As we enter into the final days and hours before the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, Australia, we would like to take some time to reflect on the work ahead.  The 2009 Parliament will be ripe with challenge and promise and we will engage this opportunity by considering the interreligious movement as a whole. We are happy to share this series of five articles to help attendees prepare for their Parliament experience.

Our fifth article is written by Rev. Dr. William Lesher, as an interview with Kosmos Journal.  Lesher discusses the relationship between individual and social transformations, the significance of the interreligious movement and his hopes for the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions.  It is a fitting conclusion to our series of articles in anticipation of the Melbourne Parliament.

Rev. Dr. Lesher has been active in the Parliament since its centennial gathering in Chicago in 1993, serving as an Ambassador for the Council in preparation for the 1999 Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa and as the convener of the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Lesher has worked with communities and institutions across the globe in various responsibilities for church bodies. He currently serves as a Trustee of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia and as a member of the Board for the Global Ethics and Religion Forum.  Please read his full article here.

As we enter into the final days and hours before the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, Australia, we would like to take some time to reflect on the work ahead.  The 2009 Parliament will be ripe with challenge and promise and we will engage this opportunity by considering the interreligious movement as a whole. We are happy to share this series of five articles to help attendees prepare for their Parliament experience.

Our fourth article is written by Kim Bobo and is titled Ending Poverty: Real Questions for the Interfaith Community.  Bobo affirms the interreligious impulse to combat poverty, but contrasts individual acts of charity with the difficult and often controversial problems of systemic poverty.  Her article is a call to an authentic and ambitious response to poverty, and addresses how this can be achieved at the Parliament of Religions.

Kim Bobo is the Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice and is the former Director of Organizing for the organization Bread for the World. She is the author of Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing and Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid – And What We Can Do About It, and co-author of Organizing for Social Change. She writes a column for the online magazine Religion Dispatches.  Please read her full article here.

As we enter into the final days and hours before the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, Australia, we would like to take some time to reflect on the work ahead.  The 2009 Parliament will be ripe with challenge and promise and we will engage this opportunity by considering the interreligious movement as a whole.

We are happy to share this series of five articles to help attendees prepare for their Parliament experience.

Our third article, written by Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether is titled Religion and the Continued Discrimination Against Women.  It opens with a critique of presumptions that discrimination against women has ended in spiritual and secular spheres.  The article presents the evidence of ongoing discrimination and argues for the hope of progress in such programs as the Parliament’s “Overcoming Poverty in a Patriarchal World.”

Dr. Ruether is the Carpenter Emerita Professor of Feminist Theology at Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union, and the Georgia Harkness Emerita Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.  Her many writings include America, Amerikkka: Elect Nation & Imperial Violence, The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and others.  Please read her full article here.

As we enter into the final days and hours before the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, Australia, we would like to take some time to reflect on the work ahead.  The 2009 Parliament will be ripe with challenge and promise and we will engage this opportunity by considering the interreligious movement as a whole.

We are happy to share this series of five articles to help attendees prepare for their Parliament experience.

Our second article, written by Dr. Judith Simmer-Brown, is titled Commitment and Openness: A Contemplative Approach to Pluralism.  The article reflects upon the relationship between pluralism and contemplation, suggesting that it is ultimately complementary and necessary.  The article treats this both in reference to the Parliament of Religions as well as in the context of the larger world.  Dr. Simmer-Brown is the Chair of Religious Studies at Naropa University and author of Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism.  Please read her full article here.

As we enter into the final days and hours before the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, Australia, we would like to take some time to reflect on the work ahead.  The 2009 Parliament will be ripe with challenge and promise and we will engage this opportunity by considering the interreligious movement as a whole.

We are happy to share this series of five articles to help attendees prepare for their Parliament experience.

Our first article, written by the Rev. Dr. Marcus Braybrooke, is appropriately enough titled Preparing for the Parliament of World Religions.  As a member of the Council’s International Advisory Committee and a vicar associated with the World Congress of Faiths, Rev. Braybrooke’s words are timely and insightful.  As he states, the Parliament “raises the profile of the wide range of interfaith activity across the world at local, national and international levels.”  Please read his full article here.