Recently in Interfaith Relations Category

And not a moment too soon.

After losing out on a $1.5 million chair in Islamic studies last month, Temple University announced it has received a new gift from a local energy executive and former Catholic seminarian to fund a chair in interfaith dialogue.

Harry Halloran, 68, who took just one religion course at Temple 30 years ago, offered $1.5 million to finance the Leonard and Arlene Swidler Chair of Interreligous Dialogue. Swidler has been a professor at Temple University since 1966 and is an authority on ecumenism.

"Len knows so many people and has done such a great job traveling all over the world and having dialogues with different religions," said Halloran, chairman and CEO of American Refining Group, an oil and alternative energy company. "I thought it was important to continue this work which is irreplaceable."

Halloran, who lives in Villanova, also is donating $300,000 toward the $1.5 million needed to create the Islamic studies chair. A Muslim organization had offered to fund the chair, honoring a retiring Islamic studies professor, but withdrew after Temple delayed giving making a decision on the money.

Professors, including Swidler, said that trustees and others pressured president Ann Hart to decline the money because it came from a Muslim organization, International Institute of Islamic Thought, which had been included in a government probe of terrorist funding after the Sept. 11 attack. No action has been taken against it.

Source.

Princess Diana has posthumously entered the interfaith relations debate a decade after her death. The inquest into her death heard that her mother called her a "whore" for "sleeping with Muslim men." Frances Shand Kydd made the comment when she discovered her daughter was in a serious relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan. The pair did not speak again before Diana died two months later, according to her butler Paul Burrell.

Mr Burrell told the High Court that the princess had held up the phone as they sat together on the sofa of her Kensington Palace apartment so that he could hear her mother's rant.

He said Mrs Shand Kydd, who died in 2004, was a 'formidable lady' who often expressed herself 'in extremely forceful terms about Diana's consorts, especially if they were Muslim'.

Asked to describe what he had heard on that particular day, he hesitated.

It was only when the coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, interjected, saying: 'This is relevant', that Mr Burrell replied: 'Well, she called the princess a whore and she said that she was messing around with f****** Muslim men and she was disgraceful. She said some very nasty things.'

Mohamed Al Fayed's barrister, Michael Mansfield, asked: 'It was shortly after one of these telephone calls that the princess decided she did not want to talk to her mother again?'

It's easy to dismiss this story as tabloid fodder in what has seemed like a decade-long train of tabloid gosspi. Yet another boyfriend we've never heard about from Diana? But I suspect if this story penetrates the public consciousness she could become a powerful symbol to future generations of women in interfaith relationship. What better representative than Diana?! When a mother criticizes a daughter for dating a Muslim, she can reply, "But the Princess of Wales did it..."

I have enjoyed and recommended the books of the chief rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks. I see today that he's both on the offensive and defensive. On the offensive, attacking multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and threatens liberal democracy, Britain's top Jewish official warned in extracts from his book published Saturday.

Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm Britain's diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and respected. But in his book, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, he said the movement had run its course.

"Multiculturalism has led not to integration but to segregation," Sacks wrote in his book, an extract of which was published in the Times of London.

"Liberal democracy is in danger," Sacks said, adding later: "The politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear."

Sacks said Britain's politics had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for rights, then for special treatment.

The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive."

"A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others," he said.

On the defensive, he's been forced to back down on his plan insisting that only Jews can attend a Jewish school.

The Jewish Free School (JFS) in London has removed from its admissions criteria a clause favoring ethnically Jewish children after the school was accused of breaking state anti-discrimination laws, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the top Jewish state school was accused of discrimination after it denied a place to a child who did not meet the definition of Jewish set by Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

The mother of the child in question, who heads the school's English department, had converted to Judaism under supervision of Israel's chief rabbi.

Sacks, who is the school's religious authority, had stipulated that applicants must have an ethnically Jewish mother in order to be accepted into the school. Following the accusation, chief schools arbitrator Philip Hunter ruled that the JFS had not violated race relation laws as it was following religious, rather than racial, criteria.

See the video announcement here.

The TED Prize was introduced in 2005, and it is unlike any other award. Although the winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, the real prize is that they are granted a WISH. "A wish to change the world". There are no formal restrictions on the wish. We ask our winners to think big and to be creative. The goal is that it creates an incredible sense of excitement and common purpose. It inspires the TED community, and all those who hear about the wish, to offer their help in making the wish come true.

Three winners are chosen each year. They could be anyone with worldchanging potential: inventors or entrepreneurs, designers or artists, visionaries or mavericks, story-tellers or persuaders. But they must be people who the judges believe have the ability to inspire others to do something great for the world.

Our new winners will announce their wishes at TED2008 in Monterey, on February 28, 2008, and their presentations will be released online to the world shortly afterward.

FeilerFaster takes you where few other blogs, or at least few other blogs on Beliefnet, dare to go. Earlier this year, it was backstage at the Super Bowl. Now, the World Series!

