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Parliament Now Hiring: New Development Position
DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE – JOB OPENING
The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) has a rich history and current efforts in working with communities of spirit and faith to foster harmony and engagement to bring about a just, peaceful and sustainable world. CPWR is looking for a Development Associate.
The small staff and volunteers work together to carry on the initiatives with the help of an engaged board, and the development associate would work with the Executive Director and others. The scope of the work includes researching and developing resource opportunities with foundations, corporations, individuals and religious groups. Work would also include writing proposals, arranging appointments and events, and follow through with donors. The Development Associate works with Board committees, and shares the mission of CPWR with visitors and events.
Desired skills: articulate, with both written and oral communication talent, some experience in fund raising, positive personality, computer and internet skills.
Salary at the early end of comparable jobs. Job available immediately.
CPWR is an equal opportunity employer.
For consideration, send a resume and cover letter to Stephen Avino (Stephen@parliamentofreligions.org)
Patel’s Vision of Purposeful Interfaith Cooperation
Interfaith Youth Core Founder Eboo Patel published a response this week to a Religious Dispatches essay critical of Interfaith as a cure for religious violence. Supporting a notion that Interfaith cooperation has not standardized political values or beliefs across the Interfaith diaspora. Patel asserts differing political positions do not hinder a healthy interfaith community where the shared value is peace and co-existence. Further, he dispels the charge that Interfaith cooperation by default lobbies any “X” political tactic. In Patel’s view, both conservative and progressive political activism follows naturally of many interfaith collaborations, but do not justify a case that value-based outreach stands for the “ends” of Interfaith as a “means.”
Patel begins,
Some years back I met the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Nechervan Barzani. One of the first things he did was thank me for the American military intervention that he described as freeing his people from oppression. I informed him that many of my friends viewed the Iraq War as profoundly unjust and protested vociferously against it.
Barzani was rendered speechless for a moment. When he finally spoke it was to say, through clenched teeth, that the only thing unjust about the war that removed Saddam Hussein was that it didn’t happen sooner.
I was reminded of that story when I read Lucia Hulsether’s thoughtful critique here on RD of my recent Huffington Post article on the urgency of interfaith cooperation after the Boston bombings.
The Boundaries of Religious Freedom and Pluralism
By Leo D. Lefebure
Board Trustee, Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions
In 2007, a group of 138 Islamic scholars from a wide range of traditions issued “A Common Word between Us and You,” a public letter addressed to the leaders of the Christian world, including Pope Benedict XVI and a long list of others. The letter proposed the biblical teaching of love of God and neighbor as a common heritage uniting Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and invited further dialogue based on this shared principle. There have been a number of earlier international gatherings that have discussed this proposal at the Vatican, at Cambridge University, Yale University, and at Georgetown University. On April 24, 2013, Georgetown University, the Jesuit university in Washington, DC, which serves as the North American site for the Common Word Project, hosted the most recent Common Word Conference, focusing on “The Boundaries of Religious Pluralism and Freedom: The Devil is in the Detail.”
The opening panel, chaired by Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, explored the question: “Are There Limits to Religious Freedom that Religions Agree On?” The statement introducing session proposed the premise, “Few dispute the value and centrality of religious freedom,” and then went on to pose the question of whether religious traditions can “agree to limitations on blasphemy, building churches, and missionary work.” Professor David Law of Washington University in St. Louis reflected on the question in light of globalization, noting two opposing views. According to Thomas Friedman’s model, globalization is a “happy” process of convergence upon increasingly shared values, largely those of Western constitutional democracies. According to the competing model of the late Samuel Huntington, globalization is a process of polarization with growing conflict over values that are incompatible. Law suggested that while there is some evidence for the model of convergence, there are also problems with this interpretation. Combatting the stereotype that only Muslim majority counties have blasphemy laws, Law noted that the constitution of Ireland contains laws against blasphemy. Law suggested that there are many exceptions to Friedman’s proposal, but he also rejected Huntington’s suggestion that the main polarization is the West against the “Other.”
