Creating Harmony in the World: Working through Our Faiths in Dialogue

an article by Steven Handwerker PhD

There are approximately 6.5 billion people on the planet today and about one half of them identify themselves with a religion. Religion is a key arena to pursue building a culture of peace. It all starts inside with a valuation for dialogue and moves into a commitment to counsel together to listen to understand, as we work together to respect each other and to share our worlds.

Working within the community and throughout the country through American Psychological Association convention programs as dialogues has been very productive. This created more networking with religious leaders who are proactively seeking dialogue for the sake of peacebuilding as well as providing forums for the discussion of processes and ideas around building interfaith harmony. Panels of religious leaders from the various Faiths, including Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Bahai and Buddhist are very useful as one wonderful forum to build this connection for understanding and acceptance.

Communication...listening...empathy for each other in our individual circumstances is beginning to make a difference in our community. Every year at the Palm Beach Community College, in Palm Beach Florida, I orchestrate an Interfaith dialogue/panel. In addition, each year for the past three years a panel discussion was generated and facilitated at the American Psychological Association convention for this same purpose. Wonderful opportunities to build culture of peace!

This is but one of many different projects The International Association for the Advancement of Human Welfare has been engaged in for the past 7 years. Please join us...contact me to find out how. My email is peacewk@peacewk.org. And our web site is
http://www.peacewk.org. Thank you!

DISCUSSION

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How can different faiths work together for understanding and harmony?,

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This report was posted on August 25, 2004.

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