Religions for Peace - USA : About Us : History

History

A Thirty-Year Legacy
Religions for Peace – USA began as an office within its parent organization, the World Conference of Religions for Peace (now, Religions for Peace International) in the early 1970’s. Although it was created solely to aid the work of the international organization, it steadily began developing its own programming along the lines of the international body. In 2000, the U.S. office decided to establish itself as an independent chapter, The United States Conference of Religions for Peace, in order to develop a mission that was more focused on U.S. initiatives. The organization's name was changed again in 2004 to Religions for Peace – USA (RFP-USA), and a new mission and vision took hold. Today, RFP-USA's official headquarters are in the Church Center for the United Nations, where the organization has worked side by side with its parent body since its establishment more than thirty years ago.

Diverse Leadership
The governance of the organization is carried out by three bodies: the Council of Presidents, the Executive Council, and the Advisory Council, whose membership encompasses senior U.S. religious leadership, interreligious affairs officers and advocates, scholars, and issue based experts. Together these councils represent over sixty religious communities, making RFP-USA the most broadly based religiously representative organization in the country.

On a day to day basis, operations are handled by Interim Director of Operations Anne Hillman and a small staff of young adults, interns, seminary field education placements, recent college graduates, and volunteers. Religions for Peace-USA notes the importance of keeping young adults in interfaith work, as it has employed the services of about fifty young adults over the past three years. The team of staff and interns is comprised of a number of individuals with varying cultural and religious backgrounds, which our former executive director said, “is growing to be as religiously representative as our governance bodies. Even better, interfaith dialogue is happening on a daily basis as we work to realize our organization’s mission.” Many of the interns have also been shared with other religious organizations and private institutions, like the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahaii's and the US Fund for UNICEF, to establish more in-house collaborations.

Programming
Programming Initiatives of Religions for Peace – USA are coordinated with its 3 areas of focus:
1) bringing together religious communities and their official representatives for the purposes of building relationships, ultimately creating space for effective interreligious participation in human progress
2) building community, which draws on the increasing religious, cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity in our nation
3) advocating for responsibility of the U.S. as a citizen of the global community with particular regard to peace, human rights, and development

At the core of its 30-year programmatic history - stemming back to its roots in the World Conference of Religions for Peace - is the focus on interfaith dialogue. Since 1984 with the adoption of a new strategic focus on interfaith discussion, the organization has hosted more than 30 formal dialogues. One of the organization’s most wide-reaching dialogue initiatives was the two-year Diversity and Community Project, where it visited eleven communities to hold local dialogues discussing the changing face of the American religious landscape and the issues that resulted from this change. During this time, RFP-USA worked with over fifty-five local interfaith groups and representatives from coast to coast. In 2004, RFP-USA also entered into a project under the auspices of the United Nations Foundation, entitled The People Speak, in which the group coordinated the administration of forty local dialogues to discuss America’s role in the World from a faith perspective. In 2005, RFP-USA joined together with the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. and a consortium of religious and Native American bodies in the Return to the Earth project to support Native Americans in burying unidentifiable ancestral remains now scattered across the United States, and to enable a process of education and reconciliation between Native and non-Native peoples. In 2006, Religions for Peace – USA, in conjunction with partnership organizations, engaged in the Hope for Children project which aims to assist in addressing the psychological, social, and spiritual needs of the child victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita through a unique multi-religious approach of day camps for children and trauma awareness and resilience training for adults and young adults.

Building Interfaith Community
Among RFP-USA’s programmatic areas of focus is to “build community,” not only among our country’s cities, but also among today’s interfaith movement leaders. For this reason, RFP-USA has been reaching out to other interfaith organizations for cooperation and event collaboration. RFP-USA, for example, acted as a liaison between the North American Interfaith Network and the National Association of Ecumenical and Interreligious Staff for the 2004 joint NAIN/NAEIS Connect Conference in NYC. It has also sponsored a young adult scholarship contest for the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. In the coming year, the organization hopes to host a gathering of U.S. religious leaders from all of the country’s major religious communities.

Other recent joint initiatives of the organization include the co-sponsoring of a 9/11 memorial service, dialogue on the Sudan crisis, and a forum to recognize the International Day of Peace. Another project, Creative Explorations in Community Building, is being coordinated with the Same Difference Interfaith Alliance as a way to bring interfaith dialogue and intercultural understanding to communities through engagement with the arts. Another way RFP-USA is combining dialogue and the arts is through the development of public service announcements through a special collaboration with Faith and Values Media.

Presently, RFP-USA sends out an interfaith newsletter every month to over 200 interfaith organizations which features the work of the organization and that of its member bodies. RFP-USA is also creating an inter-chapter newsletter for other regional and national chapters of Religions for Peace International found worldwide, to give leaders a chance to learn from one another as they address peace and justice issues in their parts of the world.

Expanding Local Initiatives
Since gaining an independent 501(c)3 status, the organization has been challenged to form its own mold aside from its identity with Religions for Peace International and to expand its local programming through a strategic focus on local leaders and citizens. Heckman notes, “the work of RFP-USA has a strong historical presence in the work of the WCRP, and we are doing new and exciting interfaith programming apart from them, too.” To Heckman, being a national body is particularly advantageous because the group has essential ties to international and national leaders, but can also work on the local level to bring interreligious understanding to smaller communities nationwide. In sum, RFP-USA has a global vision with the benefit of working it out on a local, statewide, and national level.

Currently, one state chapter of the national body exists– Religions for Peace Hawaii. Although RFP-USA intends to develop more statewide chapters in the future, it is focusing its attention at this time on a new project entitled Building Interreligious Councils. The project was implemented in 2003 in an effort to develop three new interreligious councils in the United States where an interfaith structure was lacking and to provide technical assistance for them through the development of a guidebook and formal training process. Out of more than two dozen inquiries, three locations were chosen for this project – Fresno, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Kansas City, Missouri. Through efforts like these, Heckman says that RFP-USA is well on its way to expanding its local presence and widening the scope of interfaith activity in the country.