Ben Clark, Brian Farr, Alan Bachman, Jan Saeed, Elaine Emmi

Many members of the Salt Lake City Interfaith Roundtable and their friends worked for months of detailed planning and preparation to host NAINConnect 2010.  Committee members included Wendy Stovall [registration], Ivan Cendese, Brian Farr [presenter and host, new NAIN Board member], Alan Bachman [musician, host, Roundtable Chair], Andalin Bachman [music and video], Benjamin Clark [conference program and tech support], Linda Hilton [Roundtable Treasurer], Gary Poll, Leela Baggett, Elaine Emmi [Roindtable Secretary], Rahz Saeed, Jan Saeed {NAIN Board], Nahzaneen Aqhdassi, Samantha Meland, and Katie Danner.

Thank you seems inadequate.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral hosted a sumptuous continental breakfast and a wonderful dinner catered by Bombay House.  Breakfast tickets on Tuesday could be used either at the Nauvoo Café or Hagermann’s Bake House.

LDS Luncheon Banquet

Tuesday lunch was a banquet hosted at the LDS Church Headquarters on the 26^th Floor.  The view was spectacular.

Evening Gala

Our final gala event was at the Jewish Community Center.  Again, the balcony view was captivating.  Middle Eastern food was delicious. The music of a half Jewish-half Arab band with the Interfaith Roundtable’s President Alan Bachman and his wife and friends.  The music had most attendees dancing and clapping.

Connecting: The power of genetics and genealogy in bringing people together. David Rencher, Chief Genealogical Officer, Family Search.  This was a most appropriate inclusion from the genealogy capital of the world.  Mr. Rencher gave a fast-moving and fascinating glimpse into DNA genealogy which proves that we are indeed one family.  By the 50^th generation back, we are all connected to Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad through common DNA.

After this introductory presentation, there were two sets of breakouts on the topic of Working Together for the Common Good.

WISDOM

• Five Women, Five Journeys: How Different Are We? Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit (WISDOM) Gail Katz, President and Co-Founder; Patricia Harris, Co-Founder; Paula Drewek, President-elect.  Three leaders from WISDOM told the story of how they formed and wrote their book.  They then demonstrated how they present their program.  http://www.interfaithwisdom.org/ http://www.readthespirit.com/friendship-and-faith-book/
• Refugee Resettlement Program of Interfaith Works, Dr. Jim Wiggins, Interfaith Works of Central New York. http://interfaithworkscny.org/blog/  There are 11 million refugees worldwide and InterFaith Works is currently working with refugees from Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, and Vietnam. Refugee Services: Great Projects That Cross Lines of Religion and Culture. Amy Wylie, Volunteer Coordinator, Utah Refugee Services Office.  http://refugee.utah.gov/about/index.html
• Awaken the Dreamer – Be the Change. Derek LaCroix and Maureen Jack-LaCroix, Multifaith Action Society (MAS) of Vancouver, B.C. The intended result of this session is to activate environmental change through personal and social awareness, while providing a connecting point for faith-centers and the broader community to develop common goals and collaboration.  http://www.multifaithaction.org/

Building a Global Family, photo Tomiko Nojima

• Our Challenges; How to Build a Global Family, Rev. Paul Chaffee, Director of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio www.interfaith-presidio.org, Mrs. Prabha Duneja, Hindu teacher and chair of the Women’s Interfaith Circle of Service (WICS) of  the United Religions Initiative (URI) http://www.uri.org/cooperation_circles/detail/womensinterfaithcircleofservice , Pastor Kevin Thompson,  Regional Director of Universal Peace Federation UPF http://us.upf.org/ . This panel will be joined by NAIN Scholarship recipient Peter Frank Womack. Mr. Womack has a BA degree in Economics, an MBA in Entrepreneurial Studies, and a JD in International Governance and is the Founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Settlement Foundation, an interfaith organization dedicated to the establishment of a municipality specifically predicated upon interreligious cooperation.
• Can Faith-based Work Really Make a Difference? Getting Beyond the Quick Fix. Benefit from lessons learned from 41 years of tackling some of the most systemic problems facing a city. Rabbi George Stern, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement, and Eric Wilden, Assistant Director.  http://www.nimphilly.org/   Rabbi Sterns and Eric spoke of their successfully diverse staff.  A beautiful mural has enhanced their visibility.  Their services include older adult programs, long-term care resources, childcare and youth programs.
• Respectful Contestation of Irreconcilable Differences, Dr. Randall Paul, Founder and Exec.Director of the Foundation for Inter-religious Diplomacy.  http://www.fidweb.org/home

