Religions for Peace - USA December 2007 E-Newsletter

Having Difficulty Viewing This E-mail?, Please Click Here.

In This Issue:

From Our Executive Director…

Happy Holidays From RFP-USA
This time of year many religious traditions are celebrating holy days with family and friends. Religions for Peace-USA wants to wish all of our members and newsletter subscribers Happy Holidays and best wishes for a wonderful New Year. May our work continue to grow and bear new fruit in the coming year.

Great Gift Ideas for the Holidays!
As the holiday season approaches for a number of our religious traditions, many of you will be scattering around searching for the perfect gift. This year, consider giving your peace-loving loved one the gift that keeps on giving: Religions for Peace apparel! Check out all our apparel options here.

Religions for Peace Featured in Guide to Good Giving
Religions for Peace-USA joins an exclusive list of organizations included in the Case Foundation’s Guide to Good Giving, which is designed to help people make smart and meaningful decisions about their giving during the holiday season and beyond.

The 2007 Guide to Good Giving is filled with interesting and innovative gift and giving suggestions, including a charitable donation to Religions for Peace-USA that will nurture interfaith dialogue.

RFP-USA Joins the Giving Challenge
Now through the end of January, Religions for Peace-USA is taking part in the Giving Challenge sponsored by the Case Foundation in partnership with Facebook Causes and Parade Magazine. These are two separate giving challenges designed to reward non-profits who collect the greatest number of individual donors in the month-long competition.

In the Facebook Causes Giving Challenge, $1,000 is given away each day to the charity with the most unique donors for that day. Awards will be given at the end of the challenge to the causes with the most unique donors overall. These awards include $50,000 for 1st place, $25,000 for 2nd and 3rd place, and $10,000 for the next 10 causes.

In Parade’s America’s Giving Challenge, the eight individuals whose charity badges attract the most unique donors through the America’s Giving Challenge will get $50,000 for their cause. The 100 nonprofits with the greatest number of unique donations made to them through America’s Giving Challenge will each get $1,000.

Learn how you can help Religions for Peace-USA here.

Summer Peacebuilding Institute
Last newsletter we highlighted the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. This program is still accepting applications through January 7th.

For more information, click here.

Pontifical Council Sends Diwali Message to Hindus
The President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue sent its annual message to Hindus on the occasion of Diwali. This year Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran drew attention to the importance of educating believers about their own faith and the faith of others. "Belief and freedom always go together," he explains. In defending freedom for religious belief we promote religious education which enables true dialogue between religions. Such dialogue builds "a society of harmony and a world of peace" by correcting assumptions, clarifying misunderstandings, and creating foundations for friendship.

Find the full text of the message here.

January Programs at Auburn Seminary
During the month of January, Auburn Seminary will provide three 2-3 day programs for both seminary students and interested public. The first is Evolution, DNA and the Soul, taught by Robert Pollack professor of biological sciences and director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion at Columbia University. The course will offer participants the biology background necessary to understand the complex medical issues clergy face in providing routine pastoral care in congregations.

The second is Women's Preaching Academy, designed to support and strengthen the preaching and leadership of clergy women. Developing Coaching Skills in Ministry is the third program which will introduce participants to coaching skills, offering an approach to individual coaching that emphasizes increasing resilience and creating a climate of teamwork.

For more information about any of these programs or to register, please contact Auburn's registrar at 212.662.4315 or send an email.

A Religious Mosaic in the Holy Land
Galillee College in Israel announces its Joint Jewish-Christian-Muslim Religious Studies Programme: "A Religious Mosaic in the Holy Land" to take place July 2nd through August 5th, 2008. Participants will be analyzing: Is peace possible with Islam? Is peace possible without Islam? Among the variety of approaches through which to address these questions, they will consider also that of Rabbi Fruman. The program will also address what the role of religious interfaith dialogue in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should be and whether or not it would complicate matters or have a conciliatory influence.

For more information contact Program Director Shoshi Norman.

Most Translated Document on Earth
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights reached its 60-year mark this month, an occasion for the United Nations to renew calls on governments to implement international norms that they have signed on. The declaration adopted on December 10, 1948 remains a major landmark document that has been adopted by all governments and translated into 360 languages, making it the most-translated document on earth, according to the UN.

