum development; the cultivation of values; moral and ethical development; and the fostering of global learning communities and responsible global citizens. Religion is a global phenomenon, and students will not be as ready for globalization if they lack knowledge about religion.

To attain these goals, EasT has developed books and other resource materials and has provided presentations at professional conferences, as well as direct consulting services for individual campuses. A great deal still needs to be changed if college and university campuses are to become centers of pluralism.

To encourage that change, EasT has fostered many innovative approaches to religious life in education. These include:

• A staffing model for Religious Life Departments that relies on an administrator who does not function as a representative of any particular religious tradition, but who coordinates the work of a team of advisors, each representing a major religious group on campus.
• The creation of a team of religious life advisors who serve their particular religious communities on campus but work together in ways that provide visible illustrations of multi-religious cooperation and collaborate with colleagues in other academic and administrative departments.
• The institution of a student multifaith council, where students from each religious group on campus meet regularly to form a sense of community and discuss issues of religious diversity.
• The development of programs that bring students together across religious lines, including campus-wide celebrations that serve to create visibility for religious diversity and cooperation.
• The construction or renovation of campus facilities to provide a multi-faith center that serves the needs of all of the religious groups at the institution.

Most recently, Education as Transformation has begun serving as a resource for the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge: Advancing Interfaith Cooperation and Community Service in Higher Education, “an initiative inviting institutions of higher education to commit to a year of interfaith cooperation and community service programming on campus.” This initiative is led by the White House, through its Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and is supported by the Department of Education, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), and the Interfaith Youth Core.

The college or university campus is a place in which students come into contact with religious diversity in new ways. In its recent history, the educational system of the United States has tended to marginalize religion. But by avoiding the questions raised by religious diversity, that system has narrowed the field of inquiry available to students. Instead, by exploring the broad spectrum of religious expression historically and in the world today, not only as an academic pursuit but as a living facet of humanity, the phenomena of religion and spirituality can be brought to light and countless misunderstandings can be overcome. As we see it at Education as Transformation, this is a vital educational experience.

Interfaith Youth Core is offering opportunities for training to empower the interfaith movement on college campuses.

Interfaith Leadership Institutes are 3-day intensives that equip students and their campus allies to be movement builders for interfaith action. Come find out how your campus can join the growing number of campuses who are changing the way they think about religious diversity through the Better Together Campaign.

Upcoming Institutes:

• June 28 – July 1, Dominican University in Chicagoland
• July 25- 28, Georgetown University in Washington D.C.
• Fall, TBD, West Coast

Applications are due May 20. Apply by May 10, 2011 to save $50 per person.

The Better Together Campaign is about students of diverse religious and non-religious beliefs working to make the world Better – Together. It is a campus-based campaign of interfaith action in which students choose an issue to impact (like domestic poverty or global warming) and tackle it by working together. Each campus can send a delegation of up to three students and up to two staff or faculty allies to attend an Institute.

Students should apply if you’re excited about creating a movement of interfaith action on your campus by organizing the Better Together Campaign during the next school year. This Institute will give you three jam-packed, high-energy days of trainings, relationship building, and inspiration, equipping you to:

• Speak out on the importance of interfaith action,
• Mobilize fellow students to take action, and
• Sustain your efforts to create a lasting impact on campus.

Staff and faculty members should apply if you want to network, share best practices on interfaith work with your colleagues from other campuses, and support student leaders as they plan their Better Together Campaign. The Institute will provide you with the concrete skills to:

• Engage religious diversity on campus in new, creative, and positive ways;
• Bridge student-led efforts to interfaith initiatives across your institution;
• Expand the depth, scope, and reach of interfaith engagement on campus; and
• Lead efforts to transform your institution into a model of interfaith cooperation.

For more information, please visit ifyc.org

From The Huffington Post

So the story begins like this. Four students, an Ahmadi Muslim, a Protestant Christian, a Sikh and a Hindu are crammed into a tiny dorm room at Princeton University. Each comes out three days later, having discovered the solution for world peace. Yeah, seriously.

