Talk:Interfaith dialogue

merge and/or move
Is there any reason why this shouldn't be at Interfaith? Camelcase is hideous. --Pyroclastic 02:45, August 15, 2005 (UTC) I believe that the title of this page should be spelt 'Interfaith Dialogue' not 'Interfaith Dialog' Sfuqua 03:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC) - Agreed. It also seems that the history of the interfaith movement needs more discussion, and interfaith with respect to other religions should be moved into separate pages. Sikhism is important to the interfaith movement, certainly, but should not be the dominant part of the page. Any thoughts before this is changed?


 * I agree entirely..it should be re-categorized, as well. Perhaps into the Religious Faiths, Traditions and Movements category?User:JDeleted_user_jj1 21:42, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

See my comments elsewhere - this page, Interreligious relations and Ecumenism could be rearranged/merged etc. Jackiespeel 21:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I merged Interfaith dialogue here. Please see Talk:Interfaith dialogue for old talk. Sam Spade 15:49, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

This article should be moved to Interfaith dialogue or Inter-religious dialogue, much more common terms than "InterFaith". &mdash; goethean &#2384; 17:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, and long past time. NicM 17:39, 13 April 2006 (UTC).

The first term of the above loops back to this page. Jackiespeel 21:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I do not feel that Ecumenism should be merged here, though cross references are certainly welcome. My understanding and experience of Ecumenism is it is a term used primarily (only?) within Christianity and it refers to encouraged combined events for Christians of different labels. So, an Ecumenical service may include Lutherans, Baptists and Roman Catholics but it would probably not include Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, etc. An interfaith service would include and welcome people from all of the above and all referenced on our main article. Just my two cents. Keesiewonder 12:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Layout suggestion
The layout adopted in syncretism might be appropriate for this topic (or whichever of this group survives). Jackiespeel 22:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Vatican II related edits
I changed the first paragraph reference to 1962 and removed the reference to John XXIII: while John XXIII inaugurated Vatican II in 1962, the Declaration on the Church's Relations to Non-Christian Religions (aka Nostra Aetate) was not approved and issued until the last session of the Council in 1965, under Paul VI. I also removed the bit about Vatican II disappointing traditionalists and Mel Gibson -- while this is true, this seems to veer off into the strictly-Catholic category, and I don't know that it belongs in the first paragraph of the "interfaith" entry. Makrina 02:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Changed "we" to Muslims
I think it's better to use Muslims than "we" in the text of the page.


 * Since this is complete, apparently didn't raise any problems, and was apparently submitted unsigned, can we delete it or archive it or move it in to the Muslim portion of this discussion page? It doesn't seem worthy of its own slot in the table of contents of topics we're discussing. Please note I am not suggesting we make any edits to the article - just to this talk page - for clarity of our current discussion topics. Keesiewonder 12:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Religion and politics reference?
Could a comment on interfaith be put on Religion and politics - for example how the state handles various religions. Jackiespeel 21:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

And could the title be expanded to include inter religious relations, as that article has been incorporated here?

Another area to put on the theoretical "University of Wikipedia Postdoctoral Research Projects" list (all those topics you wish *someone* would pursue, and produce a brilliant article on for Wikipedia (g).

Jackiespeel 11:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Page rename request?
Please note: On 20 November 2006, I tried to organize our ideas into sections if they had migrated all over the talk page. It appears to me that Jackiespeel nicely raised the topic of title expansion and at some subsequent date, someone else not involved with the discussion, submitted a page rename request in such a way that the Wiki Gods did not allow it to go through. Keesiewonder 12:12, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

And could the title be expanded to include inter religious relations, as that article has been incorporated here? Jackiespeel 11:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

''It was requested that this article be renamed but the procedure outlined at WP:RM did not appear to be followed, and consensus could not be determined. Please request a move again with proper procedure if there is still a desire for the page to be moved. Thank you for time!''

