Georgetown University: Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs: Katherine Marshall Blog

Katherine Marshall, a Berkley Center Senior Fellow, has started a new blog "Faith in Action" that tracks the activities of people of faith around the globe. Here are recent posts:

Blogging the Breakthrough Summit at the Washington National Cathedral
April 25, 2008

The landmark “Breakthrough” summit at the National Cathedral had a clear goal; to bring together faith, development, and women’s organizations in order to create a powerful new force for reducing poverty by improving the lives of women and girls around the world.

The event, held April 13-14, had two distinct parts. The first was a grand and moving show that drew in the crowd in both a spiritual and sensory way. In the morning a forum in the Cathedral nave featured Thoraya Obaid, who heads UNFPA and the sermon at the 11:15 service was preached by Agnes Aboum, who heads the All Africa Council of Churches. At 2pm the 2,000 person audience in the National Cathedral was treated to inspirational speeches with Madeleine Albright standing out: her comment “some people call domestic violence cultural; I call it criminal” was perhaps the most memorable of the day.

Desmond Tutu's inspiring video message was also superb. His general theme was the need for vital new action to fight poverty with much sharper focus on women and girls.  He highlighted the need to translate rhetoric into action and to involve men.  During the speeches, statistics and moving notes about the meaning of poverty were presented to the audience via several large monitors. The themes of moral arguments for fighting poverty and the merits of investing in women were reoccurring.

In many respects the Summit was framed in terms of "Commitments' which were generally summed up as monetary pledges, said to total over a billion dollars.  While some are indeed exciting new engagements from institutions, companies, and individuals, there was, as is always the case with such "pledging' efforts, considerable smoke and mirrors.  The veterans grumbled a bit about this in private and noted that it remains to be seen what it all will amount to in terms of the fervently promised "change".

The program was quite long and ran roughly four hours. Unfortunately, many people melted off after Madeline Albright’s speech and missed Ashley Judd’s interesting presentation targeted at young people. 

The basic framing of the event was three groups, however fuzzy at the edges: the Women's group was composed of feminists and semi feminists, with Women Thrive the leading voice; the Faith Group, with WCRP very much in the lead (it has organized a quite unique and impressive Women of faith Network over roughly two decades); and the Development group, coordinated by Interaction, included the UN Foundation, CARE, World Bank, and others.  As an aside, the Catholic presence was not large, though Ken Hackett from CRS was an active participant Monday. There was a mix of women and men in attendance, with women predominating, though less obviously in the faith contingent.  Different colored banners and dancers symbolized the three groups.  The three groups processed in, and the program (video available on Washington National Cathedral website) was largely broken down by the three groups, with a symbolic weaving of banners at the end.

The second event, located on Connecticut Avenue on Monday, was a 200+ person discussion focused on a new "alliance" (WFDA - Women Faith and Development Alliance), led and moderated by Mary Robinson, former Prime Minister of Ireland, and Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada.  The warm tone and personal quality of their interaction was symbolized by their repeated references to themselves as "old broads", as in: "if you need to get a hard job done get an old broad". Their leadership was material to the success of the event overall, as was Madeleine Albright's consistent support.

 The discussion was based on moderated table inputs and focused on next steps, with a host of ideas emerging from a generally enthusiastic group.  The tensions between a global "movement" geared towards mobilization and the need for capacity building and activism at the community level was woven throughout.  We received a tabulated "voting" on priorities among the many ideas that emerged.  Obvious areas for action are to gear the alliance towards upcoming global meetings like UN meetings, the G8 and global meetings on HIV/AIDS. The question of how to engage more conservative, less converted, groups was on the table but not fully addressed.

The Berkley Center's primary support was the report "Challenges of Change"; the fliers and reports were widely distributed; our work to support the intellectual foundation was both needed and appreciated.
 
My sense is that the Alliance has indeed formed and will move forward.  The Berkley Center and WFDD can be supportive in two primary ways: by publishing and following thorough with the Gender report and building the organization database on which it is grounded; and by convening targeted and largely private dialogue sessions aimed at advancing dialogue and bringing together groups that may harbor doubts or questions or disagree with the broader "consensus".

KM/AB April 25, 2008


Sant'Egidio's "Prayer for Peace"
November 20, 2007

Forty years ago, Andrea Riccardi dedicated himself in Rome to helping his poorest neighbors. Last month in Naples, he challenged leading religious officials and members of the Catholic lay group he founded to confront terrorism and the "idealized" violence of war, as well as the "culture of contempt" that feeds them both.