Thomas Farr, who served as the first director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, rejected the premise of this session that “few dispute the value and centrality of religious freedom.” Farr maintained that there is no consensus on religious freedom either in the United States or in Western Europe or in the rest of the world. He noted the controversial questions surrounding blasphemy, building churches, and proselytizing and mission activities. He strongly defended the right of religious minorities to erect houses of worship, and to share their religious views in a non-violent, non-coercive manner. He suggested that the most successful democracies allow for freedom of religious expression, including proselytism. He objected to violent responses to the expression of religious opinions. He noted the difficult but important change that the Roman Catholic Church went through in its view of religious freedom, and he cited the teaching of The Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) of Vatican II, that the Catholic Church demands the right of religious freedom not only for itself but for every other religion.
Farid Esack, a South African Muslim theologian who is professor at the University of Johannesburg, agreed with Farr that the premise of the session was faulty. Esack proposed that the devil is not just in the detail but in the subject of religious freedom and in the notion that “religions” can agree. He said that there is no “Islam” to make an agreement; there are Muslims who can agree. He acknowledged that many in the Muslim world do not affirm the value and centrality of religious freedom. He suggested that there is often a selective application of concern for human rights, noting that during the apartheid era in South Africa, there was widespread condemnation of the practice of detention without trial; but today the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations use this same practice because of their deep anxieties regarding terrorism. He suggested that building churches and missionary activity are embedded in a larger ideological project, and he noted that this was true of dawa activity sponsored by Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the former government of Libya, where the propagation of Islam was linked to ideology.
In another panel focusing on religious pluralism and the Arab Spring, Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, reflected on the status of religious scriptures in the Arab spring. He supported and encouraged the new exegetical moves to appropriate the Qur’an to promote civil religion and society, with tolerance of others as equals. He lamented that often interreligious declarations are crafted by the upper-level leaders but never reach the grass-roots communities. He stressed the vital importance of the training in seminaries; many people are connected with their local religious leaders and reflect the values and attitudes instilled by these local leaders. Much of the new exegesis of the Qu’ran is very academic and is not reaching the ordinary people. This creates problems for pluralism and peaceful, harmonious co-existence.
The next speaker, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington, DC, began by saying, “Wow!” to Sachedine’s remarks. He noted that “the way forward changes all the time,” pointing out that just recently there have been many changes in religious leadership: there is a new Catholic Pope, a new Coptic Pope, a new Catholic Coptic leader, a new Archbishop of Canterbury—all since October 31, 2012, when this conference was originally scheduled. Cardinal McCarrick observed that many recent events are very worrisome, from the Boston bombing to the kidnapping of the two archbishops in Syria to countless other tragedies. He agreed with Sachedine that if we deal only with the elites, we may not know what is going on among ordinary people. The cardinal cautioned that a single election does not make a democracy, and acknowledged that the United States has only a very limited ability to promote change in other cultures: “We are neither coach not captain, but we have a change to become coach.” Dalia Mogahed, the former executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, acknowledged the difficulty of getting accurate data in some countries and stressed the importance of United States support for democratic transformation in the Middle East.
In another session that focused on issues of gender, Kathleen Moore, Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, described how Islamic women in the diaspora are active in feminist issues, challenging patriarchy with a hermeneutics of equality. Many Muslim women in the United States seek to transcend the polarity between freedom of self and the restrictions of the Islamic tradition by reinterpreting the Qur’an, the hadith (reports concerning Prophet Muhammad), and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). Merve Kavakci-Islam, originally from Turkey and now professor at George Washington University, stressed that the suffering of women in the Islamic world is not homogeneous. She challenged the imposition of Western models, such as secularization, on Muslim majority countries such as Turkey. Margot Badran of Georgetown University reported on her extensive experience in Egypt since the revolution in 2011. She proposed that what divide Egyptians is not religion but authoritarian politics and corruption. She observed that the most vulnerable groups, women and Christians, are also the most symbolic. Badran claimed that while there are politically motivated incidents involving women and Christians, there is not a general sectarian or a Muslim-Christian problem in Egypt at the present time. There are efforts to repeal the legislation of 1923 regarding the minimum age for marriage, as well as other efforts to undo the gender gains of recent years, for example by requiring women to have the permission of their husbands to travel abroad. Badran encountered many young Egyptian men and women who are “more determined than ever” to combat patriarchy and to establish gender equality under the law. These people want to make Egypt “its own type of democracy,” not in imitation of other nations.
The conference offered an important international forum for exploring many challenges in interreligious relations. Much needs to be done to spread knowledge of such efforts and to invite more and more people to become involved.
