by Brenda Suderman
from Winnipeg Free Press

For 11-year-old Camryn Kangas, compassion is as simple as being friendly to her classmates, and as involved as caring about people who are completely different from her.

“It’s a really big part of life, and you really need compassion in the world for people to be equal and get along with each other,” explains the Grade 6 student at St. John Brebeuf School.

In addition to that eloquent explanation, Camryn and her classmates at the Roman Catholic elementary school in River Heights are dancing, singing, chanting and even rapping their feelings and thoughts about compassion.

With the help of their teachers, the dozen grade 5 and 6 girls created a five-minute mini-musical about compassion, based on a poem by Winnipeg artist Manju Lodha.

“It reaches the soul of the listener,” Lodha says of the mini-musical, which includes a rap about human rights.

“I only put the words to it, and the students invoked the life in my words through their talents and the directions of their teachers.”

Lodha and fellow Winnipeg artists Isam Aboud and Ray Dirks spent the last two months leading workshops on compassion in eight Winnipeg public and independent schools for a project sponsored by the Manitoba Multifaith Council.

Called the Art of Compassion, the project culminates with a week-long student art exhibit, which opens 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 1 at Canadian Mennonite University, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd., and features the St. John Brebeuf students and Hindu dancers.

Since 2007, the three artists, representing three different faith traditions — Hinduism, Islam and Christianity — have led workshops for schoolchildren and adults on topics such as multiculturalism, respect and more recently, compassion.

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by Kile Jones
from State of Formation

A new journal is born!

“Religion” is one of the most difficult words to define.  People use the word all of the time but have a hard time flushing out its precise meaning.  Having spent time on issues surrounding defining “religion,” I felt it would be a good idea to start a new journal where “religion” can be analyzed, interpreted, and compared with other phenomena.  I figured it would be an accessible, academic, online forum for people to publish on issues surrounding “religion.”  Much likeState of Formation, Claremont Journal of Religion is meant to facilitate academic dialogue and encourage the enactment of deep pluralism.

Claremont Journal of Religion (CJR) is a student led, peer-reviewed, online journal that focuses on the ways “religion” can be understood in the contemporary world.  CJR is in relationship with the recently established Claremont Lincoln University,Claremont School of Theology, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont University Consortium, and The Society for Philosophy and Religion at Claremont (SPARC).  The goal of this journal is to provide a forum for emerging scholars, academics, graduate students, and lay-leaders to publish their latest work in the broad field of “religious studies.”

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by Matthew L. Skinner

Research consistently shows that people—and I’m thinking primarily of those in my home country of the United States—know alarming little about the basic contours of the world’s religions.

Runaway ignorance about the foundational tenets or central writings of religions, whether of other religions or even one’s own, threatens to undermine the prospects for constructive inter-religious dialogue and cooperation. But a corollary ignorance should generate as much concern. Consider how widespread is misunderstanding of or unfamiliarity with the ways that religious beliefs and texts are interpreted or put into practice.

People of faith can promote religious literacy and better acquaint our neighbors (and ourselves) with our beliefs; but to do so without showing them how our faith is meaningfully lived out, how it helps us makes sense of our lives and our world, accomplishes little. Worse, it risks reducing the notion of “religion” to a list of definable assertions or a set of historical processes.

In my vocation as a scholar who educates students to serve in Christian ministry, I emphasize the need for biblical interpreters to be more forthcoming, more public, about their hermeneutical presuppositions and tendencies. Pastoral leadership, I believe, is less about transmitting “what the Bible says” than it is about attending to the ways faithful imaginations get shaped through attentive, critical, and corporate interaction with the Bible. Other Christians may approach scripture out of a different set of values, but I would expect them to agree that the goal of having and reading a Bible is not to amass more information so much as it is to meaningfully indwell and practice their faith.

