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NAINConnect 2008 Workshops |
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Theme: Multifaith Challenges We Face
ASSEMBLY 1 - NORTH AMERICA IN AN INTERFAITH WORLD - WHAT DO WE HAVE TO OFFER? WHAT DO WE HAVE TO LEARN?
WORKSHOP SUMMARY
Plenary Session - All Attending
Leaders from the world’s two largest grassroots interfaith organizations – the Parliament of the World’s Religions and United Religions Initiative – share stories about how North American interfaith activity at the local level can be a positive, vital interfaith force outside North America. Along with talking about what North America has offered the world, they will explore what we need to learn.
PRESENTERS
William Lesher, Helen Spector, William Swing, and Yoland Trevino, moderated by Yasmine Khan
Bill Lesher chairs the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. He has been associated with the CPWR since the centennial Parliament in 1993 when he was serving as the President of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He has been involved with religious and interreligious activity in Europe, Africa and Asia and more recently in Australia.
Helen Spector has been active with the Parliament since the planning for its centennial gathering in Chicago in 1993, serving as a Trustee of the Council since 1990, including Vice Chair of the Board from 1999 through 2007. She worked on the design of the Assembly of Religious and Spiritual Leaders for all 3 modern Parliament events and co-chaired the site selection process which selected Barcelona Spain and Melbourne Australia as the sites for the fourth and fifth Parliaments.
Rt. Rev. William Swing served as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California for 26 years, during which he founded United Religions Initiative (URI). Since retiring his bishopric in 1996, he works full time as URI’s President.
Ms. Yoland Trevino, a Mayan with a Hindu practice, is the Chair of URI’s Global Council. An international consultancy in community organizing allows her to weave together he work and interfaith responsibilities.
Ms. Yasmine Khan, panel facilitator, is a Pakistani-American Muslim, She went from internship to become a program office at Islamic Networks Group. She is currently pursuing graduate studies.
Workshop is interactive - please post a comment and note your interest
DISCUSSION AND COMMENTS
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OPENING STATEMENT
Grassroots interfaith dialogue is developing in most countries today. The global ‘interfaith movement’ is a tsunami of growing activity, with manifold wonderful results. Public interfaith dialogue can be framed with a few dates…
the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago,
the birth of International Association of Religious Freedom in Boston a few years later,
the formation of Temple of Understanding in 1960, its first office Washington, D.C.,
the founding of Religions for Peace in Kyoto in 1970,
the first gathering of NAIN in Wichita in 1988,
the 1993 centennial celebration of the first Parliament, again in Chicago, and
the formation of United Religions Initiative, incorporated in 1995 in San Francisco.
Clearly, North America took a pioneering lead in growing multireligious relationships, and the grassroots communities responded across the continent. Today hundreds of interfaith councils jointly explore policy issues and spiritual practices never before addressed. A proliferation of dinner-dialogues, visitation programs, issue-oriented and service-oriented multi-faith agencies, and multi-faith schools are changing the religious fabric of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
North America is also one of the wealthiest, most advantaged regions in the world, and we are connected to our six-plus billion brothers and sisters in ways utterly unimaginable a generation ago. Half of our human family lives on $2 US a day or less, and hundreds of millions suffer in wars where religion is misused to stoke the violence.
In this context – what do we have to offer, and what do we have to learn, as North Americans? Our panel members, who may add their own comments below, are among the best networked interfaith leaders on the planet. They will share their answers – but we are also interested in your answers, as well as new questions.
What do we have to offer, and what do we have to learn, individually and as interfaith groups, from the rest of an interfaith world? Thanks for adding your comments!
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