Interfaith // Current

Tony Blair Searching for 30 Oustanding Young people

In Spring 2009, thirty outstanding young people will be chosen to serve as inter-religious ambassadors for the Millennium... more

soleil10
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U.N. Faith Forum Denounces Intolerance, Extremism - washingtonpost.com

World leaders, senior diplomats and religious figures condemned extremism and terrorism Wednesday at a U.N. conference on... more

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King Abdullah and the skeptics

The decision by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to hold an interfaith conference under the auspices of the United Nations is bold,... more

bedeboop
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Keweenaw Bay Indian Community: Zaagkii Wings & Seeds Project Protects Pollinators

In July 2008, a three-year initiative began called the Zaagkii Wings and Seeds Project that involves Native American youth and... more

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Christian Century article on concerns over "acid" mines planned in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Above Photo of Lake Superior shoreline © Jim Kruger Please read the Christian Century Article by Rev. Jon Magnuson on the... more

Yoopernewsman
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Menominee Tribal School students speak out about protecting Mother Earth

Menominee Tribal School students in Keshena, Wisconsin are learning valuable lessons about protecting the environment and learning... more

Yoopernewsman
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Muslim Morocco using Music as a bridge between world faiths?

As Saudi Arabia held its first ever conference on interfaith dialogue Morocco is hosting its 14th festival of World Sacred Music.... more

ASUK999
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Frances Jewish & Muslim leaders unite to encourage tolerance

The French Muslim & Jewish communities have both choosen their new leaders this sunday which are vowing to make their faith... more

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Christians: No One Path to Salvation

"Americans of every religious stripe are considerably more tolerant of the beliefs of others than most of us might have... more

CCashman
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Turtle Island Project Director Some rich view Indigenous Peoples as "expendable commodities"

TIP Dir. Rev. Dr. Lynn Hubbard:
I think we have here two different forms of religion. Ands its this religion of my ancestors that I participate in that I think really has been the problem. I think we have to come to understand that religious consciousness evolves just like anything else does. It's not just the material world that evolves but also our cultural world evolves and the realm of the concept evolves. We are going now, as a people - there was a time from prehistorical religions to historic religions. the religions of the book Judaism, Christianity, Islam to this historic period. Now I think that is transending to this transrational understanding of spirituality. And as part of this transrational understanding of spirituality is an appropriation of this knowledge and spirituality of Earth-based cultures. I think we have to be open now to what John Trudell called ‘spirit making and escape.’ I love this idea. My spirit needs to make an escape from my religious consciousness. The racial and cultural genocide that still goes on today inside this country . Judaism is an inherently ethical religion except you have to be a Canaanite. You may get your ass kicked or your head cut off but basically it's OK. But sky Gods and cultures that worship sky Gods are traditionally barbaric - Read the Old Testament - Wow! Talk about patriarchy. But we are in a war. It is not a war of my choosing.But we are in a war I truly believe that - a war fore our hearts and our minds. We have to continually fight.It's multi-generational. We fight against great principalities and powers. It's amazing. If you stick your head up out of the foxhole just a little bit and you start speaking on behalf of the poor. Those bullets are flying. I said something about a corporation. I said we created these corporations and political structures that aren't moral entities because you have to say things like: ‘I'm sorry. I made a mistake.' You have to admit your humanness. When's the last time your heard a politician ever admit a mistake unless they were forced to? ‘I did not have sex with that woman - I did not inhale - yes I smoked but I did not inhale' And I said corporations are liked this too - they are not moral entities because they cannot do these things like apologize. Well, good Lord that's attacking a sacred cow - there's a guy in my congregation who just went ballistic - who quit the church because he had spent his entire life benefiting from, working for, a non-moral entity. I did not say all corporations were liked this - I just said some corporations are like this. Well that's all you have to say. Rev. Hubbard said Americans and all people who call Earth home need to protect the environment. He said we have lost the sense of the sacred - a lesson that can be learned from Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. I understand this because I feel desperate. What John Trudell was talking about is the same way. We've lost our way. We do not have any spiritual sense because we have lost any sense of the sacred. A great historian of the religions Mircea Eliade who was at the University of Chicago where I for many years - I did his funeral. Mircea Eliade had this notion that in order to have a hierophany, an experience of the sacred, you have to have sacred space. If this Earth is not sacred to you, which it isn't to Mickey Mouse, then you can't have an experience of the sacred. I deal with people every day in my congregation who have lost or are losing any sense of the sacred. And it's not only - like you were saying this relationship between Earth and women - and the earth and man. If you do not have power in a capitalistic society, you become part of and you are thought of in terms of the Earth. Women who have less economic power, children who don't have any power at all unless somebody gives it to them, Indigenous communities, you are all thought of as expendable commodities.TIP Dir. Rev. Dr. Lynn Hubbard: I think we have here two different forms of religion. Ands its this religion of my ancestors that... more