Ralph Singh

• Changing the Narrative: Using Stories From Our Traditions and Music to Build a More Compassionate, Engaged, Pluralistic Society. Ralph Singh, Director of Publications and Public Relations for Gobind Sadan Institute and Society for Interfaith Understanding http://www.gobindsadan.org/usa-website/usa-home.html , will share progress of his project “Nurturing an Ideal Citizen of the State of Virtue” using the audio CD “Stories to Light Our Way, Journey to the World of Good” and study guides. He will be joined by NAIN Scholarship recipient

Judy Wight & Skyler Oberst

• Teaching Children and Youth Respect for Others. Rosemary Baron, Interfaith Chaplain, Former Middle School Principal, co-developer of The 3 R’s Project.(Rights, Respect, Responsibility) http://www.schools.utah.gov/curr/socialstudies/teachers/pdf/3R.pdf ; Jacqueline Thompson, REACH (Respecting Ethnic And Cultural Heritage) coordinator for the Davis School District http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/EPTW/eptw8/eptw8h.html ; Judy Wight, The Ulster Project http://www.ulsterprojectutah.com/joomla/ Northern Irish teens from Omagh arrived in Utah on Tuesday June 29, 2010 and along with their US host teens engaged in activites and service projects; Skyler Oberst, NAIN Scholarship recipient. (Skyler is a student at Eastern Washington University working on a double major in philosophy and anthropology, founder of Compassionate Interfaith Society and recipient of one of EWU’s prestigious Student Excellence Awards.) http://www.ewu.edu/x62902.xml?printer_friendly=1

Media Presenters

Judy Trautman, NAIN Communications Chair and Editor of NAINews. Judy will lead this session and will report on highlights from the recent Religious Communications Congress. She currently also serves as co-chair of the MultiFaith Council of Northwest Ohio.   Judy shared some of the changes happening in media – the impending demise of print media, the shift to handheld devices, the emphasis on interactive, short, and visual communications, the virtual faith online and phone app phenomena.  She advises a plan to include multiple and flexiple approaches, in order to stay current and relevant. There is a values issue in that many of the new technologies appeal to the affluent.  She urges filling the needed role to reflect, evaluate, and tell good stories.  But if no one hears a story, is it still a story?

R C Congress 2010 Implications  PowerPoint of the presentation.

Sumitra Srinivasan, NAIN Scholarship recipient, board member of the MultiFaith Council of Northwest Ohio, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Toledo.  Sumitra’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of journalism, international/intercultural communication, new technologies, faith-based learning, and multimedia communication.  Sumitra focused her presentation on Facebook and its successful use by non-profits.  She also showed some websites prepared by students.  She showed how vocabulary is affected by media changes – we tweet and facebook – new verbs.  She mentioned a youtube video that shows the religious buildings in the Virtual Reality portal called Second Life.  You may see it here.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQtY79xsNY

Alisa Roadcup, NAIN Scholarship recipient and Communications Director, the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. Alisa led the Council’s most successful marketing campaign ever for the 2009 Parliament and holds a BA in Humanities and an MA in Religious Studies.  Alisa showcased PeaceNext http://www.peacenext.org/ as a best practices example of a successful social networking site.  The launch at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in December 2009 was a true spiritual experience.  It now has aver 2500 members and about 80 groups.  The launch was aided by sharing of advice from the Interfaith Youth Core whose Bridge-Builders http://bridge-builders.ning.com/ site is also very successful.

