Pagan Interfaith Work through the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy
May 10, 2013
By David Dashifen Kees, technical director of the Pagan Newswire Collective and interfaith activist.
In May 2012, a guest post over at the Wild Hunt introduced me to the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. I was intrigued. As an employee at a major American public university, I’ve worked with many student interfaith leaders, some of whom have gone on to work with the Interfaith Youth Core. But, as a staff person, I was unable to partake fully in some of their activities. One way that I was able to get involved was as a Pagan representative to various panel discussions and similar events at the university and to assist the Pagan students’ association in similar capacities.
Thus, it was with some excitement that I began to investigate the FRD. Here was an organization dedicated to the very activities that I found so fulfilling over the last decade and whose work was focused on facilitating them between its various chapters. I’ve been working with other Pagans as well as with John Morehead, the custodian of the FRD’s Evangelical chapter and an author of the above-linked guest post, to investigate the feasibility of a Pagan chapter.
I’ve found that not only is it feasible, but that I’m ready to make it happen. Perhaps just as importantly, the FRD is excited to have us.
It is an ideal organization for us to be involved with. It recognizes that a person’s deeply held beliefs are not likely to change. Further, these differences, when not understood, are what lead to resentment between different religious and non-religious communities rather than understanding. Thus, the foundation uses dialog—or as they term it, “honest contestation”—as a way to foster that understanding.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/
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