Speaking at the opening of this year's International Encounter for Peace, organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio, Riccardi acknowledged the difficulty in overcoming "the mist of pessimism that often clouds our vision."

However, the gentle-aired, erudite history professor also reminded those in attendance that faith requires them to overcome pessimism and to act. "Anyone who uses the name of God to hate the other, to practice violence, or to wage war, is cursing the name of God," said Riccardi. "We commit ourselves to learn the art of living together and to offer it to our fellow believers."

Riccardi's inspirational, but soberly realistic view of the world and the task of improving it was consistent with the mission and accomplishments of Sant' Egidio, whose members work with many of the world's poorest people and are actively engaged in solving some of the world's most intractable conflicts.

The community, founded by Riccardi and a small group of friends at the height the 1968 student protests that shook Europe and the U.S., now has 50,000 members in more than 70 countries. It is perhaps best known for conflict mediation in Mozambique and the Balkans, but has also provided aid to refugees, victims of famine and those with HIV/AIDS in the Balkans and Africa.

And it hosts the Church's annual "prayer for peace," launched in 1986 by Pope John Paul II at Assisi. The meetings take place each year in a different city, and combine rhetoric, ideas, dialogue, networking and pageant. Pope Benedict XVI participated in a mass celebrated before the official opening of this year's meeting, which was attended by a number of prominent leaders, including Bartholomeo, the Ecumenical Patriarch; the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and the Rev. Sam Kobia of the World Council of Churches.

In addition to Riccardi, a long list of religious and political speakers took part in the opening of October 21 - 23 event, including a Burmese monk, who gave testimony to what was happening there, and a doctor running the Community's HIV/AIDS program in Mozambique.

What is remarkable about the Sant'Egidio meeting is how conflict and poverty, peace and human welfare, are graphically linked in ways that touch deep emotional chords. Religion wears a loving, benign, yet urgent face at the interfaith gathering.

Naples was unseasonably cold and wet this year, and the outdoor liturgy with the Pope saw large shivering and damp crowds. Some saw the unusual snow on Vesuvius as a troubling symbol of the perils of our time. But with the clearing clouds, a mood of hope emerged. The mists of pessimism can clear and with will, there is hope.


Taking Stock: Faith in Interfaith?
Monterrey, September 24, 2007

Katherine Marshall, a Berkley Center Senior Fellow and Director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, attended the Monterrey Religious Encounter, September 21-24, 2007.

The Interreligious Encounter hit its full stride Sunday, with speakers and participants well into routines of speeches, panels, and the like. Overall there were three full days of events, with the closing plenary on Monday evening. The International Interreligious Encounter then concludes, and in Monterrey, the Cultural Forum shifts its focus from religion to other dimensions of culture, over its 80 day life. For the Parliament of the World Religions, the focus will shift to the major global event on its calendar, the meeting in Melbourne Australia in December 2009.

The Interreligious Encounter, to my mind, had three overlapping dimensions. It offered, first and perhaps foremost, the opportunity, largely in this instance to the people of Mexico, to learn about and, in a real sense, to encounter the diversity of living religion today. The major (that is, the largest) world faiths, from all continents, had representatives at the Encounter, in a “safe” atmosphere where they could present both their beliefs and their perspectives on major world problems of the day. This was a place for learning and feeling, not for debate. Lingering images for me included the delight of the Mexican participants, but also of the international participants, in encountering different traditions and religions in the flesh: crowds of people trying to hear the first Buddhist ordained nun from Thailand and the presentation on Paganism, groups of nuns posing for picture after picture with the Sikh contingent, and a line of people wanting their photographs taken with the group representing Yoruba traditions.

The Encounter also was part of a continuing process of building networks, reinforcing contacts across widely different worlds focused on religion. The international participants included veterans who knew each other well – many going back to the watershed Chicago 1993 Parliament of Religions meeting, but there were new faces also. The network, I can attest, is rich and wonderfully diverse, with people of good will who share a vision of a diverse and peaceful world, and who, from their direct contact with religious friction, also harbor fears about what lies ahead if interfaith harmony is not achieved. The discussions among participants were fascinating – how contemporary religions should approach just war, with examples from India, Colombia, the Middle East, and Africa, reflections on the fascinating film that premiered in Monterrey – Rumi Returning, a joyful celebration of the great 13th Century Sufi poet and sage, brilliant reflections by Harvard Confucian scholar Tu Weiming about the changing dynamic of religion both in China and within the broader world of Chinese cultures, issues for reproductive health from abortion to genetic engineering, options ahead for a Sikh project for education in Kericho, Kenya, the Baha’i influence in Botswana, and much discussion about what religious leaders and communities could do about violence within families, to highlight a fraction of the conversations I personally was part of.

