Monday 13.12.2010 17:18 Age: 5 yrs
Twenty-Six Graduates of Elijah’s Education Network’s Interreligious Dialogue Training Program Complete Seminar in Amritsar, India
Elijah’s vision of ‘sharing wisdom, fostering peace’ was advanced significantly this month, when the first 26 graduates of our Education Network’s Interreligious Dialogue Training program completed their seminar in Amritsar, India. The Educational Network’s India Training Program was designed to implement and develop the Educational Network in India, as a key component of a planned global educational initiative.
In November 2007, the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders met in Amritsar for their third biennial meeting. The concluding statement of the Board meeting, (the ‘Amritsar Declaration’), begins with the following statement:
This gathering in Amritsar, the holy city of Sikhism, was characterized by a profound sense of openness, mutuality, respect for one another's faith, and trust. The sense of shared spiritual longing pervaded our deliberations our and our commitment to taking our learnings from our meeting to the larger world infused our discussions. There was both an intimacy to our discourse and expansiveness to our vision. Through this Declaration, we invite others to join with us in affirming the profound Wisdom of our religious traditions and how that wisdom can inform the world.
As a result of the call of the religious leaders at the meeting for religions to ‘offer their finest teachings as a resource to guide humanity to safe harbour’, Executive Director, Alon Goshen Gottstein, and Director of Educational Activities, Peta Jones Pellach, developed the work of its Educational Network and designed its India Training Program. This project brought Elijah back to Amritsar with a program that engaged religious leaders, academics and interreligious activists from across India and inducted them into the world of interreligious dialogue and sharing of wisdom. Participants gathered for an intensive week of study of sacred texts, personal reflection, interaction with religious leaders from Elijah’s Board and from our scholars, acquiring skills and making new relationships. They were drawn from twelve universities and represented Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Jain and other local religious traditions. They spoke Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil and English and came from major cities and small villages, from Kashmir to Kerala to Madurai, travelling up to three days to join the program. They focused on a common endeavour and completed their week transformed through knowledge and challenging experiences.Participants studied six learning units on the theme ‘From Hostility to Hospitality’, based on papers from the Seville meeting of the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders in 2003. The academic papers presented at the Board meeting have been translated into expertly-crafted study units by Elijah scholars, each unit comprising sources and an essay, summarizing the positive elements as well as the challenges that beset each religion studied, in its relationship with other religions. Original units cover Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Religions of India (Hinduism). A Sikh unit was added for the seminar.In addition to formal study, participants were treated to presentations by many of Elijah’s leaders and scholars, including Khandro Rinpoche and Timothy Gianotti by Skype hook-up, and Shrivatsa Goswami and Bhikku Sanghasena in person. Other local contributors who addressed the group included Father John Chathanatt and the Jathedar from the Golden Temple, who also presented participants with an orange scarf, bestowing a great honour on each person.A highlight of the program was visiting places of worship, including evening prayers in a Roman Catholic Church and at a mosque, and joining the worshippers at a Hindu Temple. The groups spent a morning at the Sikhs’ Golden Temple, experiencing the range of activities of a spiritual and social welfare nature that take place in the precincts. Watching the way food is prepared for and served to thousands of pilgrims each day (the Langer) had a profound impact on the group. After these visits, participants were able to analyse the similarities and differences between religions in regards to worship. This increased understanding was enhanced by morning reflections, conducted each day participants from a different religion.The final day of the seminar was devoted to ‘taking the program home’ and participants worked intensively with others from their locality laying the groundwork for their future role as Elijah Educational Network interreligious dialogue leaders. Their role will be to transmit the knowledge and understanding they have gained to university students and the broader community.The first step in that process will be for participants to report to their institutions on the training they have received and to solicit support for an ongoing program of activity. Each institution and each locality has different needs and difficulties but participants have taken on the role of local Elijah leaders and have decided on the first steps towards implementation of the Elijah Educational Network in their particular locality.
With these local leaders in place, the Educational Network in India will be able to move forward, conducting the following activities: local interfaith study circles, based the on Study Units that have been prepared by the Elijah Interfaith Academy; involvement of Elijah scholars and religious leaders in Network activities, providing guidance and inspiration to the work of the Educational Network; an Annual Network Conference to deepen study and understanding, enabling the formation of coalitions towards a practical action for launching community-based initiatives that grow from the study process; building a global interfaith community on Elijah’s website in order to initiate a global conversation and facilitate collaborative projects among Network members.
The ‘Elijah All-India Interreligious Dialogue Training Seminar’ was conducted by Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Peta Jones Pellach, in conjunction with Guru Nanak Dev University. Sikh scholar, Dr Balwant Dhillon, laid the groundwork and recruited participants to the program, which was held at Nishkam International Centre, alongside the Golden Temple. This marvelous venue was made available through the generous facility of Bhai Sahib, Mohinder Singh, with the organizational support of Mr Sukhbir Singh.
