There were 60 founder member organizations: national faith community representative bodies of the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities (the Zoroastrian community joined in 1989, but had been involved in consultations before the Network was established); national inter faith organizations; local inter faith bodies; and educational and academic bodies with an interest in multi faith and inter faith issues. National inter faith bodies included UK chapters of international inter faith initiatives. The pattern of membership today is similar and there are nearly 200 organizations in membership.

It has also worked to ensure that the importance of religious identity and of good inter faith relations is understood in wider society.

IFN sends Circulars throughout the year to member bodies about matters connected to its work and developments relevant to inter faith engagement, including in as the area of public policy. It also distributes information more widely through its regular newsletter, which carries information about inter faith projects, relevant national updates, research projects, funding opportunities, and upcoming inter faith events.

Part of IFN’s work involves advocacy in the area of faith and public life. IFN links in direct membership many local inter faith organizations (LIFOs) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within England, IFN links in membership a number of regional multi faith bodies, which play a significant role in their regions.

Vision

IFN’s vision is of a society where there is understanding of the diversity and richness of the faith communities in the UK and the contribution that they make; and where they live and work together with mutual respect and shared commitment to the common good.

Mission

Working with faith communities, inter faith organizations, educators and others to increase understanding and cooperation between people of different faiths and to widen public awareness of the distinctive religious traditions in the UK.

Working to achieve this through: supporting and encouraging inter faith initiatives and sharing good practice between these; helping create opportunities for mutual learning and tackling prejudice; and offering opportunity for engagement between faith communities and Government and other public agencies on relevant issues.

Values

Service to others, Integrity, Accountability, Trust, Consultative and cooperative working, Valuing diversity, Inclusiveness, Listening and openness, Courtesy, Mutual respect, Respecting dissent and people’s right to express this.

Contacts

• Address: Mary Sumner House, 24 Tufton St, London SW1P 3RB, UK
• Phone: +44 20 7730 0410
• Email: ifnet@interfaith.org.uk
• Website: www.interfaith.org.uk

Interfaith America (previously known as Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)) was founded in 2002 based on the idea that religious difference should serve as a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division. Since that time, Interfaith America has evolved from a small Chicago-based nonprofit to the nation’s premier interfaith organization.

Led by Founder and President Eboo Patel, Interfaith America inspires, equips, and connects leaders and institutions to unlock the potential of America’s religious diversity. Utilizing a research-backed approach, IA works across higher education, racial equity, health, workplace, bridgebuilding, democracy, and technology.

Interfaith America provides expert consultation, training, curricula, and resources to positively engage religious diversity. It values collaboration, developing robust institutional partnerships to leverage interfaith cooperation as a proven approach in solving challenges.

Interfaith America have made college and university campuses the center of their strategy; working where the minds and values of emerging leaders are shaped and conversations take place that steer broad cultural change. Campus is where students and educators engage the complex ideas that will shape our country’s future. It’s where young people learn to be citizens and leaders. It’s where issues of diversity and difference are explored intellectually and experienced personally and up-close. It’s an environment that can model the highest ideals of civil society alongside some of the most divisive conflicts that we’re grappling with as a nation.

Over the years they have expanded the programs to engage leaders across the campus environment – students, faculty, administrators – building a network of over 100,000 aspiring interfaith leaders on more than 600 U.S. college and university campuses. These partners come from wildly different faiths, worldviews, and institutions, but share Interfaith America’s vision.

Today, Interfaith America and its partners continue writing the story of American interfaith cooperation, finding new ways to help people build bridges above dangerous currents of incivility and polarization.

The big idea for Interfaith America came to the founder, Eboo Patel, as the last millennium drew to a close. At a 1998 conference on interreligious engagement hosted by Stanford University, he and a small group of his peers looked around and suddenly realized that they were the only young people in the room.

They built an interfaith youth movement using service to bring together people who might disagree on ultimate truths, but share a commitment to improve their world.

Between 2003 and 2011 Interfaith America tripled its staff and launched programs ranging from interfaith service around Chicago to dialogue initiatives in the Middle East, South Africa, and India. Interfaith America partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative and Queen Rania of Jordan to create an international exchange program. They collaborated with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to develop a fellows program that brought together young leaders to serve as interfaith ambassadors to the United Nations, focusing on malaria. Eboo was asked to speak at the 16th Nobel Peace Prize Forum and he and Interfaith America were profiled by major media outlets like the New York Times. During this time, Interfaith America also began to see unique breakthroughs on college and university campuses. This led to a breakthrough: campuses are laboratories for diverse civil society, and the perfect place for rising leaders to tackle the hardest questions of diversity and difference in the 21st century.