Practical Application Panel

Young Adult Scholars Panel

NAIN received over 30 applications for young adult scholarships this year.  We extended our budget to offer schoalrships to 12 exceptional candidates.  One was stranded in India.  The remaining 11 were integral parts of the Connect programming.  Six participated in a panel.  Others took part in other presentations.

• Erin Bilir, high school senior at Colorado Academy, published journalist, award-winning playwright, and president and founder of ETHOS (Ethics, Theology, Humanity, Oneness, and Society) a student interfaith club. Erin is a member of Colorado Friends of the Harvard Women’s Studies in Religion program and researcher for the Pluralism Project.  She is investigating online spirituality.
• Kaitlin Hasseler, Program Specialist, Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital where she develops programs and curriculum relating to youth empowerment, gender equity, and interfaith and religious topics. Kaitlin is a participant in the Washington Interfaith Network and a graduate of Ithaca College with a degree in Journalism and double minors in Religious Studies and in Politics.  She is very involved in helping Girls Scouts develop inner reflection and a sense of shared humanity.
• Michelle Jackson, is the Tannenbaum Inter-religious Fellow at Vassar College and advisor to the Interreligious Student Council where she creates and implements campus-wide programming. Michelle has a B.A. degree in the Study of Religion from UCLA and a Masters of Divinity from the Harvard Divinity School.  Michelle challenged us to the reality that interfaith needs to be more racially diverse and to reach out to conservatives.
• Hillary Kaell, doctoral candidate in American Studies at Harvard University specializing in the history and practice of North American Christianity. Hillary has taught undergraduate courses in interfaith conflict, worked on the Pluralism Project’s World Religions Project in Boston, and is a paid consultant for the PBS series Religion in America.  Hillary suggests a way to participate in interfaith when living in a homogeneous society is to use Internet resources, such as pen pals.  She indicates that media imposed narrative arcs, with a neat beginning-middle- end, do not reflect reality and can lead to quoting out of context.
• Dawinder Sidhu, author and civil rights attorney with an interest in the aftermath effect of 9/11 on religious communities. “Dave” has a BA in Philosophy from the U. of Penn., an MA in Government from Johns Hopkins, and a JD from the George Washington University Law School. He has held fellowship and/or research posts at Harvard, Stanford, and Georgetown.  His post 9/11 self-imposed role of protecting his father, who looks the traditional Sikh and therefor was in danger, led him to study law and engage in civil rights and justice.  He criticizes just talking about belief systems without action towards a just society.
• Wm. Andrew Schwartz, a Ph.D. student in Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont Graduate University. He is a licensed minister in the Church of the Nazarene and holds BA degrees in Religion and Missions from Northwest Nazarene University and an MA in Theological Studies from Nazarene Theological Seminary.  Andrew comes from an interfaith family.  His father is Jewish and his mother Christian.  His study abroad program in the Middle East raised awareness.