Global Youth Call for Videos on Migration, Diversity, and Social Inclusion
The United Nations Alliance of Civilations and the International Organization for Migration are announcing 2013′s PluralPlus Youth Video Festival contest open to ages nine through 25 on the topics of migration, diversity and social inclusion. Instruction for entries due June 30, 2013 is found on the Plural+ site.
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Easter Means ‘Festival of Humanity’ to Bahrain Interfaith
By CPWR Staff, Adaptation of original Bahrain Interfaith report by Sheikh Maytham Al Salman
According to clergy spanning a world of spiritual beliefs, Bahrain is an island nation half populated by immigrants who live in peace. For Bahrain Interfaith, this captures the essence of diversity and harmony. Easter, a holiday that is most important in Christianity, was the backdrop there for an important snapshot of a Persian country where interfaith is the vehicle for social cohesion.
An Easter party organized by Bahrain Interfaith held on March 29 in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, brought together representatives of several churches in Bahrain, civil organizations, diplomats, and expats spanning the globe from the United States and the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Greece, South Africa, Kenya, Canada, China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Lebanon, and Tunisia.
Speeches delivered highlighted positive sentimentality about the fair and religiously open Bahrain. Bryan Condub, an American, began speaking personally of Bahrain with great joy about interacting with various cultures that coexist in a state of peace and security. “I thank the Lord who gave me the opportunity to discover the tolerance and openness of the people of Bahrain and its residents,” Condub began. He continues,
I have visited and worked in 25 countries since I left the United States and did not witness anything like the tolerance and ethnic diversity in Bahrain.
Reflecting on a year of work with Bahrain Interfaith, Condub said that religious extremism is the biggest threat to world peace, and that Easter is not only a Christian celebration, but a festival of humanity.
Pastor Basi Ligethlem of the Rivers of Joy church emphasized the philosophy of Easter and biblical verses of Easter. Concluding a powerful speech, Ligethlem declared, “since twenty years ago I was wandering in the Middle East until I settled in Bahrain and found it already a country of tolerance and peace. Because of its peaceful people and their good manners”.
Sheikh Maytham Al Salman spoke short and simply stating, “Bahrain is an oasis of tolerance and openness, and will remain a model of modesty and coexistence between different religious and ethnic groups”.
Religous groups were asked to invest religious occasions across all religions to spread and establish the principles of peace, compassion, non-violence, civil coexistence, religious tolerance, social justice, and respect for human dignity. Bahraini flutist Ahmed Ghanim delighted guests by saying that the message of music is also peace, love, tolerance and joy.
Historically, Bahrain has been known since ancient times as a welcoming place to newcomers, reinforcing its cultural position and transforming the country into a meeting point for religions and civilizations. Seated in an unsettled region, it became known as a center for peace and tolerance. Manama, the capital, embraces expatriate communities of a multitude of ethnic and religious backgrounds without discrimination. Manama is the first Gulf capital to appreciate and support churches since 1900. Visitors nowadays discover a local character of flexibility, moderation, openness, and welcoming attitudes.
Our Global Interfaith Family Is Saving the Parliament…
Dear friends,
What an outpouring of support! Thanks to hundreds of generous interfaith advocates we are almost there! With a little more help, we CAN put this tentative time behind us.
A reminder of what happened … and why now …
Eight days ago we openly shared that the Parliament is in jeopardy of closing its doors due to an obligation to pay a court judgment of $276,000. It is the result of circumstances in 2004 when we needed a last-minute loan to produce the Barcelona Parliament. Attendees became hesitant to travel after a bomb killed and injured thousands in Madrid months before the event. It went on in spite of that and became a transformative experience of overcoming fear through Interfaith harmony.
After a decade of disputes around loan details, the final judgment leaves us only until April 15 to come up with the funds.
Here’s the good news:
Today, $225,000 is in our hands: $100,000 coming in the last seven days! You have proven that the Parliament shall go on.
Hindus, Muslims, Pagans, Sikhs, Jains, Episcopalians and Lutherans are partnering in teams to rally support. Spanning a world of faith and spirit, their voices speak on just how much our efforts matter:
“The Parliament is one of the most important gatherings of the world. We must support its existence and purpose.”
“Without the Parliament, global peace and cooperation will be in even greater jeopardy. With the Parliament, there is hope for a more just world.”
“[We] have been at every Parliament since 1993 and will continue to support your efforts.”