Interfaith = Nonfaith?
Whilst I think that genuine inter-faith work is valuable, it seems to me that a number of people parade around as "interfaith ministers", even presuming to call themselves "reverend", whilst really being little more than jumped-up new-agers more interested in psychobabble and astrology than anything else, and with absolutely no knowledge at all of any of the world's bona fide religions. Is it worth mentioning this? Ros Power 22:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Islam section
"Muslims understand themselves accept all Prophets and Books sent to different peoples throughout history, and regard belief in them as an essential principle of being Muslim. A Muslim is a true follower of Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and all other Prophets, upon them be peace. Not believing in one Prophet or Book means that one is not a Muslim. Thus we acknowledge the oneness and basic unity of religion, which is a symphony of God’s blessings and mercy, and the universality of belief in religion. So, religion is a system of belief that embraces all races and all beliefs, a road that brings everyone together in brotherhood."

While a beautiful declaration, this paragraph is just that, a declaration, rather than espousing facts. It's written in the first person plural, includes a religious overture to the Prophets, and sounds like the transcription of a spoken opinion. The neutrality is somewhat dissolved compared to the other sections, which try to state objective facts.

The other two paragraphs in the Islam section are better written, but need some prolix cleanup. I'd suggest editing this one, finding a source citation (it sounds like a quotation), or erasing it. AtenRa 12:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

-It looks like it was written by a Muslim who was trying to defend his religion against accusations of violence. Farae 03:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Which is a valid desire, but it is expressed poorly within the context of the article. I don't know where to find citations enough to give evidence to such an individual declaration. If the paragraph will not be edited to a more neutral view, I advocate removing it completely until someone can come up with one. AtenRa 21:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Pearl S. Buck was a Sikh?
Maybe some reorganization is in store? A glance at the opening to the Interfaith article could lead someone to think that Pearl S. Buck was a Sikh. I don't think this was true, though she certainly displays great sensitivity and interfaith appreciation. Thoughts? Keesiewonder 19:54, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree; this page needs a bigtime cleanup. The bigger question is what the organization should be, and where to find the sources. -- Jeff3000 20:09, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Being a graduate student, I have access to a large library of online resources, so I can probably find almost anything. I'd say finding the resources is not going to be a problem. So, perhaps some time when either of us has some free moments, we can simply propose a new structure, migrate what he have to it after time for discussion, and all the while I'll try to poke in an absent resource here and there. How does that sound? For all my spare time ... i.e. I'm busy, so we'll need to be patient. Keesiewonder 20:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Time for re-structure and associated discussion appears to have passed, so I'm going to be bold and make the following changes;
 * 1. Title "Different religions" changed to "Policies of religions to Interfaith Dialogue".
 * 2. Title "Organisations" changed to "Interfaith Organisations".
 * 3. Title "Criticism of Interfaith Dialogue" added. Personally I don't think a criticism section is necessary, but then I don't think the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir are necessary either.
 * 4. Views of Hizb ut-Tahrir moved to Criticism of Interfaith Dialogue section.
 * 5. The sections of religions need re-arranging to a consistent order, either alphabetical or chronological. I will postpone making this change until further time has elapsed for consultation. Daniel De Mol (talk) 10:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 6. Given that Hizb ut-Tahrir are a small fringe group (the largest known estimate is one million members), it seems unwarranted to give its views an unbalanced amount of space, and therefore I'm cutting it down to size. Daniel De Mol (talk) 10:59, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Judaism Section
The Judaism section is heavily biased agianst Orthodoxy. There are plenty of Orthodox Rabbis involved in interfaith dialogue with Christians in the United States. This article only lists the opinions of the Haredi camp and not the Modern Orthodox. Furthermore this article is not the place to discuss the internal issues of Judaism (...Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism, which are regarded by Orthodox Jews as deviating from Jewish tradition.)

I agree and just rewrote the section. Please feel free to add your thoughts.129.2.203.195 04:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Muslim section
I think you should change the wording of the part where you say muslims "claim" to believe in moses, jesus etc. I understand what you are saying but as it is documented in their holy book that they do believe in them I think you should omit the word claim.