Skeptics of interfaith meetings often focus on a phenomenon that was evident at Monterrey: those who come to such events rarely represent the branches of religions that are in conflict. Such meetings do not solve problems directly. There are knotty problems around representation: who, after all, can truly “represent” most faith traditions? And the vision of harmony among traditions that is the essence of most interfaith events obscures real difficulties, tensions, and religious conflicts. The meeting in Monterrey was not about dialogue, it did not have a structured agenda, and it did not set out to change opinions. It was careful to live up to its theme: “respect in every respect”. It was aggressively inclusive. Nonetheless, the reality of differences was often obvious, in part in the many communication barriers and very obvious differences in style and approach. The fact that there are conflicts around religion was not hard to discern, just for a start, in a meeting where the large majority of participants were Catholics, issues for women were high on the agenda, and a long series of sessions focused on family, reproductive issues, and HIV/AIDS. Meetings like this, though, serve an important purpose in breaking the many barriers of ignorance, in helping to build the web of networks, and in marking the paths ahead for engagement, intense dialogue, and action.


Down to Business
September 23, 2007

There are some 60 people that the Parliament of Religions has invited to be part of the Interreligious Encounter (40+ plus speakers plus people accompanying them). This is a truly “global” group, coming from all over the world, and from an extraordinary span of religious traditions. It includes Christian leaders, a woman who works with Muslim Sufi networks, several Jain representatives, Sikhs, from the UK and California, filmmakers, Baha’i’s, and a few who resist simple categories (myself among them – I introduced myself as coming from a tradition of Episcopal Christianity with faith in the development of human potential). Perhaps most striking, visually, to an observer is the group of Buddhists, as Dharma Master Hsin Tao Shih from Taiwan (creator of the remarkable museum of World Religions there) came with 11 nuns, all in identical grey robes, their heads shaved, and with the same backpacks. The indigenous group includes a Hopi from Arizona, several Yorubas from Nigeria, and a representative of Paganism, who traces his roots to the Celtic world.

This is the group who are the speakers at the Interreligious Encounter. And the question buzzing among this group since we arrived has been: who is the audience? Constant back to back sessions are scheduled over three full days, four a day, 12 at a time, with instructions to speak for 70 minutes in a presentation, 17 minutes each for panels. Who is going to listen? It has become increasingly clear that this is a Mexico centered event, focused on this dynamic city, with a fairly limited number of people from overseas.

The answer came Saturday morning, as the conference center was abuzz with people. The street word (ie not verified by authorities) was that over 8000 people had now registered. The “early bird” event was a series of 8 am faith observances; most were packed, especially the Buddhist session; people came to all sessions throughout the day, with special crowds where the topics turned on spirituality. Most listeners came from Monterrey, with a fairly high proportion of women, not notably young but also not dominated by retirees. In discussions, we (the invitees) marveled at the interest in the event, since Monterrey is not particularly interreligious, the conflicts in Iraq and elsewhere are rather far away, and religious conflict is not at the door (Monterrey’s population is perhaps 90% Catholic). The answer that came back when we asked what sparked the interest was that Monterrey, Mexico’s second largest city and perhaps its richest, is opening up in many ways and global issues are indeed at its door. The city prides itself as a knowledge capital. Citizens were indeed ready to come to an event that featured interfaith dialogue and a menu of grave issues of the day.

A source of considerable frustration within the speaker group is that most of the invited guests speak several times each day and thus cannot enjoy the feast of offerings in other panels. And little of it is captured in summaries or papers. So we relied on the old fashioned method, that is conversation, to garner highlights of other sessions. Overall, the picture was of quite structured events, successive speeches, with no reports of sharp exchange or discussions going out of control. The topics of conflict, terrorism, family values, and tapping spiritual resources, were of particular interest. Audience size varied widely, in short a market of sorts as the people of Monterrey voted with their feet.