On Sunday night, following an all-night blow-out for my sister-in-law's wedding, I went to an even bigger all-night blow-out, Game 7 of the ALCS. My father-in-law, father, brother-in-law and I screamed through the last remaining voices we had as we took advantage of awesome seats in the private club behind home base and watched the Boston Red Sox defeat first their fans, who spent most of the game convinced they would lose, then the Cleveland Indians. By the end, everyone was cheering except the police, who put the city on tigther lockdown than Baghdad, hoping to avoid recent rioting after Red Sox victories. The most impressive achievement of the night was my brother-in-law Dan, who knew the names of all the retired numbers in Fenway Park, including Jackie Robinson, in blue, while all the rest were in red.

The other interesting tidbit I was reminded of is that star first baseman Kevin Youkilis (he hit .500 in the ALCS and got more hits last night in Game One of the WS), just one of many Red Sox with unusual facial hair, is Jewish.
He apparently asked one of the limited partners I know whether he should play in Yom Kippur this year and opted to suit up but not play, a decision, as you might imagine, that suited few. The Internet being the Internet, I found the controversial clip from a few years ago (before the facial hair) when Denis Leary pitted Youkilis against Mel Gibson. I also stumbled on some comments he made on the topic back in his minor league days.

Growing up in Ohio in the 80s and 90s, the 24-year-old Youkilis did not have any Jewish baseball stars to admire.

“There weren’t that many,” he says.

Heroes of the past such as Greenberg and Koufax were just that, not relevant to a kid looking for inspiration from current stars. Today, however, Jewish players, some current and former MLB All-Stars, pepper the baseball landscape. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Shawn Green is one of the more promising power-hitters in the game, while Brad Ausmus and Mike Lieberthal have established themselves as franchise catchers for the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies, respectively. Atlanta Braves pitcher Jason Marquis, Anaheim Angels lefthander Scott Schoeneweis, and outfielder and recent Red Sox acquisition Gabe Kapler round out a solid core of up-and-coming Jewish major leaguers.

Although he does not shrug off his association with these other Jewish baseball players, Youkilis downplays the influence that faith has on his game.

“I don’t really bring it into baseball,” he says.

However, he does credit his faith with making him a disciplined person, which not only helps shape his character, but also his approach to the game. Though raised Jewish, Youkilis’ parents did not push the faith upon him past his bar mitzvah and Hebrew school, and allowed him to choose his own level of involvement.

These days, most of the Youkilis family, including Kevin, attend synagogue only on the high holidays, and they do not keep kosher. “We keep the faith,” he says, adding, “we believe in what we believe.”

When asked how his faith plays into the clubhouse dynamic, he says that “everyone knows” that he’s Jewish. But it doesn’t seem to be a big deal. Although Youkilis is unique among his teammates, he is able to joke about it with them. In fact, Youkilis says that he hasn’t experienced any form of anti-Semitism among his teammates since his high school days. He recalls anecdotes from his minor league seasons, one of which involves a bright orange t-shirt bequeathed to him by his Portland teammates that reads, JESUS IS MY HOMEBOY.

Though the list of Jewish ballplayers is not large, it includes a member of the Rockies, and this week the NYT talked about the challenges Jason Hirsch has faced on a team with evangelical inclinations.

Hirsh said not once during the season had he felt uncomfortable with the place Christianity occupies within the organization.

“There are guys who are religious, sure, but they don’t impress it upon anybody,” Hirsh said. “It’s not like they hung a cross in my locker or anything. They’ve accepted me for who I am and what I believe in.”

The role of religion within the Rockies’ organization first entered the public sphere in May 2006, when an article published in USA Today described the organization as adhering to a “Christian-based code of conduct” and the clubhouse as a place where Bibles were read and men’s magazines, like Maxim or Playboy, were banned.

The article included interviews with several players and front office members, but team players and officials interviewed this week said it unfairly implied that the Rockies were intent on constructing a roster consisting in large part of players with a strong Christian faith. Asked how his own Christian faith affected his decision-making, General Manager Dan O’Dowd acknowledged it came into play, but not in a religious way. He said it guided him to find players with integrity and strong moral values, regardless of their religious preference.

“Do we like players with character? There is absolutely no doubt about that,” O’Dowd said during a recent interview in his Coors Field office. “If people want to interpret character as a religious-based issue because it appears many times in the Bible, that’s their decision. I believe that character is an innate part of developing an organization, and to me, it is nothing more than doing the right thing at the right time when nobody’s looking. Nothing more complicated than that.

“You don’t have to be a Christian to make that decision.”

I haven't heard Jason Hirsch be interviewed, but I'm afraid I did hear Youkilis after the Game 7 victory on Sunday night. Not exactly a poet. I can't say I was surprised when, on hearing that he was quoted in Michael Lewis's book Moneyball, about the Oakland A's, where he was called the "Greek God of Walks," Youkilis said he hadn't read it. "I'm not exactly a big book kind of guy."

What's fascinating, though, is that once again, the biggest book of all has become a backdrop to American sport. At the Super Bowl, it was Tony Dungy who stirred passion and controversy by bringing his Christian philosophy to the fore. This year it's the Rockies. Fair enough. At least Hirsch and Youkilis remind that there are limits when owners, GM's, and managers put their own faith front and center. They just might need an occasional helping hand from the God of Walks.

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