Removed irrelevant material
I have removed most of the sections describing individual religions. There seems to be a common confusion that examples of being tolerant to members of other religions is enough to be included in this article. This is an article about interfaith dialog. The article needs to contain properly sourced descriptions of dialog between religions. I also found several examples of blatant original research in the article. Please do add information to the article, but only if you can cite reliable sources for what you add. Thanks, Gwernol 01:05, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a citation to the history section relating to the 1965 anti-war in Vietnam article which should meet wikipolicy Daniel De Mol (talk) 09:29, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Citation also added to the history section relating to the July 2008 interfaith dialogue conference by Saudi king Abdullah, and sentence changed from "Historic Interfaith dialogue initiated by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to solve world problems through concord and not conflict. The conference attended by religious leaders of different faiths like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism etc. was hosted by King Juan Carlos of Spain in Madrid." to "A historic interfaith dialogue conference was initiated by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to solve world problems through concord instead of conflict. The conference was attended by religious leaders of different faiths like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism etc. and was hosted by King Juan Carlos of Spain in Madrid." Change made to improve readability. Daniel De Mol (talk) 11:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Interfaith Wikipedians?
Namaste. Does anyone know if there is any interfaith project on Wikipedia? In editing articles on Hinduism I have begun wondering how to get more multifaith readers to check for POV issues and basic comprehensibility of articles that often raise cross-cultural issues. Buddhipriya 02:39, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

islam section
unless we provide sources for this this section must be revised. Modern times have shown us something very different from what is described here. Saksjn (talk) 13:15, 8 September 2008 (UTC).

Regnocentrism
The article should maybe mention the notion of Interfaith as connected to Regnocentrism, that is, the idea that the collaboration of religions is supposed to herald the Kingdom of God on Earth at a much faster speed. ADM (talk) 04:27, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Clarification on a Deleted External Link
An external link I added to this article was deleted for -- I believe -- conflict of interest (COI) issues. I would like to re-add it and explain why I think there is no conflict of interest.

The link I added (http://interfaith.issuelab.org/research) is for a website which houses a collection of research on Interfaith Organizing. The website belongs to a nonprofit organization called IssueLab whose purpose is to collect and archive research produced by nonprofits and university-based research centers. The link does not go to IssueLab's home page or any sort of promotional or donations page. It goes directly to the collection on Interfaith Organizing -- an actual list of research documents. The research was not written or sponsored by IssueLab and we do not benefit financially from an increase in the number of people who view the research. We are a non-profit-seeking organization by definition. Like Wikipedia, IssueLab is a neutral resource; we do not espouse any political views and we include in our archive research produced by a large variety of organizations. The link was added in the spirit of expanding knowledge, what Wikipedia is all about. One of IssueLab's guiding principles is to encourage sharing of and free access to information. Along with the link I included the description "Nonprofit Research Collection on Interfaith Organizing" so as to make it clear what the link led to. I assure you I was not trying to mislead anyone or promote any sort of commercial website. I was simply trying to offer an additional resource for those who might be interested. I apologize if I appeared to be breaking the rules, but after carefully reading Wikipedia's guidelines on External Links and Conflicts of Interest, I truly believe that I am not.

From Wikipedia's section on External Links: "Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic, information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy."

IssueLab's Interfaith collection contains "further research that is accurate and on-topic" and "could not be added to the article for reasons such as...amount of detail."

External Links also includes guidelines on "Links Normally to be Avoided": "Links mainly to promote a website. Links to web pages that primarily exist to sell products or services, or to web pages with objectionable amounts of advertising. Links to sites that require payment or registration to view the relevant content."

The link was added to promote the research, not to promote the website or to sell anything. The site does not require payment or registration.

From the section on Conflicts of Interest: "A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor.

"COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. Where advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest."

The aim of IssueLab is to offer another "neutral, reliably sourced" resource. "[A]dvancing outside interests" is not more important to us than "advancing the aims of Wikipedia," which are strongly in line with those of IssueLab.

Finally, other external links for this article go to nonprofit organizations and to the website of a journal. My added link fits right in with these.

I hope I've explained the situation clearly and I hope you won't object to my re-inserting the external link. My apologies for the length of this entry.