“Never lose an opportunity to bring hope.”
“2004 Parliament changed my life.”
Many have expressed a desire to give more than their budget permits. If you have stepped up in the last week and would like to stretch your gift, you can contribute more to the Parliament by creating a personal fundraising page on the Causevox website! Share why you’ve donated, and invite others to join your effort. We can help you set it up if you’d like so it reflects your previous gift. If this gift is your first to the Parliament, know that you can make a difference.
With this off our backs, we are freed up! We can continue our important work toward peace and harmony.
Please give generously. Go online and make your tax-deductible donation* today:
www.parliamentofreligions.causevox.com - or - www.parliamentofreligions.org
Together we can finish off this $50,000 debt and enter the new era of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Your gift of at least $100, or whatever you can give, helps move us toward the future.
BE A HOPE BUILDER TODAY.
*Hope Builder donors will receive discounts to the next Parliament event and other local interfaith gatherings.
We are profoundly grateful.
Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid Dr. Mary Nelson
Chair of the Board Interim Executive Director
CPWR is a 501c.3 non-for-profit organization
THE PARLIAMENT OF THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS MUST GO ON
The Council that convenes the Parliament of the World’s Religions is faced with an enormous one-time financial challenge we must immediately overcome to continue to exist. By April 13, 2013, we can raise the $150,000 needed to go on.
In just two days, generous gifts granted through our fundraising site on CauseVox and direct commitments have totaled more than $35,000.
CPWR Executive Director Dr. Mary Nelson says each Board Trustee is meeting equal fundraising goals through personal outreach. By helping us meet this challenge, the Board of Trustees can free the Parliament to carry on the mission of creating peace in the world through interfaith harmony by:
- Convening the next Parliament event
- Widening our connections and keep encouraging local interfaith event
- Celebrating our deep 120 year history
- Honoring our leaders and MOVE FORWARD TO A FUTURE WITH HOPE
“Our problem started when a bomber attacked Madrid just weeks before the 2004 Barcelona Parliament,” says Mary Nelson. To explain further why the Parliament is acting fast, Nelson continues,
A last-minute loan became necessary to carry out the event. But a life changing Barcelona Parliament was held, bringing people together to overcome fear through interfaith action.
Why now? A Spanish court judgment of $276,600 against the Parliament slowly came to the U.S. Courts. On March 21, 2013, the U.S. court upheld the debt against the Parliament. We were advised we had at least three months, but court papers served last week gave us until April 17,2013.
The CPWR Board met and said we dare to do the impossible; the work of the Parliament must go on. To protect the celebration of our 120th Anniversary this year, we had raised $126,600 in our earlier efforts. The need now is $150,000 more.
In a few short days, by internet, direct solicitation, Board efforts, we have an additional $35,000 in hand. And we’ve just started. You can help make the difference.
Reasons to donate are many and personal, but the hundreds stepping in already have shared that the Parliament:
- “…teaches tolerance”
- “…is a vehicle for peace in the world,”
- “…was the highlight of my life.”
PLEASE. BE A HOPE BUILDER TODAY.
Tony Blair Foundation
Melbourne Parliament, 2009
Building a Groundswell, Lighting Up the Network
A Virtual Community Empowering Grassroots Interfaith Communities
By Valarie Kaur for The Interfaith Observer
Reprinted with permission
When a dozen twenty-somethings gathered in my tiny living room in the fall of 2010, vexed about the firestorm of protest against Park 51, an Islamic center planned in Manhattan known as “the Ground Zero Mosque,” we had no idea that we were planting the seed for a movement.
We were Christian, Muslim, Jew, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu and Humanist Millennials who had come of age in the decade after September 11, 2001. All of us were tired of witnessing religion wielded as a weapon to destroy, denigrate, and demonize others. This time, through drumming up controversy around Park 51, a small conservative network had succeeded in spreading widespread fear of Islam. When a pastor in Florida sparked riots around the world after threatening to burn the Qur’an, we gathered in my apartment to ask what we could do to stop the madness.
Kicking off a strategy session, I looked into the beleaguered faces of my friends and decided to try a different approach. I asked us instead to envision the world that we wanted. Literally. We closed our eyes and imagined what our street corner would look and feel like in a society where every human being lived, worked, and worshiped without fear.
