Tag Archives: Parliament of the World’s Religions

INTRAfaith at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

Christianity, Interfaith, Intrafaith, Religion, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. When last we met in January 2020, I was organizing a screening of Same God, the story of the Wheaton College professor who was removed from her tenured position because of her “embodied solidarity” with Muslims.

But then . . . well, 2020 happened. And it felt like a whole lot of other issues took center stage. I pretty much decided to give up on promoting my book, blog, etc. When I got the notice that the Parliament of the World’s Religion would be on line this year and was soliciting proposals for workshops at this years online gathering, I decided to give it a pass.

But, as is the way of the universe, something happened. I received two emails. The first was from members of FEZANA, a coordinating organization for Zoroastrian Associations of North America. They planned to propose a panel discussion on the need for Interfaith organizations to become incubators for intrafaith dialogue. They had somehow found me on the Internet and wondered if I would be interested. Of course, I was interested! That proposal was accepted and plans have begun for our presentation on “Tweaking the Interfaith model: Interfaith Organizations as Incubators for Intrafaith Dialogue.” More details will come as our planning proceeds.

The second email was from a retired Lutheran pastor in St.Paul, MN who had found my interview with Steve Kindle on Pastor to Pew about how to deal with John 14: 6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” which John attributed to Jesus. Listen to that podcast here.

Rev. John Matthews had begun an initiative called the 14:6 Project. He says, “The exclusivity of this verse, while ‘understandable’ in its late-first-century historical context, hinders authentic dialogue with other faith traditions. The mission of the 14:6 Project is to focus on this verse of New Testament scripture that is so problematic for Christian involvement in interfaith settings.

He comes to these conclusions from a long career in this area. He was a founding member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Consultative Panel for Lutheran-Jewish Relation (1990-2000), chaired the Region III (ELCA) Task Force for Jewish-Christian Relations (1990-2005), and served on the program advisory committee of the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (2004-2008). While on the ELCA Consultative Panel, Pastor Matthews assisted in drafting the “Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community” (1994) which is now a part of the permanent display on anti-Semitism at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Our workshop will be “A Deep Dive into One Barrier to Christian Interfaith Relations: Introducing ‘The John 14:6 Project.'” Our hope is to find others who want to continue the work of re-imagining this verse. We believe that If interfaith relationships are to thrive, each tradition must work on its own intra-faith issues. John 14:6 is Christianity’s intra-faith challenge.

So I’m back in. In fact, a third proposal, “Dismantling Patriarchy in the World’s Religions” was also accepted – but that’s the subject of another post. My commitment to the intra-faith conversation continues!

ELCA’s Inter-Religious Commitment

Christianity, Church, diversity, Interfaith, Intrafaith, Intrareligious, Lutheran, pluralism, Religion, Uncategorized, , , , ,

One of the workshops I attended at the Parliament of the World’s Religions (PWR) in November was At theunknown-1 Intersection of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations. One of the reasons that session appealed to me (among the 15+ other offerings at the same time) was the moderator of the panel was Kathryn Lohre, executive for Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations for my denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)

She is also one of the members of the task force that created Inter-Religious Commitment: A draft policy statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This is a new social statement that will be considered at our national church gathering this coming August.

Here’s the PWR workshop description – and if you’ve read my book or anything else on this blog, you’ll understand why it was right up my alley (bold type is mine):

In the midst of rapid changes in our global religious landscape, Christian churches, denominations, and councils of churches are increasingly exploring what it means to be Christian — and to seek Christian unity — in a multi-religious world. New approaches to interreligious relations are emerging, and focus is being given to understanding complex forms of religious and spiritual identities, practices, and communities. All of this is raising important and timely questions about the challenge of Christian supremacy in interreligious spaces and relationships.

The panel also included Donna Bollinger, executive director of Religions for Peace USA; André Lavergne, Assistant to the Bishop for ecumenical and interfaith matters for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada; Karen Thompson, minister for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations for the United Church of Christ; and Paul Tché, president of the Council on Christian Unity of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the US and Canada.So, I thought, here were some heavy-hitters for the mainline churches on the interfaith scene. I wanted to hear about how we Christians were going about navigating all the issues inherent in engaging with our multi-religious milieu. And I wasn’t disappointed. That is, until the Q&A time.

One of my gripes about the Parliament is that there’s never enough time to really engage in a topic after a workshop or presentation. The conversation that began after this one could have gone on for hours. Although unfortunately it got sidetracked by a couple of guys, members of non-Christian groups, who thought it necessary to “mansplain” how we Christians could get around our issues. By the time I got to ask my question, our time was almost up.

What I wanted to know was this: how are the interfaith departments in our denominations working with other departments to promote the idea that interfaith  – and of course I’ll also emphasize intrafaith – engagement is not simply an add-on to all the other work that goes on in our churches? Understanding our religious diversity – and our response to it – is a necessity for our work in Christian education, evangelism, seminary training, to name a few. Most of the clergy I know are overwhelmed with the day-to-day stuff that leading a congregation entails.

Plus, in the midst of the down-sizing of the Christian church, many congregations are anxiously trying to figure out how to stay open. Interfaith dialogue seems to be a luxury they cannot afford. But my premise is that it is not a luxury. In fact, as the church learns how to be present in the 21st century, albeit smaller, it will have to add interfaith and intrafaith engagement to its toolbox.

So I’m excited about the upcoming presentation of Inter-Religious Commitment: A draft policy statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at our Churchwide assembly in August. Although I do have some questions, as well as suggestions for implementing the document. But that another post. Stay tuned.