Given these convictions, it makes sense that I became part of an editorial team responsible for launching nearly six months ago a Web-based resource called ON Scripture—The Bible. Produced weekly by Odyssey Networks, the multi-faith media coalition, and published on their website, Huffington Post Religion, and the Protestant preaching site Day 1, ON Scripture—The Bible is simply an investigation of a biblical text, offered in a way intended to show readers how the Bible might affect people’s interactions with the trends and events that inform our lives. An accompanying video follows the biblical themes or a current event, making for a richer exploration into lives of faith.

I knew ON Scripture—The Bible would, as it has done, provide Christians a forum for learning more about—and vigorously discussing—how the Bible is faithfully interpreted in light of current news and social realities. My pleasant surprise has been discovering that it brings others, especially those interested in reading the Bible over Christians’ shoulders, into the conversation, as well. Whether out of curiosity, worry, or respect, others want to see what Christians are doing with their scriptures.

By making the study of scripture more public, ON Scripture—The Bible welcomes others into discourse around the nature of the Christian Bible, hermeneutics, and practices of faith, whether they realize that this is what they are doing or not.

Having glimpsed the potential for a resource like this to attract and promote not just intra-faith but also interfaith conversation, Odyssey Networks expects to launch ON Scripture—The Torah in early 2012. This will feature rabbis and Jewish scholars writing weekly on Torah passages. The possibility of a third ON Scripture resource, dedicated to interpretation of the Quran, sits on the horizon.

These resources cannot make up for our culture’s shortcomings in “religious literacy.” But they do much to promote “religious fluency,” which consists of a curiosity and ability to be in informed, constructive conversation with a religious tradition, whether one’s own or someone else’s. It is about becoming familiar with people’s ways of living their faith.

The focus on sacred texts provides a fitting arena for welcoming others to observe a religious worldview in action. At the same time, it affords anyone with a computer the opportunity to examine other religious perspectives. For in doing so, I do not just read another’s sacred text; I watch another person enter into creative and expectant dialogue with this text. The encounter becomes personal, and a clearer window into a lived faith. To peer inside other people’s scriptural interpretation—and inside another religion’s scripture—is to gain a better sense of their understanding of who or what God is, and their understanding of what it means to respond to this God.

Matthew L. Skinner is Associate Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, MN, and a contributing editor to ON Scripture—The Bible.

by Nathan Schneider
from Religion Dispatches

The first time I went to the American Academy of Religion conference it really got my hopes up. This was the fall of 2006 and, with only a summer in between, I’d just finished college and begun my first year of a PhD program in religious studies. The AAR was at the enormous new Washington, DC convention center. Fittingly, one of the plenary speakers was Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state who had just written a book about why religion is so important.

What I remember her saying, which stuck with me and probably a lot of the other graduate students in the hall, were things like this: “Our diplomats need to be trained to know the religions of the countries where they’re going.” And: “I think the Secretary of State needs to have religion advisors.” I hadn’t really thought of it that way before, but it made great sense, especially with someone like Albright saying it. Religion is everywhere. It does matter. The ongoing sectarian violence in occupied Iraq had turned the headlines into daily reminders about the consequences of not taking religion seriously—to say nothing of politics in DC back then. Yes—sounds like a job for a religion scholar.

Suddenly, committing the next however-many years to getting my degree in this stuff switched from the leap-of-faith category to eminently reasonable. Sure, maybe I’d end up a scholar. But I could also be a diplomat. Or the director of an NGO. Or a bartender. Or an astronaut.

Fast-forward a few years—the AAR, 2010. Grad school hasn’t really panned out. (It wasn’t you, PhD, it was me.) By this point I’ve become a journalist, but still go to the conference to connect with friends and keep up with the field. Things have changed, though. The economy crashed, and the bottom fell out of the academic job market. Quite independently, a handful of scholars—established ones, tenured ones, reputed ones, etc.—tell me the same story in the hallways. They confess to feeling remorse about training graduate students. There are so many bright young people, but so few jobs. (The AAR reports 193 positions filled in 2005-2006, compared to 49 in 2008-2009.) They sound kind of despondent.