Contacts

• Address: 141 W. Jackson Blvd, Suite 3200, Chicago, IL 60604, US
• Phone: +1 (312) 573-8825
• Email: info@interfaithamerica.org
• Website: http://legacy.interfaithamerica.org/

Peace, Justice, Healing

 United Religions Initiative (URI) is comprised of over 1,100 member groups, called Cooperation Circles, in 112 countries.

URI Global Staff and Global Council Trustees share their views on what it means to be part of an international interfaith peacebuilding movement.

Mission

URI is a global grassroots interfaith network that cultivates peace and justice by engaging people to bridge religious and cultural differences and work together for the good of their communities and the world.

URI implements their mission through local and global initiatives that build the capacity of their member groups and organizations, called Cooperation Circles, to engage in community action such as conflict resolution and reconciliation, environmental sustainability, education, women’s and youth programs, and advocacy for human rights.

Vision

URI envisions a world at peace, sustained by engaged and interconnected communities committed to respect for diversity, nonviolent resolution of conflict and social, political, economic and environmental justice.

Purpose

The purpose of the United Religions Initiative is to promote enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the Earth and all living beings.

Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue

URI Cooperation Circles must include members of at least three different religions or traditions. By engaging in respectful conversations, members learn, share and build bridges of understanding.

Action Areas

URI members make an impact in 14 different action areas. Be inspired by their work and their efforts around the world:

Arts, Community Building, Education, Environment, Health & Social Services, Human Rights, Indigenous, People, Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue, Media, Peace building and Conflict Transformation, Policy Advocacy, Poverty Alleviation, Women, Youth.

History

The vision for the United Religions Initiative (URI) was sparked by an invitation from the United Nations to The Right Rev. William Swing, Founder and President Emeritus.

Bishop Swing was invited to host an interfaith service in June 1995 to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter. Through this invitation came “a sudden realization that religions, together, have a vocation to be a force for good in the world”.

The seed planted in Bishop Swing took root in hundreds and then thousands of people who joined in a global appreciative process to create a shared vision of the world they wished to inhabit and of a global interfaith organization that would engage people of all backgrounds in making that vision a reality.

From 1996-2000, people around the world participated in writing URI’s Charter, which was signed in June 2000. Since its inception, URI ignites people all over the world to share their dreams, initiate cooperative action, and fulfill their aspirations.

Since then, thousands of people from different cultures and perspectives have shared their visions and worked together to create URI: the United Religions Initiative.

Contacts

Address: 1009 General Kennedy Ave, San Francisco, CA 94129 USA

Phone: +1 415 561 2300

Email: info@uri.org

Website: https://www.uri.org/

Diversity of Faiths and Religious Traditions

The Auckland Inter-Faith Council (AIFC) was established in 2003 as a charitable trust, and is registered with the Charities Commission, and with Inland Revenue. Auckland Inter-Faith Council was formed to provide a platform for inter-religious dialogue and networking, and to create a model showing cooperation among religions.

Auckland, New Zeeland, with over 220recorded ethnic groups, is one of the world’s most culturally diverse cities. Every neighborhood has people of many faiths living side by side. To enhance social cohesion and help prevent misunderstandings or prejudice, it is important for people to be able to learn about religious beliefs and practices, and dialogue with those from other faiths.

The Auckland Inter-Faith Council exists to foster mutual appreciation and good relations between these traditions and faiths; to co-ordinate action, and/or to act, on behalf of any or all of these in respect of religious issues and relationships to society at large; and to act in an advisory and consultative capacity to the community at large. AIFC organizes regular public meetings, seminars and events to promote understanding among the diverse faith communities of the greater Auckland area.

Activities

• Interfaith Meetings –AIFC organizes public lectures and seminars featuring a range of speakers from different faith backgrounds who each present their faith’s perspective on topics. Areas covered previously include The Life Cycle (Birth, Death, Coming of Age, Marriage, Ordination); Social Issues (Domestic Violence, Family Breakdown, Substance Abuse); Sharing of One’s Faith Journey; What is the meaning of Dharma; Views of the Prophet Abraham, to name a few.

• Neighborhood Interfaith Development: One of the main purposes of interfaith work is to facilitate interactions that promote acceptance, understanding, and appreciation for people who practice faiths other than one’s own. Learning about basic beliefs and practices and visiting each other’s sacred places help break down barriers and contribute to creating social harmony. AIFC organizes programs designed to foster the development of interfaith networks within a given local community.