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Bill Lesher’s INTRAfaith Journey

Christianity, Church, Interfaith, Intrafaith, Intrareligious, Lutheran, pluralism, Religion, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

blesherThere’s a very nice article by Joseph Prabhu in this month’s edition of The Interfaith Observer entitled A Tribute to Bill Lesher.

William E. Lesher was truly a giant – and not just in Lutheran circles. Parish pastor, seminary professor and president, civil rights activist, champion of the environment: Bill put several lifetimes into his 85 years! But it was his commitment to the interfaith movement that had the biggest impact on me personally. His involvement with the Parliament of the World’s Religions was a powerful witness to me of what Christian leadership in a religiously diverse world looked like.

I knew Bill only in the later years of his life. He and Jean were just getting ready to move to Claremont when I met him for lunch. I knew that he’d often said that what we really needed was intrafaith dialogue. So of course I wanted to pick his brain about how to go about doing that. So I’m grateful that Prabhu mentioned this aspect of Bill’s life, which was not just an academic interest, but part of his spirituality. As Prabhu wrote:

“. . . he took interfaith dialogue seriously as a requirement of interreligious under-standing and also as a source of personal spiritual enrichment. This enrichment usually takes the form of learning and appreciating religious traditions other than one’s own. Thus, a Christian might learn about Hindu or Buddhist meditative practice and discern parallels with the contemplative practices of her own tradition. There is, however, a stage beyond this when inter-faith dialogue leads to rigorous intra-faith dialogue. Here, the differences with other traditions, and specifically differing truth-claims, challenge one’s original convictions.”  (bold emphasis mine) 

In my book, The INTRAfaith Conversation: How Do Christians Talk Among Ourselves about INTERfaith Matters? I found a phrase in John S. Dunne’s book The Way of All the Earth that described just this process: “passing over and coming back.”

Dunne wrote:
“What seems to be occurring is a phenomenon we might call ‘passing over,’ passing from one culture to another, from one way of life to another, from one religion to another. 

“Passing over is a shifting of standpoint, a going over to the standpoint of another culture, another way of life, another religion. It is followed by an equal and opposite process we might call ‘coming back,’ coming back with new insight to one’s own culture, one’s own way of life, one’s own religion. . .

“Passing over and coming back, it seems, is the spiritual adventure of our time.”

Bill has now gone on to a new spiritual adventure. And I will always be grateful for his life, his example, his encouragement, his faith, his courage to move outside the boundaries of his own religious tradition, and the wisdom to come back with  new insights and understandings.  

New Voices in the Conversation Part 1: Spiritual Independents                                                                                         

Christianity, Interfaith, Intrafaith, Spiritual But Not Religious, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

51UJ1PNsX6L._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_Those of us who are still in the church must accept the fact that for many people the old categories of Catholic/ Protestant, Episcopal/ Methodist, high church/ low church, contemporary/ traditional, etc. just do not matter. There are new voices contributing to the religious scene, although most of them would not like to be referred to as religious. These voices deserve to be heard. They may have left or never been part of the church, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a lot to say about spirituality, the meaning of life and how to make a difference in the world.

Spiritual Independents
A piece of accepted wisdom among many involved in interfaith dialogue is that one must first be grounded in one particular tradition. This is reflected in the quote by Mahatma Gandhi that “. . . our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian.” However, according to the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One fifth of the US public – and a third of adults under thirty – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

We often refer to these folks as the “spiritual but not religious” or “Nones.” But I agree with Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who has declared that these designations are too negative and has coined the more positive “spiritually independent.”  In Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent he says:

“Most of these so-called Nones are not dismissive of God or spirituality but simply find religious labels and affiliation too narrow and constraining. This is why I choose to call this segment of the population by the far more positive and accurate term spiritually independent.”

In another positive take on it, the Rev. Dr. Anne Benvenuti, a Board Trustee for the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, writes in “The Nones Are Off the Bus, and Many of Them are Alls”: “I know a lot of Nones and many of them are Alls. They celebrate the Winter Solstice, and Easter sunrise, they may do yoga or meditate, and they give thoughtfully to charities, all in no particular order, but depending on where they are, how they feel, what seems to be called for. They resist labels produced by media-saturated culture to represent certain predetermined sets of characteristics. They distrust such prepackaged beliefs, and also distrust religious institutions that are so often corrupt and hypocritical. Yet they value human spiritual heritage, often in great variety, and many of these people are more comfortable in a variety of religious settings than they would be in only one.”
“The Nones Are Off the Bus, and Many of Them are Alls”

In the new emerging community being formed by Mission Developer, Pastor Anders Peterson under the sponsorship of my congregation, First United Lutheran Church, we are finding the truth of these perspectives. Mission, defined as converting people to Christianity, does not work with this group. Openness to other religious traditions is essential. This is not to say that we deny or water down who we are; we do our work in the world as Christians. But we do it as Christians who have worked through the intrafaith questions that are raised by many as they are confronted with this population. According to the Rev. Bud Heckman, senior advisor to Religions for Peace USA in New York City:

“A couple of decades ago this category accounted for no more than a single-digit percentage of the population. Today it accounts for one of every five people in the States, and one in every three amongst those under 30 years of age. The numbers are even higher in Europe and China. This means there is a great deal of fluidity in identity that is socially permissible in ways that simply were not true before.”
“Five Things Changing the Way Religions Interact”

We do not know what Mahatma Gandhi would make of our world today. However it is clear that, both within Christianity and on the interfaith scene, the spiritual independents must be part of the interfaith and intrafaith conversations.

  • Do you know someone who would be considered spiritually independent? If so, have you had or could you have a conversation with that person about what they believe?
  • Are you a spiritual independent? How would you describe your spirituality?