The Future of Religious Leadership

Every two years, since 2003, the stellar gathering of world religious leaders, that make up the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders, come together in person in a major religious site or important city. They have come together for the fourth time, this time in Haifa and Galillee, where the vision of the Elijah Institute was born, back in 1996. Haifa carries the memory of the Prophet Elijah, a harbringer of messianic peace, through several locations, sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims. This is why the Institute bears his name. This meeting thus brings us back to our visionary roots.

The meeting was devoted to the theme "The Future of Religious Leadership". It  explored what it means to be a religious leader, in all participating religions, what challenges religious leaders face today and how religious leaders should be trained. One specific focus of the meeting is how forgiveness is practiced as part of the vocation of the religious leader in all religions.

As always, the meeting of the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders takes place through the preparations of a team of scholars. The scholars met in Kalamazoo, Michgan in May, at the invitation of the Fetzer Institute.

To see the photo presentation of the meeting, click here.

To see the Haifa meeting program, including a list of participants:

The work of the scholars is integral to the deliberations of the leaders. Part of Elijah's uniqueness lies in the bringing together of religious leaders and scholars to develop novel resources and fresh reflections. The Kalamazoo meeting is the subject of a film, that was recently made by Canadian director Amanda Tetrault. The movie shows the scholars in conjunction with the leaders, in Amritsar, with special emphasis on the Dalai Lama's discourses on forgiveness on that occassion. I am told that most viewers of this film have found it deeply moving.

To view the movie Sharing Wisdom, click here.

Alongside the scholarly papers, Elijah also conducted an international survey on religious leadership. Its findings are being released, on the occassion of the fourth meeting of Elijah's Board of World Religious Leaders. The results are significant. They underscore the commonality in the practice of leadership in all religions and  the importance attached by the faithful to their leaders' continuing engagement in interfaith activities. The survey suggests what are the weak spots and the areas that require attention in the training of future leaders. The results of the survey in relation to Jewish religious leadership are particularly noteworthy and have been called by one scholar an alarming wakeup call to Jewish leaders.

Readers who would like to offer their thoughts and responses to the background papers, are invited to do so by joining the discussion group devoted to the topic. We will attempt to summarize responses received in time and to share them with our leaders.

In order to sign up for a discussion group click here 

 

In the Third Board of World Religious Leaders Meeting - "Sharing Wisdom: The Case of Love and Forgiveness" (Amritsar, India, November 2007), Elijah leaders and scholars were interviewed on how their faiths approach forgiveness. 

Click on the picture below to view the interview clips on our Youtube Channel.