Last weekend, Princeton University hosted the 5th Annual Coming Together Interfaith Conference (CT5), a conference designed to counter a growing threat to our humanity: the gap in interfaith relations. While there were far too many inspirational attendees to mention, adherents from virtually every faith participated. There was Tom the Confuscist, who also happened to be a brilliant stand-up comedian. There was Cameron, the aspiring Christian Minister and Emily, an atheist with a zeal for humanity. There was Muhammad, a Muslim from Wake Forest with an incredible voice for Quranic recitation, and Irteza from Stanford, with a talent for Bengali music. Who can forget David, an Orthodox Jew who passionately sang G-d’s praises during Shabbat, and Connor, who sang about his love for the Pope. Silent but profound was Sunil the Buddhist-Hindu, and due credit to Rahul, a devout Hindu who coordinated an excellent presentation on spirituality in action.

Click here to read entire post.

From America Magazine

The subject line of the e-mail read: “Ten reasons Muslims can’t be Americans.” The young Christian woman, who had received the chain message from a fellow member of a church committee, knew the content of the e-mail was full of lies. She chose to respond—kindly, respectfully—with the truth. As she typed her reply she drew on her experience working at the Interfaith Youth Core. As an intern with the organization she collaborated with Muslims on a daily basis, befriended Muslims, and participated in dialogue and service with them. She clicked “send” and hoped for the best.

The response from her fellow committee members was not as kind, however. Many were angered by her response and told her so. The young woman now attends a different church, but she doesn’t regret her actions.

The courage and commitment to truth displayed by the young woman is the kind Eboo Patel hoped to foster when he co-founded the Interfaith Youth Core in 1998, at the age of 22. The Core—spelled this way to represent its place at the center of a larger movement—works to provide the tools and support college students need to become leaders in interreligious dialogue. These leaders, Patel says, are young men and women “who have the framework, the knowledge base and the skill set to bring people from different religions together to build understanding and cooperation.” In light of the ongoing and much-publicized controversy surrounding Park51, the proposed Islamic center a few blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, as well as the anti-Islam protests popping up in cities across the country, these skills are especially needed today.

Click here to read the entire article.

Ambassador Ande, right, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions is pleased to announce its newest international Ambassador, Emmanuel Ivorgba Ande.

Mr. Ande is currently the Executive Director of the New Era Educational and Charitable Support Foundation, which he founded in 2006 to engage local youth in interfaith dialogue. Mr. Ande has also been active with Interfaith Youth Core, facilitating a Global Interfaith Movement Project in Nigeria.

The Council is pleased to welcome Emmanuel to the Ambassador Program, a select opportunity for passionate interfaith leaders around the world.

To learn more about the Ambassador Program, please click here.

From The Chicago Tribune

Since it was founded more than two decades ago, the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago has come to a consensus on issues such as housing and gun control, served as a resource for local law enforcement and brought religious leaders together to do work in the community.

But as the organization celebrates its 25-year anniversary, its leaders say that helping local congregations better address major social issues — such as poverty and violence — is crucial to meeting the challenges of the 21^st century.

“One of the major challenges before us is how do we take what we’re doing at the top level … and get it down to the average person in the pew and on the prayer rug,” said the Rev. Stanley L. Davis, co-executive director of the council, which is made up of some of Chicago’s top religious leaders.

Helping local congregations take action on those issues is one way, said professor William Schweiker, director of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

“It is important to include congregations in these discussions,” said Schweiker. “It allows religious people a way to voice their concerns beyond the claims of ‘official’ statements.”

…Chicago has been the home of formal interfaith conversations since the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, a gathering of international religious leaders during the World’s Columbian Exposition. The Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago was founded in 1985 by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who sought to tackle social injustices head on. Its core message to the city was clear: Your leaders of faith, however different, can sit at one table and tackle sensitive issues with respect and candor.

At the time, those religious leaders came from the city’s Christian and Jewish communities, but as Chicago has grown more diverse, so has the council. Today, its members also include Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians, Mormons, Sikhs and Baha’is.

…Dirk Ficca, executive director of the Chicago-based Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, said continuing the discussion is what’s important.

“If people can come to the table and have sharp disagreements and really engage, to me that is the healthiest sign of navigating religious diversity,” he said.

Click here to read the entire article.