Interfaith Movement Research Articles

Plural(Is)Me: Mungkinkah Kita Bersaudara? Merangkai Gerakan Persaudaraan Sebagai Arena Bersama, Belajar dari Jaringan Gusdurian

In the midst of inter-religious segregation, there are several inter-faith movements. Apparently, the movement developed over time. One of the interfaith movements currently present in implementing the values of fraternity is Jaringan Gusdurian. The presence of Jaringan Gusdurian gives a new color to the interfaith movement, because of this group move actively in fighting for justice, defending minority groups and carrying out peace campaigns. In its implementation, this group also prioritizes human values wrapped in interfaith movements.This article will specifically discuss the brotherhood movement as a common arena, learning from Jaringan Gudurian, using the perspective of Strategic Action Fields theory, where this theory explains the fields or arenas that gives a new possibility through the role of social actors. Through this theory, a guide will be founded to find out models of fraternal movements in Jaringan Gusdurian which are models of fraternal movements in living together.

Women's Experiences in Interreligious Leadership

AbstractWomen are providing significant leadership across the interfaith movement in the US context. While their leadership is increasingly acknowledged, this article will explore how women experience interreligious leadership. What are the challenges and opportunities they face? How do they view and engage their work and their networks? What is the vision they hold for transformed and transformative interreligious relations? How is women's interreligious leadership both an indicator of and a means for contributing to gender justice? This article will feature primary sources – leaders living in the United States and serving in local, national, and global positions with impact in all spheres – along with analysis from secondary sociological and theological sources. Thus, this article will contribute a rare first‐person assessment of women's interreligious leadership to a growing, much‐needed body of research on this topic.

“Revolutionary Youth” in Egypt: Interfaith Relations Since the 2011 Revolution

Due to their important role as the “revolutionary youth” ( shabāb al-thawra) in the 2011 Egyptian revolution (known in part as the Arab Spring), they have attracted considerable attention from scholars. In the post-revolution era, discourse on the revolutionary youth has become prominent in Egypt. Compared to the social exclusion of the youth before 2011, it is noteworthy that the revolutionary youth emerged as the main focus of the interfaith relations between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Based on field research data, this article argues that since 2011, the “revolutionary youth” has become a new driving force of the solidarity movement among different sections of society, particularly interfaith harmony. By and large, the interfaith movement can be seen as an activist movement to maintain one’s ongoing revolutionary spirit by living differently. As a part of the global generation, Egyptian youth have been transformed by the revolution experience within the context of their historical–social location.

Understanding Covenants and Communities: Jews and Latter-day Saints in Dialogue

Understanding Covenants and Communities: Jews and Latter-day Saints in Dialogue

Countering Social Stigma as the Basis of Interfaith Movement: A Case Study of Cadar Garis Lucu

One of the weaknesses of interfaith dialogue in Indonesia is the lack of participation and space for women’s voices. Almost all spaces for interfaith dialogue are dominated by men, even though women have an important role in interfaith dialogue. Therefore, we should involve more women than men, not only because women are the most affected when religious conflicts occur but previous studies have also shown that women are most effective in peacebuilding negotiation based on non-violent strategies. This study investigates an interfaith movement, Cadar Garis Lucu, which veiled/niqab women initiated to counter the stigma that veiled/niqab women are radical-extremist and anti-other religions. Besides being active in promoting peace and interfaith dialogue, Cadar Garis Lucu also promotes the discourse of gender equality. By employing qualitative research and in-depth interview method as the primary data collection technique, this study found that Cadar Garis Lucu is an interfaith movement that aims to counter society’s negative stigma towards women – both veiled/niqab women and women in general – and seeks to bring women to participate in interfaith dialogue. Furthermore, this study argues that there is no better way to peacebuilding than to give space for women in interfaith dialogue.

The Rhetoric of American Exceptionalism in the Interfaith Movement in the United States

Two aspects of the rhetoric of American exceptionalism have informed the interfaith movement in the United States for more than a century: (1) America is an exceptional society with an exceptional religious system, and (2) America has a global mission. This article traces the rhetoric of American exceptionalism in four interfaith cases: the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, and the Tri-Faith Initiative of Omaha, Nebraska. Two supportable claims can be made: The modern interfaith movement originated in the exceptional social and civic context of the U.S. and subsequently emerged in comparable social and civic contexts.

Unity in Diversity

Interfaith Scotland (IFS) represents a substantial number of religious bodies in Scotland and the representation of non-Christian religious minorities is fundamental to the interfaith movement. In a country in which religious minorities make up a tiny fraction of the population, in comparison with England and other European countries, narratives of diversity have become more prominent in the public sphere. Interfaith Scotland has depended on the world religions paradigm to promote its version of religious pluralism as embodied in its structure and represented in its literature, reinforcing the equivalency and paramount importance of the ‘major traditions’, while groups which do not fit neatly into one of these traditions have no representation on the organisation’s governing board. On the other hand, the world religions approach means that religious groups like the Scottish Pagan Federation are re-made according to that mould in Interfaith literature, with stress on an overarching intellectualised tradition constructed from disparate sources. This closely parallels the processes out of which the world religions paradigm arose in the 19th century with the construction of ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’ and other world religions as discrete intellectualised traditions.

