Interreligious Dialogue in Southern California

By: Gwynne Guibord Katherine Marshall

April 17, 2015

Rev. Gwynne Guibord founded and directs the Guibord Center in Los Angeles. It draws on the inspiration of her twenty years of working with leaders of the many faith practices and traditions that live side by side in Southern California. The aim is “To bring people together to challenge assumptions, unleash the Holy, and affirm the faith that transforms the world.” Interreligious dialogue is thus a central challenge as the center addresses the issues facing the community and the nation. Domestic violence has emerged as a live topic, and the Guibord Center has organized several events to address the issue. This exchange with Katherine Marshall took place in Atlanta on February 9, 2015, on the margins of the Carter Center Human Rights Defenders Forum. The discussion served as an introduction to the short and powerful video on violence against women that was screened as part of the forum. Rev. Guibord stresses the vital importance of healing in the effort to combat domestic violence and of engaging men in a positive and truly spiritual way.

Read the interview in its entirety here.

About the Authors

Gwynne Guibord

Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord is an Episcopal priest and the founder and president of the Guibord Center – Religion Inside Out. Guibord works for interfaith harmony in the Los Angeles region; she has served on international interreligious bodies and is a much celebrated preacher. She represented the Episcopal Church USA in the National Council of Church’s Christian-Jewish dialogue. Guibord has received many awards for her work, including the Muslim Peace Award from the Islamic Center of Southern California, the Mahatma Gandhi Award for the Advancement of Religious Pluralism from the Hindu American Foundation, and the Annual World Interfaith Leader Award in 2009 from the National Association of Interchurch and Interfaith Families. She received an Appreciation for Faithful Contributions to the Ecumenical and Interfaith Communities of Southern California from the Southern California Ecumenical Council and the Distinguished Alumna Award for 2010 from the Claremont School of Theology.

Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.