Something surprising happened: a sense of ease and openness filled the room. The frenetic energy and anxiety which characterizes so much of public interest work melted away, and we felt a sense of calm and connection we had felt in church, or in the woods, in prayer or in meditation.
We began to share what we saw – the respect for all people of faith, the freedom to be openly gay, the ability for immigrants to come out of the shadow, the capacity for women to care for their own bodies… the list goes on. These were not mere pictures of social or political progress: we were expressing a shared moral vision. The concern that brought us together in the wake of Park 51 was part of a larger concern for human dignity in our society.
A New Approach
It seemed to us that the conventional way of fighting – for one’s own rights, issues and peoples – is woefully inadequate. Growing up in the era of Facebook and Twitter, our generation’s notion of “community” already stretches beyond color, class, faith, and nation. We often see ourselves in one another’s struggles: we knew we could not achieve racial justice without also securing the equality of women, economic justice without also protecting our climate. We wanted to fight in a way that matched our worldview. How might 21st century digital tools connect and support us – and others gathered in living rooms across the country – in a common struggle for human dignity?
A 200-year old seminary in New York City was ready to explore this question. Under the leadership of its new president, the Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson, Auburn Seminary was refashioning itself into a force for movement-building. They invited me to join their staff in 2011 to build an initiative that would help equip people of faith to “trouble the waters and heal the world.”
Groundswell was born
Groundswell is a digital platform that gives faith leaders and communities the tools to wage campaigns as part of a national multifaith movement. We bring together people across faiths and backgrounds in actions; we amplify the voices of faith leaders in the public arena; we connect issues that are typically fought separately.
In our first year, Groundswell led campaigns to defend religious pluralism, stand for LGBTQ dignity, fight human trafficking, support disaster relief, and organize for reform in the wake of mass shootings in Oak Creek, WI, and Newtown, CT. Now in our second year, thanks to the leadership of Isaac Luria (director of Auburn Action), Groundswell has become open-source: people across the U.S. can now launch their own online campaigns on the same platform as part of a networked movement.
Today, the Groundswell community is 60,000 people strong.
When I travel the country, I meet congregations, faith groups, and informal circles like the one in my living room who want to do more than traditional service projects to fight injustice – they want to become political. Today, these groups can leverage the authentic voices of their priests, rabbis, imams and young leaders of all kinds in campaigns, whether to stop budget cuts to the homeless shelter down the street or call for federal gun control. Groundswell can equip these groups with the right digital tools and connect them together – like nodes in a constellation – so that they know they are not doing the work alone but as part of a broader community.
To be sure, nothing can replace the feeling of community when gathered in a living room, sharing ideas and drawing up blueprints for concrete action. Groundswell is meant to support – not replace – the thousands of faith-based, spiritual and humanist communities on the ground who are already committed to social justice. It connects campaigns and communities online, whether organizing for marriage equality, women’s rights, climate justice, gun control or immigration reform.
For centuries, faith leaders have helped lead the greatest social movements of U.S. history, from women’s suffrage to civil rights. People of faith and moral conscious have always had the ability to transcend small-minded politics and appeal to the greater human spirit of love and justice. In a time of soaring social inequality, environmental degradation, civil rights violations and gun violence, our nation needs these prophetic voices more than ever. Groundswell is one of many emerging ways to lift up these voices in the months and years to come.
The light of social justice flickers in brave corners but can fizzle in isolation. To achieve meaningful change in a networked society, that light must shine in a bold constellation. From my living room to yours, may we envision a better world together – and in the darkness, shine a light.
New Zealand Celebrates Swami Vivekananda
Celebrating Vivekananda’s 150th Birthday continues world-wide. These photos showcase the Interfaith dinner held in Wellington, New Zealand this month hosted by Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions Ambassador Lachlan Mackay and St. Andrews. How the Interfaith movement can move forward locally in Wellington to carry forward the tradition of the Parliament with homage to Swami Vivekananda’s mission was discussed over food and bonding.
“No Hay Camino Para La Paz” a Bilingual Report on Interreligious Dialogue from Mexico
Ambassador to the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Rosalia Lozano Benitez, shares this Writing On Interreligious Dialogue* from her view as an Interfaith activist in Mexico.
*English translation, see below for original Spanish-language submission
There is no way to peace, peace is the way – Gandhi.
No peace among the nations without peace among religions – Hans Kung.