Critical reflections on the interfaith movement: A social justice perspective.

Critical reflections on the interfaith movement: A social justice perspective.

The Interfaith Movement in a Liminal Age: The Institutionalization of a Movement

This essay confronts current questions within the interfaith movement: What is it? Does it have a clear purpose? What is its role within our current liminal culture? How do we articulate the answers to these questions in order to gain a place in the academy, establish an interfaith atmosphere in the classroom, and gain funds to achieve its mission? The questions, in turn, are answered by providing descriptions of the diverse ways “interfaith” is used in public discourse in an age of continual uncertainty and fracturing. These descriptions are then placed within the practical multireligious world of teaching, fundraising, and professionalization of an academic discipline.

Interfaith Resistance in South Africa

Abstract This edited excerpt from the Rev. Dr. G. J. A. Lubbe's memoirs, titled Embraced by Grace: The Story of a White Ant, describes the formation and impact of the nonviolent interfaith movement against apartheid in South Africa. From 1984 to 1994, the year of President Nelson Mandela's election, Lubbe led the South African chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, now known as Religions for Peace. Under its organizational umbrella South Africans of various faiths crossed both theological and racial lines to oppose apartheid and later to influence the interfaith ethos of postapartheid South Africa.

Value Pluralism and Monotheism

AbstractHow far can monotheism be reconciled with the pluralism characteristic of modern societies? In this article, I focus on the “value pluralism” of Isaiah Berlin, which I suggest captures a deeper level of plurality than Rawls's more familiar version of pluralism. However, some critics have objected that Berlinian pluralism is too controversial an idea in which to ground liberalism because it is profoundly at odds with the monotheism professed by so many citizens of a modern society. I argue that monotheists can be value pluralists as long as they do not insist that their faith is superior to all others. This pluralist position is exemplified by elements of the interfaith movement, according to which many religions are recognized as having roughly equal value. I also argue that a value-pluralist approach to religious accommodation, if it can be achieved, may be more stable than the uneasy combination of disapproval and restraint involved in the more orthodox solution to conflict among religions, toleration.

Preface

We have reason to celebrate the publication of this volume endorsed by ISNA and JTS. Last year, we at ISNA celebrated the 50th anniversary of our organization. Half a century of growth and development in a pluralist democracy is in itself a special experience for our Muslim community. A few years ago, we realized that the Muslim and the Jewish communities in America were growing in isolation from each other. Our success and prosperity was in some ways facilitated by our close cooperation and dialogue with various Christian denominations and organizations. But this was not true with respect to Muslim and Jewish Americans. Both communities learned about each other through the writings of their own coreligionists, many of whom were distorting the images of each other and looking at each other from the lens of the excesses committed in the Holy Land. This was a very dangerous situation. If this was allowed to continue, we would have the tensions of the Middle East visiting us here and pushing both communities to build walls of separation and see extremism thrive. We had an alternative available: Open up our communities to each other and let the dialogue begin in a big way. The good will that could be generated here would be a great asset in solving the conflict back in the Holy Land itself. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the leaders in the largest Jewish denomination, the URJ, had been thinking along the same lines. We developed a joint pilot project from this initiative called the Children of Abraham. A book with this name was written jointly by Muslims and Jews and endorsed by ISNA and the URJ. This book served as a guide for a group of mosques and synagogues that we twinned for dialogue. The response from the communities was very encouraging. This gave birth to many related and independent initiatives and projects that have proliferated since then. While we were thinking that Reform Judaism alone would open the doors to Muslim-Jewish dialogue, I received a call from Rabbi Burton Visotzky of JTS telling me that he and their Chancellor Arnold Eisen were coming to Washington, DC for the Conservative Rabbinic Assembly's annual conference and that they would like to visit us at our office. Both of them came, and this was our first friendly encounter with the leaders of the Conservative Jewish community in America. They passionately made the point that the Conservative Jews were equally interested in participating in and advancing Muslim-Jewish dialogue and solidarity. I recall asking them, if that is so, then “what took you so long to come here?” We started our work in earnest. We jointly sponsored three annual seminars with JTS: the first at JTS in New York, the second at Harford Seminary in Connecticut, and the last organized by ISNA in Washington, DC. The papers that are included in this volume of The Muslim World are the products of these seminars. They point to a new horizon of cooperation. Jewish Muslim dialogue has built a strong alliance between the two communities to fight against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and to stand up together in the corridors of power against various kinds of injustices and iniquities around us. We have indeed witnessed this in a robust interfaith movement: The Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign: Standing with American Muslims; Upholding American Values. Additionally, these dialogues prepared our Imams to go to Holocaust sites and internalize the facts of human suffering and pain inflicted on the Jewish community in history. The papers here point in a unique direction, identifying the joint struggle in approaching our respective religious texts, and reviving or reforming our regulations and traditions. It is amazing to see that the challenges of interpreting and reinterpreting certain practices and foundational principles of our jurisprudence are so similar. The struggle to maintain authenticity while remaining relevant in a pluralistic, democratic society is nearly identical at JTS and in our Fiqh Council. We have so much to learn from each other. Does this mean that the two communities will consult each other when faced with new issues, such as end of life and surrogate motherhood? They have a strikingly common methodology to be true to their guiding principles. This would provide a new context to the verse repeated twice in the Quran (cf. 16:43 and 21:7): If you are in doubt, “Go and ask the scholars of the scriptures that came before you.”