I was on for two events Saturday. One was a panel on HIV/AIDS; four speakers gave four very different presentations, two focused on theology and biology, two on how HIV/AIDS affects the poorest countries and communities and especially Africa (a fellow panelist, Lally Warren, gave vivid testimony from Botswana). The other was a presentation on the Millennium Development Goals and religion (my core professional topic). At both events and one other I attended, the questions were stimulating and informed, despite some tendency for a few people to present their own perspectives at some length.

There was some buzz about the difficulties in the opening plenary session Friday evening. Apart from grumbling but sympathy about the technological difficulties that garbled speeches, the repeated mention of Hannukah (not Yom Kippur) in one of the formal welcoming speeches caused this interreligious group to cringe. So intead of trekking to the arena for a second 7 pm plenary Saturday, conversation turned out to be the order of the evening. The interreligious dialogue around tables at the hotel, though, was a feast indeed. Among topics I heard discussed were film ideas, experience with reconciliation and healing memory, religion and reproductive health, images of the United States in communities across the world, the meaning of transcendence, and repressed spirituality as an explanation for the eagerness of Monterrey citizens to attend the dialogue.


“With All Respect in Every Respect”
September 22, 2007

That’s the theme phrase for the Monterrey International Interreligious Encounter that had its formal opening last night. The event took place in Monterrey’s cavernous arena, where concerts and sports events are often held; there was an eerie smell of popcorn in the air.

The long string of welcoming speeches stressed again and again the theme that all cultures and religions deserve respect, that knowing other religions and cultures is the key to social peace and harmony. The officials of the State of Nueva Leon and the City of Monterrey were exemplars of civic pride. Monterrey, they said, for the 80 days of the World Cultural Forum, is the cultural capital of the world. And they see Monterrey as being at the leading edge in promoting the theme of respect. The opening program had also a series of careful prayers and blessings – offered by a Catholic Church official and a Sikh leader. A challenge for most interreligious gatherings is to stress the common elements that bind people and faiths together (including reverence, ritual, and prayer), but to avoid any sense of blurring boundaries among faiths or advocating one’s own faith at the expense of others. This gave a rather sober quality to much of the evening, until its rousing finale.

The talk at the opening (and throughout the day) was of the interreligious movement and its significance. The people who are here in Monterrey are part of a rich diversity of organizations dedicated in one form or another to interreligious dialogue. They see an explosion of interfaith work, programs, institutions, initiatives, in many forms. The role of film is much on display here, with an opening video that looked to different spiritual experiences in California (Rick Nahmias is the produced), and two film screenings, one called Rumi Rising, the other “God and Allah need to Talk” (more on those later). So is the community, with many assertions that what really matters is people to people contact.

The Forum and Parliament embrace indigenous cultures and the most dramatic and evocative moments yesterday centered on indigenous people. A spiritual and cultural pilgrimage of indigenous cultures began September 12 and culminated at Monterrey yesterday. It brought a wide range of different groups together – from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the United States. The end of the “Caminata”, as it was termed, was vividly colorful, with the participants in traditional dress. They were joined by many from the Interreligious Forum (which includes several participants representing indigenous traditions, including Paganism). There was a ceremony, successive dances, and, here too, a rather lengthy series of speeches. The speeches carried the message of respect and the equality of mankind, and especially cultures: no culture is superior to others.

The opening ceremony was stirred, also, by a concluding dance by the indigenous group. It left the audience on their feet, calling for more.

The more sober work of the Interreligious Forum begins this morning. It will consist of spiritual observances by different faith traditions, presentations which introduce faith traditions, life stories, and a series of presentations on themes of the Encounter. I will be on a panel on HIV/AIDS and give a presentation on the Millennium Development Goals and religion as part of the theme “Religion at the Crossroads”.


Why are all these people here?
Monterrey, September 21, 2007

Interreligious gatherings have very different flavors – I have been to many in recent years and each evokes vivid yet very different memories. But all have some special, common qualities. The united presence of people from all corners of the earth, many wearing visible symbols of their faith and cultures, makes a poignant tapestry of the diversity of humanity. It is history come alive, but also today’s plural reality in living color. A side product is a sea of cameras seeking to capture the color, life and diversity. Another is a vibrant feel of diversity – such meetings are particularly tough to organize as participants come with very different habits, not to speak of dietary needs, daily rhythms, and expectations. “Herding cats” is a common analogy.