IssuesRUs (talk) 16:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Interfaith as a "spiritual expression"
While a previous posting makes reference to the concept of "interfaith ministers" as illegitimate providers of spiritual care, it is important to recognize that Interfaith is now taking on its own identity as a path for human souls to take. In 2009, the Order of Universal Interfaith (OUnI) was created to provide the ecclesiastic base for those who express their spirituality unbound by cultural, ethnic and religious ties and formal boundaries still found in modern religions. Since 1987 when The New Seminary in New York City, NY began to grant the title of "interfaith minister" over 3,000 individuals from around the world have claimed the title as their own. Other seminaries have started since then including the One Spirit Learning Alliance and Interfaith Seminary, Chaplaincy Institute of Arts and Interfaith Ministries, Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, iNtuitive Times Institute (Canada), and the Interfaith Foundation (UK). With the creation of OUnI, the path took on a more professional and ecclesiastical organization--many of the pledgers to The Order have M.Div and D.Min. and Ph.Ds from accredited universities in addition to their own interfaith seminary experiences. OUnI has published its own Statement of Faith which includes the concept of Universal Interfaith--that clergy should serve a soul according to its path, not the path of the cleric doing the service. Many members of OUnI serve the world as chaplains in hospitals, hospices and other institutions. The Association of Professional Chaplains has allowed "interfaith" to be considered a path of spiritual endorsement. The first goal of OUnI was organize over 200 "interfaith congregations" that bring people of different faith paths together to create and share spiritual community. Each congregation has its own "flavor" based on the membership of that body. In March 2009, the Council of Interfaith Congregations of the United States (CIC-USA) was chartered in Washington, DC. This council has created its own Declaration of Principles to guide community building, worship, service and education for the interfaith community. The World Council of Interfaith Congregations (WCIC) began in March 2010.

In January 2010, OUnI joined with InterSpiritual Dialogue 'n Action (ISDnA) to co-create the Universal Order of Sannyasa as articulated by the late Br. Dr. Wayne Teasdale in his 1999 book, The Mystic Heart. While not an ecclesiastic body, it does move interspirituality into the realm of valid spiritual practice. Interfaithmonk (talk) 22:14, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

if people are interested in an interfaith publication see....
A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services, though it's also being discussed for deletion for lack of notability. Share your thoughts? Smkolins (talk) 17:07, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Monotheistic Bias?
It seems like this article mostly focuses on monotheisms. There are subheaders for Christianity, Bahá'í, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism. I'd like to see more mention of how atheist, polytheist, and unitarian groups are incorporated into interfaith dialogues. samwaltz (talk) 17:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Overview
Sentence removed from opening lines, "There is a view that the history of religion shows conflict has been more the state of affairs than dialogue." It is not cited, probably not true, and does not say who holds such a view anyway. Daniel De Mol (talk) 21:15, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Interfaith Churches & Temples (moved from article)
gf edit moved from article: —MistyMorn (talk) 13:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC) Interfaith Churches have been appearing in many locations as a pluralistic alternative to more established organised religions. These do not always incorporate the words church or temple but provide many of the same support services that are accepted as those offered by established church and temple groups. The main commonality between these organisations is the acceptance that all deistic belief is acceptable and that each belief is a facet of the same source, that of a creator deity that is often beyond simple human comprehension.

Some examples of Interfaith Churches and Temples include:
 * Community Interfaith Church.com
 * Interfaith Church of Australia
 * Interfaith Community Church
 * Interfaith Temple of NYC
 * Living Interfaith Church
 * Pebble Hill Interfaith Church
 * St. Stephen Interfaith Temple
 * Tree of Life Interfaith Temple --RevPeterB 05:10, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Title/article consistency
The name of the article is "Interfaith dialog", but in the text (particularly the opening sentence), it's referred to as Interfaith dialogue. I'm not sure which one should be used, as the "ue" seems to be more a matter of preference than region, but I'm assuming they should at least be consistent with each other. 8ty3hree (talk) 05:53, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Has to be edited, it is spelt 'Dialogue', not 'Dialog'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.218.147.194 (talk) 07:43, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * With one exception, "dialogue" is used throughout the entire article. Since there have been no objections, I'll move it. Tiller54 (talk) 15:12, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