Framing Interfaith Dialogue in Australia's Multicultural Setting: Mounting an Interfaith and Intercultural Network in Melbourne's Northern Region

By examining the experience of an innovative and ambitious initiative in the evolution of the interfaith movement in Australia, this article analyses three contested themes: first, how to connect religion more closely with culture, thereby placing interfaith relations within the context of intercultural awareness; second, how to develop a regional initiative which, informed by Australia's urban history and sociology, would complement and dovetail with preexisting interfaith and intercultural activities; and third, how to translate the general principles of dialogue into the operational environments of local communities. By analysing the insertion of dialogue into the modalities of ‘everyday’ life, this article illuminates how a multidimensional approach to interfaith dialogue can resonate with the cultural–political specificities of a major metropolitan concentration.

Christians in the twenty-first century

'Christians in the Twenty-First Century' examines Christianity as it is understood and practised both by active followers and those who regard themselves as Christian. The book opens with an examination of key Christian concepts - the Bible, the Creeds, the Church and the sacraments - and the major traditions of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism as well as more recent movements. The book continues with an analysis of the challenges presented by the rise of science, new approaches to biblical scholarship, the rise of fundamentalist movements, the ordination of women, secularization, the interfaith movement, and the impact of the electronic revolution.

Claiming the Passion: American Fantasies of the Oberammergau Passion Play, 1923–1947

In 1934 the third centennial celebration of Oberammergau's famous passion play coincided with Adolph Hitler's rise to power. For American Jews, the Oberammergau Passion Play had long symbolized the Christian roots of Anti-Semitism. Ironically, American Jews' liberal Protestant allies viewed Oberammergau as a symbol of Christian ecumenism, capable of uniting Protestants, Catholics, and even Jews. “Claiming the Passion” traces Oberammergau in the rhetoric of American liberals from the American tour of Anton Lang, who portrayed the Christus in 1923, to his successor's trial for Nazi sympathies in 1947. It places the conflicting Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant views of Oberammergau in the context of the early goodwill or interfaith movement. It argues that liberal Protestants' enthusiasm for Oberammergau arose from their effort to articulate a more inclusive national identity, in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists. But the conflicts over Oberammergau also suggest that liberal Protestants had not yet come to terms with Jewish critiques of Christian Anti-Judaism.

Interreligious Education: What Would Dewey Do?

This article explores interreligious education from the perspective of John Dewey's educational philosophy. Keenly aware that twentieth-century individuals and societies would have an expanding plurality of experiences, Dewey proposed a democratic educational philosophy able to account for life in a pluralistic world. Three interconnected themes from Dewey's educational philosophy are applied to interreligious education. The themes are the method, subject matter, and participants of interreligious education. Using Dewey's insights calls into question three aspects of the inter-faith movement: dialogue, doctrine, and sacerdotalism.

Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes

Interfaith Directory

The cause of interfaith dialogue, understanding and what is sometimesdescribed as "the wider ecumenismn has gained considerable momentum inrecent years. While interfaith conflicts and sectarian tensions continue to hitthe headlines, efforts to build bridges and arrive at some degree of mutualunderstanding are also underway. Recent years have witnessed the emergenceof many groups, agencies and organizations around the globe that are workingin the field of interreligious dialogue and understanding. These groupingshave held numerous interfaith seminars, cqnferences and workshops and havecontributed significantly in opening up new channels of communication andwider avenues of concord among the hitherto contending religious communityleaders. One such organization is The Council for the World's Religions (CWR).a New York based organization which aims to bring believers of all faithsinto mutual friendship and collaboration in the service of God and humanity.The Interfaith Directory sponsored by the CWR is one important step towarddisseminating information about other organizations and agencies workingfor interreligious harmony and concord.The Directory lists names, addresses and activities of about seven hundredinterfaith organizations throughout the world. These organizations have beenlisted in five different categories: 1) organizations with multifaith membership;2) organizations relating to two or three religions; 3) organizations basedon one religion. but with outreach to other religions; 4) universalist movementsfor spiritual unity; and 5) academic institutions which are also centers ofinterfaith dialogue and encounter. Some organizations receive multiple entriesbecause of the varied nature of their activities and programs. The Directoryalso includes two very useful indeces, one alphabetical and the othergeographical. As has been noted by the editor, these organizations may varyconsiderably in size, resources and effectiveness but all of them share thecommon goal of interreligious harmony. Francis Clark has contributed a verythoughtful introduction to the volume in which he discusses present trendsin the world-wide interfaith movement. He rightly points out that the interfaithmovement "is a deeper religious expression of the new sense of oneness ofthe human family and the new awareness of our coounon responsibilities,dangers and destiny in our one shared habitat." However, he is not oblivious ...