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Rev. Marcus Braybrooke
“Peace and Interfaith Understanding”

Hans Küng (the great Swiss theologian and principal author of the document, “Towards a Global Ethic,” first released at the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions – Chicago) puts it most clearly:

There can be no peace among the nations until there is peace among the religions.

No one understands that better than Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Council of Faiths and the greatest chronicler of the long development of the global interfaith movement. How has the movement grown? What’s changed over the course of the past fifty years? And why does it matter so much in the quest for world peace? We’ll examine the remarkable resources that the world’s religions can bring to peace work and we’ll also consider some of the most serious obstacles to interfaith harmony. We’ll also examine the notion of religious pluralism – the view that very different religions can have express equally deep truths…that more than one religion can be (indeed, must be) valid.

Other topics include:
• Which is a likelier scenario for the 21st century: spreading fundamentalism or broadening pluralism?
• How can my community or group become more actively involved in interfaith work?

Link: The launch of Marcus Braybrooke’s latest book, Beacons of Light
Link: Marcus Braybrooke on Interfaith and Globalization

Excerpt from Thriving in the Crosscurrent: Clarity and Hope at a Time of Cultural Sea Change (Jim Kenney, Quest Books 2010), p. 194:

The great Jewish thinker Martin Buber, author of I and Thou, often recalled his first experience of what he called “feeling the other side.” On a farm in the German countryside, he was brushing and currying a dapple-grey horse. As her breathing changed in response to the strokes, Buber suddenly felt as though he had changed places with the animal. Although his own arms continued their rhythmic movement, he now began to feel the currying as if he were the recipient. In a sense, he “became” the horse and shared its experience. In that moment, the vision of interfaith encounter that would shape so much of Buber’s life and work began to emerge.