The Interreligious Encounter opened Thursday night with a dinner. Dirk Ficca, Executive Director of the Parliament of Religions Secretariat from Chicago, opened with two evocative themes. First he told a story about the Muslim, the Hindu and the Presbyterian (if you want to hear it let me know!), through which he injected humor, humanity, and an admonition to introspection within religious traditions. And second, he stressed the keen anticipation of the people of Monterrey for this event.

Which raises an interesting question: why is this city in central Mexico, heavily Catholic and without visible interreligious tensions, so very interested in interreligious dialogue and the topics it brings to the agenda: identity, values, peace, tolerance, life and death? The list goes some way to answering the question: religion itself and relations among different faiths are fundamentally interesting and important in a universal sense. But still, why Monterrey? A special openness and deep curiosity about world religions seems to have been the force of gravity that inspired Monterrey’s city leaders to hold the Cultural Forum here. They want to be part of the world, to understand different traditions, and they will be intensely welcoming. Whether they would be so welcoming to diversity within the Catholic religion is less clear

But I will keep asking the question: why are thousands of people (some 5000 have already signed up and paid a subscription for the interreligious forum and more are expected) so keen and what do they expect? What will they make of the presentations of Jainism, the Brahmakumari approach to life, the Pagan representative? The evangelicals, Muslims, Sikhs? And so on.

I am here to speak about poverty and the Millennium Development Goals that emerged from the historic United Nations meeting in September 2000. It is not always obvious to people who hear me speak why the MDGs have anything to do with religion. Ironically, I do not expect that to be an issue here. Monterrey is famous in the development world, and we evoke often the “Monterrey Consensus”, as a sort of Camelot moment when there truly seemed to be a powerful consensus that we, as a global community, had both an obligation and a consensus to end poverty in our times. Monterrey was the site of an important UN meeting with a less than scintillating title – Financing for Development, in March 2002. It was here that the high ideals of the 2000 UN meeting, tempered by September 11, 2001 and other setbacks, were translated into the notion of specific action commitments, a true pact.

So being at an interreligious meeting, focused on poverty, equity, water and sanitation, education, HIV/AIDS, and reconciliation makes eminent sense.


Arrivals
Monterrey, September 20, 2007

The streets of Monterrey were clogged this evening as Mexico’s president arrived to open an 80 day named the Universal FORUM of Cultures, Monterrey 2007. The hotel lobby of the Holiday Inn swarmed with bagpipe groups in kilts, and a group that looked like medieval troubadours. I am here to participate in a first event of the Forum, which is an interfaith meeting, called the International Interreligious Encounter. A group of about 40 people from all over the world, scholars, practitioners, preachers, from a feast of different faiths, are arriving. We received a program book with a dizzying array of events – plenaries, performances, panels, life stories, introductions to religious traditions, and so on. Some 15,000 people, we were told, will attend a program with up to 15 sessions running in parallel.

There are two different stories here which link in the Encounter. The first is a dream of creating a world cultural forum. A group of passionate advocates looked to the World Economic Forum (which meets in Davos) and the World Social Forum (which began in Porto Alegre, Brazil), and conceived the idea of a World Cultural Forum. Their idea was to create a sort of Olympics where the meetings would move from city to city, with some continuity in theme. This is the second such venture – the first was in Barcelona in 2004. So it will be interesting to see how this forum unfolds between now and December.

The interreligious event is happening here because a Parliament of the World’s Religions took place in Barcelona as part of the World Cultural Forum there in 2004. The Parliament has a fascinating history – it grew from an 1893 interreligious meeting in Chicago, a pioneering effort to bring religious leaders together and launch a process of mutual education and common efforts for good. Grand intentions there took off in various directions but it was not until 1993 that, again in Chicago, a “Parliament” met again. Interreligious thinking and politics has changed a good deal since then, but the Parliament is one of the leading global interfaith organizations, with a variety of activities including parliaments on a roughly 5 year cycle. The next full Parliament will be in Melbourne, Australia in December 2009.

The Parliament and the Cultural Forum thus are continuing on a road together, with the ambitious forum in Monterrey kicking off with the interreligious event. I expect it to be full of symbolism, expressions of good will, muted but significant discussion of tough issues (I am on a panel on reproductive health issues), pageant, and education. An interesting feature will be the significant part played in the group by indigenous religious leaders – something that is of keen interest in Mexico.

The Encounter opens with a grand plenary tomorrow, Friday evening.