• Leadership Diversity Day: AIFC, now in collaboration with the Religious Diversity Center, and supported by the Astor Foundation, helps organize an annual interfaith program for Year 12 students from various schools (religious and state) preparing for their final year at school. Held on the marae on the UNITEC campus and MIT, the students are introduced to, and discuss, Maori spirituality and world religions.

Website: http://www.aucklandinterfaithcouncil.org.nz/

Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations program, housed within the School of Divinity at The University of Edinburgh draws on the strengths of one of the most distinguished centers of religious and theological studies in the UK. It offers a deep and broad study of the rich intellectual traditions of Islamic law, theology and philosophy in conversation with Christian thought, ethics and political theology.

The dialogical framework of the course allows you to study multiple disciplines in both Islamic and Christian thought and practice, not as mere historical artifacts, but as resources that transform the academic study of religion and engage public debates on the place of Islam, Christianity, and religion in society.

The program’s core courses will enable students to receive a strong grounding in the major themes and methodologies in Islam and in the academic study of Christian-Muslim relations.

Students will gain a deep appreciation of the philosophical, theological and ethical debates between Christians and Muslims in different times and places.

The program offers opportunities for study and collaboration with world renowned academics, with a view to tailoring a personalized path to doctoral study or to other relevant careers.

Compulsory courses

– The Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

– Approaches to Research in Divinity and Religious Studies

– Approaches to Research: Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

Optional Courses

– God of the Oppressed: Liberation Theologies in Christianity and Islam

– Islamic Law: From Prayer to Politics

– Islamic Theology: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives

– Pioneers of Political Islam

– Christian-Muslim Relations: Diatribe, Discourse and Dialogue

– Muslim and Christian Perspectives on Jesus

Learning outcomes

– expertise in the major themes and debates in the academic study of Islam

– specialized knowledge and expertise in several major aspects of both Islam and Christian-Muslim relations

– a facility with select major thinkers in the history of Islamic thought and/or Christian-Muslim relations

– an appreciation of how various social, historical, cultural, and political contexts shape and inform the relationship between Christians and Muslims

– a clear understanding of how Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim relations relate to and engage other academic disciplines, especially religious studies, theology, philosophy, law, and politics

– the ability to analyze the relationship between contemporary and modern Christian-Muslim encounters and the history of Christian-Muslim dialogue, diatribe, and debate

Website: https://www.ed.ac.uk/

The Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) is a secular non-profit organization with a mission to “overcome prejudice, violence, and misunderstanding by activating the power of the city’s grassroots religious and civic leaders and their communities.”

Over the course of 25 years, ICNY has built the most religiously-diverse and civically-engaged network of grassroots and immigrant religious leaders across the five boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and The Bronx. These include Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Afro Caribbean, and Native American New Yorkers who have either attended one or more of NYC’s social justice retreats, participated in the religious diversity education programs for social workers, teachers, lawyers, and NYPD officers, or joined multi-faith advocacy work on immigration and religious freedom. ICNY’s decades of organizing and educating in New York City’s grassroots religious communities have gained trust, the basis for all their successes, which recently includes increasing turn-out for the 2020 US Census and galvanizing faith-community humanitarian response to the COVID-19.

The Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) is also a non-governmental organization (affiliated with the United Nations Department of Public Information) helping to make New York an internationally recognized model of mutual understanding and cooperation among faith traditions.

In a city of 8 and a half million people speaking more than 200 languages, the ongoing challenges to religious pluralism include protecting religious freedom, balancing civil rights with heightened security concerns, countering hate speech and the prejudice that can lead to it, and providing welcome and civics education for immigrants arriving from other countries.

The Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) addresses these challenges head on, by advocating for others and by bringing leaders from every faith to the forefront of the fight at hand.

The Interfaith Center of New York has long been committed to fighting Islamophobia. From 2012 to 2013, ICNY worked in coalition with T’ruah (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights North America), the Jewish Community Relations Council, United Methodist Women, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and Muslim Community Network to advocate successfully for disclaimers on anti-Muslim subway ads placed by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. More recently, ICNY submitted testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee questioning the premise of its hearings “Willful Blindness —The Consequences of Agency Efforts to De-Emphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”

ICNY helps New Yorkers and others build relationships of mutual respect and understanding across faith lines.

