All Blog Posts (6)

Hello, ITA friends Recently I joined the leadership network of the Interfaith Youth Core. It's the Bridge-Builders network at: http://bridge-builders.ning.com. The Intefaith Youth Core started in Chicago under the very able leadership of Eboo Patel, a Muslim scholar and writer who has put out some great books and videos. IFYC builds mutual respect and pluralism among young people from different religious traditions by empowering them to work together to serve others. If you'd like to help organ… Continue

The New York Times recently published a heart-warming article about a community school in Atlanta with a large refugee population. Many of the refugee children have experienced trauma, and need to deal with the aftermath of that, as well as language and culture-adjustment challenges. Nevertheless, there are many signs of hope, hope that the inscription on our Statue of Liberty may prove to be in accord with our attitudes on immigration: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearni… Continue

Check out the Interfaith Youth Core (http://www.ifyc.org), organized by the young Muslim leader, Eboo Patel, in Chicago, Illinois. Patel is a thoughtful, compassionate, and hardworking peacemaker. Author of <<Acts of Faith>>, Patel spoke recently in Cincinnati, Ohio. You can see a video of his presentation here: http://cetconnect.org/genericPlayer.asp?id=1758&topic=Lifelong+Learning.

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Frederick Nietzsche famously claimed, "God is dead." There is a joke among theologians that God has since made the same claim about Nietzsche, implying of course that God has had the last laugh, and the joke is on Frederick.

Or is it? Was Nietzsche at least partly correct? Is God dead? Nietzsche did not believe in God at all, and his proclamation was an expression of his own atheism. I don't believe Nietzsche was correct, but I have heard the question asked, Did God ever live, specifica… Continue

I'm the Catholic half of an interfaith marriage, and my wife, who is Jewish, is the other half. We are still finding our way down the interfaith/multifaith path, but we are mainly happy to make the journey. Yet neither of us is naive enough to think that everyone else in the world holds the same positive view of marriage arrangements like ours. Parents and religious institutions can and have traditionally taken a negative view of such marriages. The source of any such opposition is pretty predic… Continue

This morning I sat in silence again with Quakers. Usually the children are quiet too--a considerable discipline for such wee folk. But this morning one little boy, two years old or so, began to kick the bench and laugh. I wondered what the meeting would do. Would a parent carry him off? Would someone prevail upon the parent to do so? Through one squinting eye I waited to see what would happen. This was a new wrinkle. The children are always so QUIET! Several minutes passed. Nothing happened. The… Continue