To me, though, this sounds like an opportunity. Maybe it’s a chance to finally throw religious studies a coming-out party. I’ve learned quickly how little the world (by which I mean, from here on out, the world that isn’t academia) knows about what religious studies even is, and how much the world needs what religious studies does. Now, hearing these professors talking like this, it occurs to me that religious studies needs the world, too. At the very least, the world has a bigger job market.

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State of Formation, an international network for young religious leaders, is collaborating with Claremont Lincoln University to develop a pilot program for informal interreligious education. The program’s inaugural events will be a monthly series of coffeehouse-style conversations on interreligious topics, beginning with a Dec. 1 evening event on the Claremont campus (see below for details)

State of Formation is an international program of the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, run in partnership with Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School and in collaboration with the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. It is a forum for up-and-coming religious and ethical thinkers to draw upon the learning that is occurring in their academic and community work and reflect on the pressing questions of a religiously pluralistic society. A number of Claremont students are regular contributors to State of Formation blogs.

As the founding member of State of Formation’s Education Leadership Circle, Claremont Lincoln University will begin hosting regular coffee hours to foster meaningful conversations, friendships and collegial relationships between students of different traditions. Each gathering will focus on a topic of pressing significance for theological students—from pulpit leadership in a diverse society to overarching theological questions related to identity and news that impacts one or more religious community.

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Engy Abdelkader
from Huffington Post

“You boys were so much fun on the 8th grade trip! Thanks for not bombing anything while we were there!” read the yearbook inscription penned by the middle school teacher.

The eighth grade yearbook was littered with similar remarks by classmates linking Omar to a “bomb.”

“To my bomb man!” read one note. “Come wire my bomb,” read another.

“What is this?” asked Omar’s mother incredulously. He had handed the yearbook over to her moments earlier when he arrived home that afternoon.

Omar answered quietly, “I know, Mom, I know.” He stared down at the kitchen floor. His eyes could not meet his mother’s but he began to tell her what had happened just one month earlier.

In May 2009, Omar joined his classmates on a school trip to Washington, D.C. As they toured the Washington Monument, visited area museums and passed by the White House, the kids repeatedly told Omar they hoped he wouldn’t “bomb” any of the sites. A teacher chaperoned the children, heard the comments and responded by doing… well, nothing, except leave a denigrating remark in Omar’s yearbook a month later.

It was clear to Omar’s mother that her American born and raised son was harassed because of his Muslim faith and Arab ancestry.

Unfortunately, this was not the first bias-based bullying incident involving Omar that school year. Only several months earlier a peer was intimidating Omar, calling him a “terrorist,” during an elective trade course. Omar finally told his mother about the bullying when his report card indicated that he was failing that same class, while acing the others where he was not subjected to such humiliating treatment.

Omar’s mother had addressed the bullying with the school Vice-Principal immediately afterwards.

But, when she spoke to her son’s school Principal regarding the D.C. trip and subsequent offensive yearbook comments (by a school teacher), the Principal was shocked to learn that Omar had been a prior victim of bullying earlier in the academic year. He had no knowledge of that incident in his school.

While the Principal assured her that he would take proper action against the offending teacher, nothing actually happened. The teacher denied hearing the bomb-related comments during the field trip to D.C. and excused her yearbook note as a “joke.”

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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.

A Watershed Moment in American Theological Education

by Paul Chaffee
Founding Editor of The Interfaith Observer

On September 6, 2011, Claremont School of Theology, a distinguished United Methodist seminary with roots back to 1885, joined in partnership with The Academy for Jewish Religion, California, and the Islamic Center of Southern California/Bayan College. Together, they and a number of other affiliates have joined to create Claremont Lincoln University (CLU), an institution like none other.

Training imams, pastors, and rabbis will be a core goal at CLU. Seminarians will have separate curricula and degree programs for clergy formation, part of a larger set of offerings and degree options focused on the interdisciplinary, intercultural, and multireligious needs of the world in the 21st century.

Others have helped open the door to interreligious collaboration. In the United States, Harvard University, Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, and Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley have been pioneers in multireligious higher education. Similar programs are brewing in other seminaries, and the Association of Theological Schools is paying attention. But CLU is the first fully accredited school in America for preparing imams – and having the three primary Abrahamic traditions training clergy in a shared environment is unprecedented.