Contacts

• Address: 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 540, New York, NY 10115, USA
• Phone: +1 (212) 870-3510
• Email: info@interfaithcenter.org
• Website: interfaithcenter.org

Through world-leading academic research and creative public engagement initiatives, the Cambridge Interfaith Program (CIP) promotes better understanding of the complex and diverse relationships between different religious traditions, and between those traditions and secular societies. Combining academic expertise and commitment to real-world impact, CIP seeks to advance social flourishing worldwide.

The Cambridge Interfaith Program was born in 2002 with the aim of promoting high-quality engagement between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and deeper understanding of the role that Judaism, Christianity and Islam can play in a complexly religious and secular world.

As part of the University of Cambridge, CIP aims to transform both the academic environment and public consciousness, shaping the way that religion is understood and related to today.

The Cambridge Interfaith Program is dedicated to learning about, learning from, and learning between religions as they interact within a secular and religious world. The Cambridge Interfaith Program:

• Pursues academic research into Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and their interactions with each other and with the wider secular and religious world, historically and today;

• Provides and facilitates high-quality education in this area for a wide variety of audiences at every level;

• Shapes debate about and between the religions nationally and internationally.

Starting in 2021, CIP is embarking on a bold new venture: the CIP Religion and Global Challenges Initiative. This new initiative seeks to generate tangible and sustainable solutions to worldwide problems by deepening understanding of the role that religious communities play – and could play – in exacerbating or in alleviating such problems.

Through this new initiative, CIP will build on existing work and broaden their focus to include new strands such as:

• Religion and the Environment
• Religion, Poverty, and Economic Inequality
• Religion, Global Health, and Matters of Life and Death
• Religion, Race, and Inclusive Societies
• Religion, Conflict, and Violence
• Migration, Displacement, and Coexistence
• Religion, Law, and Freedom

Alongside academic study, they also deeply invested in the public’s engagement with these topics. A core driving element of CIP is a desire to promote shared understanding and knowledge exchange between different religious traditions and between religious traditions and broader society.

By starting this new Initiative, they will find creative new solutions to global problems by drawing upon theological research, cutting-edge methods in social sciences, models and analysis offered by natural scientists and engineers, and conversation with contemporary religious communities.

Through the CIP Religion and Global Challenges Initiative, Cambridge Interfaith Program will do the following:

• Bring together talented researchers with expertise in religious studies, social and natural sciences, theology, ethics, and philosophy to engage in high-impact research projects.

• Enable knowledge exchange with faith leaders across the globe to bring their voices into the interdisciplinary, interfaith debate on global challenges.

• Promote the innovative use of digital tools and new technologies to maximize research impact and engage the general public, policymakers, and religious communities on these challenges.

Contacts

• Address: Cambridge Inter-Faith Program, Faculty of Divinity, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9BS, UK
• Phone: +44 (0)1223 763 013
• Email: team@interfaith.cam.ac.uk
• Website: interfaith.cam.ac.uk

Since its inception in 1970, Religions for Peace has been guided by a vision of a world where faith communities cooperate effectively for peace.

Religions for Peace’s global movement is distinguished by its global leadership, Interreligious Councils, and interfaith women and youth networks which are working at local, national, and regional levels as change makers. They respond to challenges – everything from violence and discrimination to environmental degradation – with bold solutions. For 50 years, Religions for Peace has been a movement changing the world and challenging the status quo through mutual conviction that religions are more powerful, inspiring, and impactful when they work together.

Faith leaders and communities have served on the frontlines of every major challenge the world has ever faced – Religions for Peace brings this expertise and commitment together for interfaith solutions that include government, civil society, and all other stakeholders. From COVID-19 and HIV/AIDs to peace negotiations and creating open space for dialogue in some of the most challenging contexts.

Ten World Assemblies

Every five to seven years, Religions for Peace convenes a World Assembly to bring together faith leaders with government and civil society partners to forge a consensus on global priorities for peace and elect new leadership.

Previous World Assemblies have taken place in 2019 (Lindau, Germany), 2013 (Vienna, Austria), 2006 (Kyoto, Japan), 1999 (Amman, Jordan), 1994 (The Vatican, Italy), 1989 (Melbourne, Australia), 1984 (Nairobi, Kenya), 1979 (Princeton, United States), 1974 (Leuven, Belgium), and 1970 (Kyoto, Japan).

Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund

Religions for Peace supports interfaith humanitarian projects through the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund. The Fund is currently financing 20 multi-faith projects around the world and as its impact becomes increasingly evident, more individuals, organizations, & foundations are choosing to invest in the idea that we can accomplish more together than apart.