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5 months ago

Earth Healing, EPA Great Lakes Challenge: Kalamazoo June 21 medicine collection for SW Michigan

Residents of the Kalamazoo and all of southwest Michigan can to their part to protect the Great Lakes during a free public... more

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6 months ago

Earth Healing founder, Lutheran Bishop, Zen Buddhist priest: Start interfaith environment group

The founder of two interfaith environment groups is often asked by others to explain the best way to start effective interfaith... more

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6 months ago

Mosque steps in to help raided church

A theif who strolled into St Alban's church (ilford) and stole charity money raised for Christian Aid has been replaced this... more

ASUK999
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6 months ago

Saudi king reiterates call for inter-faith dialogue

Saudi King Abdullah reiterated today a call for dialogue between Islam and other religions during a gathering of Muslim scholars... more

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6 months ago

Saudi King's call for inter-faith dialogue welcomed by the World Jewish Congress

The King of Saudi Arabia's call for inter-faith dialogue has been welcomed by the WJC. King Abdullah has the support and... more

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6 months ago

Imam speaks at interfaith dinner

On May 4th Imam Hamid Slimi made history as the first imam to speak at a Neighbourhood Interfaith Group dinner. The annual... more

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6 months ago

Florida Gathering Lasts Two Months

Thousands of people from across the globe have been flocking to Lakeland, Florida to witness so-called "supernatural... more

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6 months ago

Britain’s first interfaith game show launched by the Islam Channel

An interfaith game show which will see different religious groups competing against each other for cash prizes is to be launched... more

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2 responses

6 months ago

Bishop Thomas Skrenes - EPA Great Lakes Challenge: "We are all environmentalists"

Bishop praises interfaith success of the EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge

Marquette, Michigan - A Lutheran Bishop who has participated in interfaith Earth Day recycling projects for four years in a row said.
"Celebrate - what a great day Earth Day has been 2008," said Lutheran Bishop Thomas A. Skrenes of the Northern Great Lakes Synod (NGLS) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). "The Earth Healing Initiative has been a great success this year."
"Congratulations Earth Healers - you've done it, it has been a success," Bishop Skrenes said. "The EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge has been a great success."
"Computers have been recycled, pharmaceuticals have been brought together for proper disposal," Skrenes said. "Congratulations to those members of the faith communities and others who have been a part of this."
"We are all environmentalists," said Skrenes of Marquette, MI. "All of us want clean air to breathe, all of us want clean drinking water. We all enjoy the outdoors and nature."
"No matter our political understandings are, no matter where we are on the liberal and conservative line - no matter what we think of any of the big issues facing thee one of us - world today - all of us can agree that it is in all of our interests."
"We can all certainly conserve and save and bring back and then give to the next generation what has been given to us."
Bishop Skrenes said interfaith environment projects like the challenge ensure a better future for all humans.
"It is a sign of great significance that people can join hands and work together," Skrenes said.
Bishop Skrenes thanked the EPA, faith communities and "people of goodwill throughout the upper Midwest who have been a part of this work."
"Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency for their help and assistance in all of this work," Bishop Skrenes said. The EPA challenge "has been a part of the lives and will be a part of the future of this whole area."
"It is a wonderful opportunity to begin to look at what it is that we hold in common," Skrenes said. "What we hold in common is this wonderful Great Lakes basin."
"This is a wonderful place with lakes and streams and forests everywhere in the Midwest, and the great plains and the great fields," Skrenes said. "We have been a part of saving some of this and making a difference."
"Sometimes we become so focused on what divides us, what disconnects us, what separates us - and there are important things that sometimes do that - but yet we can all have loyalty and allegiance to this world that has been our home and this of the world that we have been blessed with by God."
"God has given us the privilege of living here in the midst of these lakes and all of this beautiful nature," Skrenes said.
"When people of faith, whether they be of Christian traditions or of other traditions, gather together to work on what connects us. One of those things that connects us is respect and awe for the creation that surrounds us."
"We are part of a movement together in these early years of the Twenty-first Century to save what has been given to us by the generations before us and what God has provided to us," Skrenes said.
Bishop Skrenes is one of nine faith leaders who signed the Earth Keeper Covenant in northern Michigan in 2004 that lead to many interfaith projects.
The Cedar Tree Institute co-founded the interfaith Earth Keeper Initiative in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that works closely with ten faith traditions on a wide range of environment projects that include college students, at-risk teens, American Indian tribes and others.
The EHI is developing the same relationship with faith communities across the Great lakes.
The faith communities include Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist, Baha'i, Jewish, the Religious Society of Friends (commonly known as the Quakers) and Zen Buddhist.
"Everyday is Earth Day," Skrenes said.Bishop praises interfaith success of the EPA Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge Marquette, Michigan - A Lutheran Bishop who... more