Making Connections - Life in Interfaith Land

Today is December 3, at least in Melbourne, Australia. I think it's still yesterday in Illinois, where I live. Eight members of our church, along with thousands of other folks from all around the world, have traveled to this appealing and welcoming city to meet each other, share our stories, and make connections that we hope will have lasting and healing effects. Officially this gathering is called the Parliament of the World's Religions.

We have already been experiencing the delights of meaningful coincidences, or synchronicity as some call it. Our nearly eternal flight from LA to Sydney was full of people traveling to the Parliament, but we were truly blown away when a young man we met purely by chance in the Sydney airport, who is not involved at all in the Parliament, turned out to be the son of an Interfaith Alliance friend of ours back home. Then this morning in an apparently random coffee shop in Melbourne, we sat down next to another UU minister who is also here for the Parliament. Here are Tracy from New Jersey and I doing our email and blogging side by side. These are delightful and intriguing experiences.

The Parliament opens this evening and we will be there. There is no place else I would rather be at this moment. It's partly just fun, but it's also a rare opportunity to get to know people who are usually not part of my daily life, people who live far away and practice different faiths but with whom I share more in common than the surface differences would suggest. Each such meeting opens up a new spectrum of opportunities that lead in ways we cannot foresee, but which offer much hope to us as individuals and as a lovable but contentious human family. We are grateful to be here.

It would be great to read your comments! Just click below.

No World Peace Without Religious Peace

"No world peace without religious peace" is a quotation from Hans Küng, the Swiss Catholic theologian who has been so active in the work of worldwide interfaith reconciliation. When we look around the globe, we see that a high percentage of conflicts and wars have a religious dimension. Virtually all of the various wars in the Middle East are obvious examples, including America's seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Küng puts forward the argument that such conflicts will not be resolved by politics or weapons alone; the underlying religious issues must be addressed as well. It is not just nations that are at war, but religions too. If Küng is right, then interfaith reconciliation is a necessity for peace on earth.

I first became aware of Küng's work at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1993. It was at this historic global interfaith gathering that Küng put forth his idea of a global ethic, a set of principles that could be adopted by all of humanity, that would favor no one group over the others and could enable the human race to live in peace. The 1993 Parliament in Chicago was followed by Parliaments in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999 and Barcelona, Spain, in 2004. The next Parliament will take place in Melbourne, Australia, December 3 through 9, 2009. Once again a movement will be made to bring the faith traditions of the earth into cooperative interchange of ideas, beliefs, and commitments.

At the 1999 Cape Town Parliament, Nelson Mandela proclaimed that the worldwide scourge of AIDS needed the cooperative effort of the world's religions to be conquered. Today the world, and Africa especially, are still ravaged by this disease. The 2004 Parliament in Barcelona focused on four major global issues: clean drinking water, religious violence, third world debt, and the plight of refugees. Significant projects were undertaken in all four areas by religious leaders.
The theme of the 2009 Parliament in Melbourne is "Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth."
You still have time to go, and you might get to talk to Hans Küng yourself. Find out more at www.parliamentofreligions.org.

If it is true that the huge social problems of the world need religious cooperation to be overcome, or at least the cessation of the conflicts between religions that exacerbate these problems, then interfaith involvement becomes a kind of moral imperative. There are many ways to participate, and your church, mosque, temple, or synagogue may offer such programs. I have found the Interfaith Alliance, supported by the late Walter Cronkite, to be a creative, active group for interfaith issues within the United States, and the Parliament of the World's Religions to be the cutting edge movement for global interfaith dialogue and action. I encourage you to explore these two good options and others as well.

Religion, to be helpful to humanity in the 21st century, must lead to dialogue and peace, not hatred and war. Now we must each figure out how to contribute toward that goal. What are your ideas?

Walter Cronkite and the Interfaith Alliance

One of the most underreported dimensions of the life and work of Walter Cronkite is his long and dedicated involvement with the Interfaith Alliance. For some strange reason, this doesn't seem to be headline news.

The Interfaith Alliance was founded in 1994 with a mission to promote the positive role of religion as a healing and constructive force in public life. That was, and still is, a challenging goal. At the time of the founding of the Interfaith Alliance, America seemed to be increasingly mired in a one-dimensional view of religion. The one kind of religion that was constantly asserted in the public eye was the conservative Christianity of mostly white, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.

The message of this movement, called the religious right, was that religion is about rigid moral rules, conservative politics, individual responsibility (which usually meant voting "no" on social programs) and a strangely unChristlike affirmation of American militarism. The religious right was cultivating a growing alliance with conservative politicians that would reach its zenith during the Bush years. Some of those politicians openly called for America to be a "Christian nation," a form of government known as theocracy.

The Interfaith Alliance was formed to provide an alternative to this flawed model of the role of religion in public life. Interfaith Alliance sought to remind the American people that America is diverse, mulitcolored and multiethnic, not monochrome and always crowding the right side of the political spectrum. The new organization wanted to promote tolerance, religious freedom, civility and respect in religious dialogue, and clear boundaries between church and state. It wanted to correct the mistaken idea that any political party represented God. It wanted America to remember that thoughtful and caring people can disagree on religion, politics and social policies, whether they are people of faith or not.

Beginning in 1997, Walter Cronkite became one of the most active and dedicated supporters of the Interfaith Alliance and remained so for the rest of his life. The group awards a prize each year in his name, and at the time of his death, he served as honorary chair of the board. Upon the occasion of Cronkite's first meeting with executive director Rev. Welton Gaddy, the most trusted person in America stated, "Nothing less is at stake in the work of the Interfaith Alliance than the existence of democracy as we know it."

In the last twelve years, the religious landscape has changed in America. The religious right no longer has the sole claim to be the voice of religion. There are many voices being heard in America, among them voices of Muslims, Jews, Native Americans, Hindus, Buddhists, humanists, pagans and many varieties of Christians. Walter Cronkite's dedication to opening up our American consciousness to the diverse voices already present among us is a major reason for the increased richness of our contemporary view. It is now our task to continue this work so that Americans of all faiths, and those of no faith, can live together peacefully, safely and in full freedom.