Contacts

• Email: info@rfp.org
• Website: https://www.rfp.org/

CSoC was founded by Prof. Haim Hames in 2012 as an inter-university I-CORE (Israeli Centers of Research Excellence) project. In 2018, CSoC became a BGU center in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and has since been led by Prof. Effie Shoham-Steiner, with a steering committee of seven senior faculty members. Currently, Prof. Daniella Talmon-Heller serves as director.

Each academic year highlights a particular theme within the study of religion. The Center supports a cohort of promising younger fellows – outstanding postdoc and PhD candidates – whose research relates to this theme. The center holds weekly seminars and reading groups, multiple book events, international workshops and field trips. It has invited guest lectures and research fellows from leading universities worldwide. Within BGU, the center’s seminars and conferences serve as a hub for the many scholars and graduate students who are interested in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and continues to draw in former-fellows, scholars from other institutions and guests from the community.

The center is proud to have nurtured 20 postdoctoral Israeli and international fellows and 10 PhD candidates, not only with stipends, but also with an intellectually stimulating atmosphere and opportunities for academic entrepreneurship and international collaborations. Some of our fellows have already achieved tenure track position (Hebrew U), fellowships in prestigious post-doctoral programs (at Harvard, Yale and Penn.), nominations for prestigious awards and the publication of articles and monographs in leading academic presses.

In 2020-2021, CSoC’s seminars were devoted to examining a wide range of issues related to materiality in the three Abrahamic Religions. Due to Covid constraints, most meetings were held on zoom, an arrangement that enabled the invitation of world-renowned scholars from afar and the participation of wider audiences. The Center hosted two successful international virtual conferences, in collaboration with the Department of Middle East Studies at BGU and with the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University, and six international book launches. Next year’s program – Rethinking Center and Periphery – will also include workshops on writing, outreach to the public via BGU’s External Studies programs and exchanges with Fordham University NYC, and Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.

Contacts

• Address: Sderot Ben Gurion, Beersheba, Israel
• Phone: +972 8 6428377
• Email: rayaed@bgu.ac.il
• Website: http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/csoc/Pages/default.aspx

Since its founding in 1970, RfP has been guided by the vision of a world in which religious communities cooperate effectively for Peace, by taking concrete common action. RfP is committed to leading efforts to advance effective multi-religious cooperation for Peace on global, regional, national and local levels while ensuring that the religious communities organized on these same levels assume and exercise appropriate leadership and ownership of these efforts.

RfP advances common action among the world’s religious communities for Peace.

Multi-religious cooperation for Peace and shared well-being is the hallmark of RfP. This cooperation includes but also goes beyond dialogue and bears fruit in common concrete action. Through RfP, diverse religious communities discern “deeply held and widely shared” moral concerns, such as violent conflict; gender inequality; environmental degradation; threats to the freedom of thought, conscience and religion; lack of interreligious understanding; and the shrinking space for civil society and multilateralism. RfP translates these shared concerns into concrete multi-religious action.

Principles

The RfP movement advances multi-religious cooperation consistent with its seven guiding principles.

1. Respect religious differences
2. Leverage the existing spiritual, moral and social assets of the world’s religious communities
3. Build and strengthen representative, sustainable interreligious mechanisms, co-owned by religious communities
4. Act on deeply held and widely shared values
5. Honor the identity and community of each religious tradition
6. Link local, national, regional and global multi-religious structures
7. Forge partnerships with other sectors of society

Every 5-7 years, Religions for Peace convenes a World Assembly of senior-most religious leaders for the purpose of forging a deep moral consensus on contemporary challenges, electing a new World Council, and advancing multi-religious action across and beyond the Religions for Peace network. The Religions for Peace World Assemblies are global in scale, multi-stakeholder in composition, and action-oriented. The Assemblies convene senior religious leaders from around the world who are strategically positioned to advance multi-religious action for the common good. They also include representatives of governments, intergovernmental organizations, charitable foundations, and other civil society sectors and provide concrete opportunities to forge multi-stakeholder partnerships for the common good.

The primary mechanism for inter-religious cooperation employed by Religions for Peace is the “Inter-religious Council (IRC).” Led by the representatives of diverse religious communities, IRCs are designed to provide platforms for cooperative action throughout the different levels of these religious communities, from grassroots structures to the senior-most leadership. Inter-religious Councils serve as bridges between diverse religious communities to help build trust, reduce hostility in areas of conflict and provide a platform for common action.

Website: https://rfp.org/