4th Interfaith Leadership Forum: Interfaith Engagement with the Environmental Crisis
Rumi Forum Podcast
Rumi Forum, Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington, and Washington Theological Consortium presented the 4th Interfaith Leadership Forum: “Interfaith Engagement with the Environmental Crisis” on May 31, 2023. The program featured keynote speaker Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, an interfaith panel, and an opportunity for small group dialogues. Keynote by: Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, D.Min. started at Adat Shalom when the synagogue was only eight years old, and meeting at the JCC – he was still in rabbinic school, Founding Rabbi Sid was part-time, Shabbat morning services were every...
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In-Person Book Talk: “Profiles in Peace”
Rumi Forum Podcast
This new book traces the lives of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Israel and Palestine who have dedicated their lives to building peaceful relations among the two peoples and between individual people who seek to live in peace and harmony with one another. These people have acted courageously and consistently in their work for peace. In this book, the author profiles the lives, thoughts, feelings, and actions of six important peacebuilders — men and women, secular and religious, 3 Jewish Israelis: Rabbi Michael Melchior, Professor Galia Golan, and Mrs. Hadassah Froman, and 3...
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In-Person Book Talk: “Between Thought & Action”
Rumi Forum Podcast
This in-person book talk by Dr. Ori Z. Soltes was a discussion on “Between Thought & Action”, Fethullah Gulen`s intellectual biography of thoughts, words, and actions including interviews with Hizmet movement followers. This volume has two goals. One is to explore the life and the thought of Fethullah Gulen and the important educational and peace-inducing activities in which he and those inspired by him have been engaged for several decades. The outcome of those efforts—of creating schools and providing diverse social and cultural services that bring people together people from diverse...
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In-Person Book Talk: "Hearts & Minds: Hizmet Schools and Interethnic Relations"
Rumi Forum Podcast
Dr. Parrillo and Dr. Ansari present a cross-cultural study of Hizmet schools in seven countries of varying histories and ethnic compositions. Some are fairly homogeneous, while others are longstanding multicultural, multiracial societies. Some have Muslim-majority populations, others a small Muslim minority. Through hundreds of interviews with students, parents, staff, and financial supporters, the authors explored individual perceptions and experiences, as well as the triad of student, parent, and school interaction. Analyzing the commonality of the schools' structures and processes in...
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In-Person Book Talk: “I Never Thought of It That Way”
Rumi Forum Podcast
We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding and attacking one another is breaking… everything. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own curiosity....
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3rd Interfaith Leadership Forum: "Building Interfaith Partnerships Beyond Racism and Religious Nationalism"
Rumi Forum Podcast
Religious nationalism is on the rise worldwide. In the U.S., it has primarily taken the form of White Christian Nationalism: the affiliation of being White and Christian with belonging and mattering in this country. This program explored the nature of global nationalism and its specific manifestation in the U.S. First, we heard from Dr. Mark Juergensmeyer, who is an expert who has been studying this trend for over thirty years. His keynote remarks were followed by a panel of diverse faith leaders who shared their views on building interfaith solidarity to resist the White Supremacist Christian...
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Panel Discussion: “Modern Muslim and Jewish Thinkers Who Have Inspired Us”
Rumi Forum Podcast
While anti-Semites and Islamophobes often speak as if our faiths have been frozen in ice (and primitive thinking) for many centuries, the fact is that Jews and Muslims belong to living, breathing, stimulating faiths. On February 9, 2022, JIDS and the Rumi Forum jointly presented a dialogue that presents some of the exciting ideas and personalities that have emerged within the past century to enrich our faiths. Jews and Muslims belong to living, breathing, and stimulating faiths. On this panel, we discovered some of their inspiring modern thinkers together. We heard...
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Panel Discussion: ”How Do We Deal With Covid, Social Injustice, and Polarization?”
Rumi Forum Podcast
Rumi Forum, Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights, and Prince George’s County Memorial Library System presented a virtual panel discussion on “How Do We Deal With Covid, Social Injustice, and Polarization?” on February 3, 2022, for a conversation for our time, in recognition of World Interfaith Harmony Week. How do we build and use interfaith harmony to develop restoration, reconciliation, and resiliency as applicable to the world that we live in now? We are plagued: by the Covid-19 pandemic, by social injustice, by economic inequities, limited and inequitable access to...
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In-Person Book Talk: “People of the Book”
Rumi Forum Podcast
On December 9, 2021, participants joined this in-person book talk for a considered study of Muslim–Christian coexistence and dialogue in the time of Prophet Muhammad. The Christians that lived around the Arabian Peninsula during Muhammad’s lifetime are shrouded in mystery. Some of the stories of the Prophet’s interactions with them are based on legends and myths, while others are more authentic and plausible. But who exactly were these Christians? Why did Muhammad interact with them as he reportedly did? And what lessons can today’s Christians and Muslims learn from these encounters?...
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In-Person Book Talk: “God`s Diplomats”
Rumi Forum Podcast
Using inside sources and extensive field reporting about the secretive, high-stakes world of international diplomacy, Vatican reporter Victor Gaetan takes readers to the Holy See to explicate Pope Francis‘s diplomacy, show why it works, and offer readers a startling contrast to the dangerous inadequacies of recent U.S. international decisions. About the author Victor Gaetan, Ph.D., has served as an international correspondent for Catholic News Service and the National Catholic Register. He contributes to Foreign Affairs and America magazine. He has written from...
info_outlineWe think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding and attacking one another is breaking… everything.
Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own curiosity.
In this timely, personal guide, Mónica Guzmán, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people. She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours.
About the book: “I Never Thought of It That Way“
Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she’s had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want, curiously.
In these pages, you’ll learn:
• How to ask what you really want to know (even if you’re afraid to)
• How to grow smarter from even the tensest interactions, online or off
• How to cross boundaries and find common ground—with anyone
Whether you’re left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you’re ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times—in your own life, at least—Mónica’s got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn’t just possible. It’s easier than you think.
Author
Mónica Guzmán is the Director of Digital and Storytelling at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America and host of the Crosscut interview series Northwest Newsmakers. She was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public.
Mónica lives for great conversations sparked by curious questions. Before committing to the project of helping people understand each other across the political divide, Mónica cofounded the award-winning Seattle newsletter The Evergrey and led a national network of groundbreaking local newsletters as VP of Local for WhereBy.Us. She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, and plays a barbarian named Shadrack in her besties’ Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Discussant
Brian Allain founded and leads Writing for Your Life, a resource center and conference for spiritual writers, which includes the Publishing in Color conference series, intended to increase the number of books published by spiritual writers of color. Brian also founded and leads the teams that produce Compassionate Christianity and How to Heal Our Divides. Previously Brian served as Founding Director of the Frederick Buechner Center where he led the launch of Mr. Buechner’s online presence and established several new programs and strategic partnerships.
Brian has developed and led spiritual writers conferences at Princeton Theological Seminary, Drew Theological Seminary, Western Theological Seminary, the University of Southern California, Belmont University, New Brunswick Seminary, and several churches. He led the publishing effort for the book Buechner 101: An Introduction to Frederick Buechner, in collaboration with Anne Lamott, and also the book How to Heal Our Divides. All of this is a second career, coming after business and technology leadership in high-tech. Brian has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was designated a Palmer Scholar, their highest academic award.