For the full text of the declaration, click here.

Teaching About Religion Results in Greater Tolerance
Today, religion has become a subject one high school teacher calls even more controversial than teaching sex-ed. Teachers feel ill-equipped to talk about it. In a post-9-11 world, students increasingly face harassment for what they believe. And yet, today's students will interact with a far more pluralistic society than their parents or grandparents did. Some educators see in this a call for urgency. If faith-based intolerance is ever to be confronted, they say schools are exactly the place religion should be addressed. The school district in Modesto, California has done just that.

After a divisive, public battle over the role of tolerance in the city's schools, a small group of teachers developed a world religions curriculum for every 9th-grade class in the district. Now, Modesto stands out as the only school district in the country that mandates a world religions course for high school graduation.

Researchers interviewed students before, during and immediately after the semester, and again six months after the course ended. Over and over, they found that students had become more tolerant of other religions and more willing to protect the rights of people of other faiths.

For a complete news article on the results of the religion course in the magazine Teaching Tolerance, click here.

RFP-USA Moderator on Council for Parliament of World's Religions
The Chair of the Interfaith Committee of the World Sikh Council -America Region (WSC-AR) and Moderator of Religions for Peace-USA, Dr. Tarunjit Singh Butalia, has been elected as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR).

Dr. Butalia remarked, "the idea of forming a World Sikh Council - America Region was proposed by Sikh participants at the 1993 Parliament of World's Religions in Chicago. I look forward to working with fellow trustees to promote interfaith respect and understanding in a world that is being increasingly polarized along ethnic, religious, nationalistic, and class boundaries."

The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, formed initially in 1988, was set up to organize a centennial celebration of the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The 1893 Parliament is recognized as the occasion of the birth of formal
interreligious dialogue worldwide. The mission of the Council is to cultivate harmony among the world's religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its other guiding institutions in order to achieve a peaceful, just, and
sustainable world. The Council has organized the Parliament at Chicago, USA (1993), Cape Town, South Africa (1999), and Barcelona, Spain (2004). The next Parliament will be held December 3-9, 2009 in Melbourne, Australia.

The World Sikh Council - America Region (WSC-AR) is a representative and elected body of Sikh Gurdwaras and institutions in the United States. Its members include 45 Gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship) and other Sikh institutions across the nation. WSC-AR works to promote Sikh interests at the national and international level focusing on issues of advocacy, education, and well-being of humankind.

Union for Reform Judaism Celebrates Biennial
The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) celebrated its 2007 Biennial Convention in San Diego, CA on December 12-16. It was a gathering of Reform Jews from all over North America that included learning, prayer, the sharing of ideas, and making decisions about the policies of the Reform Movement. In addition to calling for a greater personal and communal Shabbat observance, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union, charged the more than 5,000 Biennial attendees to return home to create state coalitions for universal health care and to open dialogue with their Muslims neighbors.

This launched the new Children of Abraham program focusing on Jewish-Muslim dialogue. Through this program, the Union for Reform Judaism is working with the Islamic Society of North America to conquer the mutual ignorance that exists among Jews and Muslims. Through dialogue session, study guides, and adult education, these two organizations hope to take stops toward mutual understanding and productive engagement.

For more information on the Biennial visit URJ’s blog about the event and for more information on Children of Abraham, click here.

Improve Your Vocabulary and Feed the Hungry
Poverty.com has launched a new sister website called FreeRice which allows web-surfers to test their vocabulary skills and donate rice to feed the hungry. For every correct answer players raise 20 grains of rice to be donated through the United Nations. The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names are seen on the bottom of the vocabulary screen.

It’s a fun and easy way to support the fight against hunger so click here to play!

Building Abrahamic Partnerships
Our society needs a new kind of religious leadership, grounded in a particular tradition and, at the same time, able to interact effectively with other faith communities. This is especially true given the prevalence of fear and mutual suspicion, exacerbated by violence committed by religious extremists.