If it smells like BS, it mostly likely is
The Islam section reads:

"Islam has long encouraged dialogue to reach truth (and not interfaith dialogue which seeks to find common between people and leave differences aside). Islam also stressed that the supreme law of the land should be Islam and that Islam regulates all life affairs and therefore regulates how non Muslim and Muslims live under an Islamic state, with historical examples coming from Muslim Spain, Mughal India, and even starting as far back as Muhammad's time, where people of the Abrahamic Faiths lived in harmony."

Uh...what? In a hypothetical situation where Islam is supreme law of a certain land, how can the faiths of that land live in "harmony" if the Muslims enforce their "supreme law" through belligerence and coercion? How can "harmony" exist under the rule of a religion that advocates death for apostasy? Wouldn't "harmony" between the faiths only exist in a religious plutocracy wherein all faiths are equal? I doubt very much that Christians who are burned alive in Pakistan feel as though they are living alongside "harmonious" people. This paragraph makes it sound like the premise of Islam is that God has picked his favorites (the Muslims) and pitted them against the Christians and Jews in some kind of sadistic chess match. Can we clean up this section by getting rid of this paternalistic, outmoded garbage? Just sayin'.Secular Gentile (talk) 00:11, 26 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Islam is one of the few religions to contain any positive mentions of other religions at all directly within its revealed scriptures. How it came to the current pass, I do not know. Islam was great when it was tolerant. As it's fallen behind there's been a toxic synergy, for some reason when times are rough people think, oh we are not intolerant enough, the God's are punishing us for our tolerance, we need to be more zealous. So they become ever more intolerant and head down the pit. When really it is almost certain that a tolerant society is a successful one, and usually what any society needs in any era, is more, not less, tolerance. Certainly anyway Islam was a lot more tolerant than Byzantine authorities it replaced, the Church at that time oppressed the Jews and used their backwardness from their oppression as evidence of them having taken God's covenant from them, and it was simultaneously invested in persecution of various major schisms it had created by denouncing various minor differences in Christological formula and such (some of which appear to be largely imagined) and attempting to stamp out all adherents of the heresy. The areas where these schisms were prominent were concentrated in the east. They had also just gotten done with more or less a genocide of the Samaritans in the holy land, and were engaged in punishing the Jews even more heavily due to Jewish cooperation with the Persian empire in the last great war that occurred before the Muslim conquests. So I would assume it almost certainly seemed a relief to all of these groups when the Muslims rode through and conquered these areas, the Muslims recognized Jews as fellow monotheists rather than deviants who must be punished for rejecting and killing Jesus, and for the "heretical" Christians all of the sudden obscure differences in Christological formulation could no longer be grounds for oppression. It is honestly easy to see why these areas were so easily conquered, the Byzantines had been very bad to them.


 * Go forward a thousand years and Christianity had finally murdered itself enough that it decided to maybe try tolerance. Islam in contrast had grown more and more zealous and intolerant with time as its greatness had faded, and it was insistent on enforcing various religious laws with little real basis in Islam. Honestly it had so much trouble arriving at the concept, that maybe laws should be for the secular rulers and not religious courts. Whatever. And even in recent times the answer has always seem to grow more and more fanatical, culminating in ISIS, who engaged in wanton takfiri murder of other Muslims, Christians, and other monotheists. Where in Islam did they come up with any of this nonsense? Always God is seeking to punish the Muslims for not killing enough, never do they stop and think, maybe we should be more tolerant, maybe God loves tolerance.2601:140:8900:61D0:C19E:537E:8BD6:AE14 (talk) 16:04, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

"Interfaith" redirects here, I think that some people might be looking for Interfaith Marriage instead
Simply "Interfaith" redirects here, however I was actually looking for Interfaith Marriage. I think that there should either be a disambiguation or a note. What do you think? Vulpecular (talk) 11:39, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

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