This point was made over and over again when the $50 million enabling donation from David and Joan Lincoln made the story national news last May. Time Magazine’s headline ran Training Pastors, Rabbis, and Imams Together. USA Today went the same way with Theology school integrates studies of different faiths. In fact, the full story and its ramifications for theological education go much further.

“On behalf of humankind”

CLU’s new provost, Philip Clayton, is clear about the focus of the new University: “Finding the common threads among religious and ethical traditions – while honoring the distinctiveness of each” is the goal. The reach of this vision goes beyond Christian, Jewish, and Muslim interaction. Indeed, on the morning of the launch, a special, widely attended ceremony celebrated a letter of understanding bringing Jains into the new University, thereby including a South Asian religion into what had been an exclusively Abrahamic conclave. American Indian, Buddhist, and Hindu participation is expected.

In addition, CLU is developing collaborative projects with a number of organizations. As its new website states, “Claremont Lincoln University is more than a teaching institution. It’s a call to action on behalf of humankind.” To that end, it already has working relationships with:

• Doha International Center for Interreligious Dialog (Qatar)
• Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions
• Pacifica Institute
• Islamic Society of North America
• Institute for Religious Tolerance, Peace & Justice
• International Islamic University Malaysia
• Harbin Institute of Technology (China)

At the September 6 inaugural convocation, the remarkable opportunity this new University represents was detailed most powerfully in the keynote address by the Honorable Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States.

… This is what the Claremont Lincoln University offers: an opportunity to share fragments of truth and pieces of the puzzle, firstly to overcome our own demons represented by the extremism, exclusivity and intolerance we spawned, and the way we have allowed some, in our name, not to follow God, but to appropriate God, and so contribute to the misery of society.

Simultaneously, we must allow the graduates of this institution to revel in the multiplicity of worship, ritual, pageantry and tradition, of the many faiths that must come to the Claremont Lincoln University, but they must also seek to enjoy the wonderment that comes from recognizing the Divine in each other, and acting on this insight in ways which cultivate a better world through compassionate relationships, collaborative efforts, and peaceful acceptance.

Ambassador Rasool noted the poignance of opening a University on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and called for “Providence” to bless this new enterprise and its focus on a more peaceful world.

State of Formation is a community conversation between young leaders in formation. Together, a cohort of seminarians, rabbinical students, graduate students and the like – the future religious and moral leaders of tomorrow – will work to redefine the ethical discourse today, particularly as it is used to refract current events and personal experiences. This initiative is supported by a partnership between the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR),Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue (JIRD), Hebrew College, and Andover Newton Theological School.

Over the past year, emerging religious and ethical leaders from around the country have engaged readers around the world by sharing their stories and views on State of Formation. Conversations once dominated by established leaders are now readily embraced by the up-and-comers, and accessible to contributors from many different moral, faith, political, economic, and social
backgrounds.

We are thrilled to introduce a new element to the State of Formation program: Regional Associations. These groups strive to showcase the strong work happening within local communities across the country while fostering better relationships between emerging leaders. Currently, State of Formation is working to partner with groups in the following cities to create Regional Associations: Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and San Francisco. We plan to create additional Regional Associations in Nashville, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Houston within six months. We hope the robust and constructive exchange among our contributors will continue and highlight the progress being made at the local level across the nation.

Contributing Scholars to State of Formation will be able to take advantage of the numerous benefits to participating in the State of Formation Contributing Scholars Fellowship. In addition to being recognized as a Contributing Scholar by JIRD and CPWR, they may be eligible for travel grants and may have their work featured in articles on additional platforms like CPWR’s website, PeaceNext, The Huffington Post, Sojourners, and Tikkun.

Nominees should be currently enrolled in a seminary, rabbinical school, graduate program, or another institution for theological or philosophical formation — or up to three years out of their graduate program in a professional setting. Emerging leaders from both within and outside of the regional groups are encouraged to apply.

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