All roads lead to the same absolute spirit – Javier Melloni SJ.
Interfaith work invites us to adopt an attitude of total respect for the other, this being the cornerstone of it.
Acceptance of the values, customs, traditions and above all other religious beliefs – stating that it is in diversity have a place where respect, harmony, unity, and is based on the plurality is where we give a face of peace. By accepting what others may achieve, fruits of knowledge and union in the convergences, putting aside differences, working on what unites us to the construction of a more just and sustainable peace, work for the common house that is the world in which we all live, knowing the obstacles and resistance, especially towards the historic openness and dialogue, more obstacles to customize obey that conscience. Each of us must do our convictions of Hans Kung when he notes that:
“No peace among the nations without peace in religions …
No peace in the religions without dialogue among religions
No dialogue between the religions without investigates the reasons therefore ”
Ideas simple, logical, illuminating a path that today we are all invited to journey involving listening to one another …. urging us to put a parenthesis in our identities to focus on the other, put aside our beliefs to analyze the others, means a strong commitment to ourselves and to the rest.
In short: look for a model in which people of faith, spirit of goodwill of different traditions and perspectives, to share their religious identities, dialogue about moral issues as complex and crucial to our times and to devise a way to work together to achieve the desired world, this is the primary goal of interreligious dialogue.
The upcoming visit of Javier Melloni SJ our city is an opportunity to dive into the issues of this renowned scholar and facilitator of this work and somehow take action in it from personal and community platforms to thereby recognize diversity in our eyes, our minds open but mostly with an enlarged heart in telling all this to the company’s omnipresent Lord of all names.
Rosalia Lozano Benitez
Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions
Mexico Link
No Hay Camino Para La Paz
No hay camino para la paz, la paz es el camino………….Gandhi.
No hay paz entre las naciones si no hay paz entre las religiones…………..Hans Kung.
Todos los caminos del espiritu conducen al mismo absoluto Javier Melloni SJ.
El trabajo interreligioso nos invita a adoptar una actitud de total respeto hacia del otro, siendo este la piedra angular del mismo. La aceptacion de los valores, costumbres, tradiciones y sobre todo las creencias religiosas del otro manifestando que es precisamente en la diversidad en donde tienen cabida el respeto, la armonia, la unidad, y es en base a esa pluralidad donde damos un rostro de paz con la aceptacion de lo demás, pudiendo lograr frutos de conocimiento y de union en las convergencias, haciendo a un lado las diferencias, trabajando en lo que nos une para la construccion de un mundo mas justo pacifico y sustentable, el trabajo por la casa común que es la del mundo en donde todos vivimos, sabiendo los obstáculos y resistencias, sobre todo las históricas hacia la apertura y el diálogo, obstáculos que obedecen mas a la costumbre que a la conciencia.
Cada uno de nosotros debemos de hacer propias las convicciones de Hans Kung cuando señala que:
No habra paz entre las naciones sin paz en las religiones..
No habra paz en las religiones sin diálogo entre las religiones
No habra diálogo entre las religiones si no se investigan los fundamentos de las mismas”
Ideas sencillas, lógicas , iluminando un camino que hoy todos estamos invitados a transitar implicando esto el saber escuchar al otro….urgiéndonos a poner un paréntesis en nuestras identidades para centrarnos en el otro, poner a un lado nuestras creencias para analizar las de los demás, significando esto un gran compromiso para nosotros mismos y con el resto.
En síntesis: buscar un modelo en que la gente de fe, de espíritu, de buena voluntad de las diferentes tradiciones y perspectivas, pueda compartir sus identidades religiosas, dialogar sobre los temas morales tan complejos y cruciales de nuestros tiempos e idear una forma de trabajo en conjunto para lograr el mundo deseado, éste es el objetivo primordial del Diálogo Interreligioso.
En la próxima visita de Javier Melloni SJ a nuestra ciudad tendremos la oportunidad de sumergirnos en el tema del que es un reconocido estudioso y facilitador de este trabajo y de alguna manera tomar acción en el mismo desde las plataformas personales y comunitarias para de esa manera reconocernos en la diversidad con nuestros ojos, nuestra mente abierta pero sobre todo con un corazón agrandado contando en todo esto con la compañia Omnipresente del Señor de todos los Nombres.
Rosalia Lozano Benitez, Consejo del Parlamento de las Religiones del Mundo