Hartford Seminary, building on its strengths as an interfaith, dialogical school of practical theology, has designed this innovative program, Building Abrahamic Partnerships to be a practical resource for Jews, Christians, and Muslims who seek a solid foundation in interfaith ministry. The format is an 8-day intensive training program, beginning with an informal dinner on January 13 and concluding with a dinner on January 20.

We need to develop educational strategies to overcome the ignorance that leads to prejudice, which in turn leads to dehumanizing contempt, which in turn breeds violence.

The goals of the course are fourfold:
• Educating participants about the beliefs and practices of the three Abrahamic traditions
• Creating a supportive learning community in which clergy, lay ministers, religious educators, and chaplains can forge mutually beneficial relationships across communal boundaries
• Helping participants acquire pastoral skills useful in interfaith ministry
• Developing leadership strategies for promoting interfaith relations in our pluralistic society

For more information, or to sign up, contact Yehezkel Landau by phone at (860) 509-9538 or e-mail

Religions for Peace Council to Advance Peace Process
On December 7, the Executive Committee of the Religions for Peace World Council—senior religious leaders representing all major faith traditions—meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, announced new multi-faith initiatives to address the world's most urgent issues.

The religious leaders endorsed the just-announced Religions for Peace multi-religious Middle East Council of Religious Leaders and the recently formed Religions for Peace Inter-religious Council–Palestine; offered Religions for Peace as a facilitator of the highly sensitive global Muslim-Christian dialogue; and continued its call for constructive dialogue and participatory governance in Burma, offering its service to the Government of Myanmar to assist in building a just peace.

"Through common action on three critical issues—common living in the Holy Land, Muslim-Christian dialogue, and the peaceful aspirations of the Burmese people for participatory governance—the world's faith communities are exercising moral leadership," said Dr. William F. Vendley, the Religions for Peace Secretary General.

Twelve members of the Religions for Peace Executive Committee forged consensus on profoundly relevant global issues at their year-end meeting on 5–6 December at the Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt.

"The actions taken by such diverse religious leaders demonstrate the power and relevance of multi-faith cooperation to address the most serious issues of the global community," said V. Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, Moderator of Religions for Peace.

The Executive Committee released three official public statements regarding the Middle East, Muslim-Christian relations, and Burma. To read the full text of these statements, click here.

Buddhist Exploration of Peace And Justice
Chanju Mun and Ronald S. Green edited and published articles presented in the Fifth International Seminar on Buddhism and Leadership for Peace on the theme of “Exploration of Ways to Put Buddhist Thought into Social Practice for Peace and Justice” in order to make this book. Of the more than 40 presentation papers, the editors selected and included 28 excellent articles to compose Buddhist Exploration of Peace and Justice. The articles investigate peace and justice from the perspectives of various Buddhist traditions.

Signs of Peace: The Interfaith Letters of Thomas Merton
In this book, readers are given the opportunity to read letters Thomas Merton wrote to his friends of many faiths. Merton, perhaps the most celebrated Christian monk of modern times, kept an array of correspondents that can serve as a model of how interfaith dialogue should be conducted today. In Signs of Peace, letters written Abdul Aziz, a Sufi scholar, Miya Chakravarty, a Hindu, and the Dalai Lama are presented among others as an example of how religious seekers from different traditions can become peacemakers.

Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace
In Just Peacemaking, Glen Stassen helps Christians mediate between the two rival traditions of just war theory and pacifism by his politically imaginative hermeneutic. Stassen bases his peace theory on the new reality of our world, recent Biblical interpretation, and on the experiences of people who have lived in the face of oppression and nuclear threat. He works to show that turning the left cheek, giving your cloak, going the second mile, and giving to the one who begs are not passive compliance but nonviolent transforming initiatives that seek to restore a relationship of justice and peace.

Peace Skills: Leaders' Guide
A hands-on resource for teaching peace-building skills to community leaders worldwide. Rather than bringing in outside experts who mediate and leave a conflict, this new approach equips the locally recognized moral and political leaders with mediation skills to achieve peace within their own communities. Includes practical guidelines for teaching mediation through role-plays, case studies, and sacred texts. The Leader's Guide prepares people to lead Peace Skills workshops; the Manual supports workshop participants in applying mediation skills back home.