Mini-Presentations

• Interfaith Week/Musical Tribute, Noor ul Hasan and Alan Bachman, Salt  Lake Interfaith Roundtable The Salt Lake City Roundtable commemorates the Olympic spirit every February with an Interfaith Week and Musical Tribute.  The 2010 Theme was: “Building a World of Harmony” http://interfaithroundtable.org/week.htm  
• Celebration of our Faiths project, Don Mayne, Edmonton Interfaith Centre The Interfaith Centre and Edmonton City Council are celebrating 30 years of multifaith prayers opening council meetings. A joint project of the City and the Edmonton Interfaith Centre is Celebrating Our Faiths: Multi-Faith displays at City Hall. Each month a new display is unveiled. Each of the city’s many religious traditions will have a turn, over the course of the year, to show their faith tradition to the public.  http://www.edminterfaithcentre.ca/
• Discovering Many Faiths – Richmond’s Hidden Treasures, Midge Falconer and Sharon Clayton, The Interfaith Council of Greater Richmond.  The council has a dialog event with tables of 10 called ‘Interfaith Dialogue: “Enlightenment through Prayer and Meditation”’.  http://www.icgr.org/2010-01-14-program-flyer.pdf
• Interfaith Art, Rev. Tim Miner, American Interfaith Artists Group.  Rev. Tim Miner is an interfaith minister.  The American Interfaith Artists Group (A.I.A.G.) is a non-profit ministry of clergy and lay members who express, share, and educate the public about their interfaith values and spirituality through their art.  Talents include singing, painting, dance, writing photography, fabric, crafts, and other media.  http://www.interfaithartists.org/
• World Sabbath of Reconciliation, Gail Katz, Women’s Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit.
• MultiFaith GROWS, Woody Trautman, Co-Chair MultiFaith Council of Northwest Ohio.  MultiFaith GROWs is a program that partners with Toledo GROWs in encouraging and supporting food-producing community gardens.  In particular, the MultiFaith GROWs niche is to encourage gardens on all faith-based land.  The program focuses on shared values and has invited many community partnerships.  http://gardens.multifaithjourneys.org/index.html
• Disaster Preparedness, Ken Kraudy [no picture], Sandy City Emergency Response, Sandy City, Utah.  Activities and services cover the four phases of emergency management: Preparedness, Response, Recovery, and Mitigation for disasters like flooding, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, hazardous materials incidents, and acts of terrorism.  http://sandy.utah.gov/government/emergency-management.html
• Camp Brotherhood, Mohammad Fani, Camp Brotherhood, Mt. Vernon, Washington.  Camp Brotherhood is a beautiful 200 acre retreat center an hour north of Seattle, Washington, that offers outstanding facilities and service to non-profit 501(c)3 organizations in a forested farm environment. Camp Brotherhood partners with other non-profits to carry out programs fostering interfaith, racial and ethnic harmony.  http://campbrotherhood.com/

Golden Rule Project Panel

“The Golden Rule Projects are about to become a Movement.”  –Paul McKenna

• Barb Dornan, Designated Sacred Space, Saskatchewan, Canada discussed a synergy wheel of the Golden rule and showed slides of their Sacred space project  Multi-Faith Brochure . 
• Paul McKenna, Interfaith Office, Scarboro Missions, Scarborough ON, Canada Paul discussed the Golden Rule Poster and associated projects to animate it and create curriculum based on it.  http://www.scarboromissions.ca/Golden_rule/ Mussie Hailu is a key interfaith activist in Ethiopia and across Africa. He has circulated 20,000 golden rule posters, adapted from the Scarboro Missions  poster, around the world.
• Bonnie Phillips, The Golden Rule Project, Salt Lake City The Golden Rule Project, begun in November 2003, produced a 16 formulation document of the Golden Rule as a piece of art. The resulting illustrated documents have been placed free in 500-600 schools.  The artistic documents may be found at http://www.goldenruleproject.org/HTML/illuminations.htm
• Dr. Paul Eppinger, Exec. Dir., Arizona Interfaith Movement created a Golden rule license plate.  The funds raised to start were $32,000.  The plates sell for $25 of which the Interfaith Movement receives $17.  They now receive $12,000 – $15,000 per month from the state.  Using the funds they have put a video on TV and in theaters.  Two million people saw the ad.  They want to work on a Scouts Interfaith Badge.  http://www.interfaitharizona.com/

Digging Deep Panel: Motivations for Interfaith Work

The panel, hosted by NAIN Board member Grove Harris, discussed various motivations for interfaith work. 

• Rabbi David A. Kunin, President, Edmonton Interfaith Centre, Rabbi of Beth Shalom Synagogue.  Rabbi Kunin feels belief is not so important.  Dogma obscures individual identity.  Meta-narratives are dangerous.
• Tarunjit Singh Butalia, Executive Committee and Chair of the Interfaith Committee, World Sikh Council – America Region; Moderator of Religions for Peace; Vice-Chair NAIN; Exec.Comm. of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.  At  first Tarunjit was a secular Sikh.  A Catholic priest led him back to his tradition.  He is fanatically mono-theistic, but does not feel that others need to be.  He needs to understand other faiths in order to fully realize his own.  He does not believe other faiths, but honors them.  He believes we must move from toleration to respect and finally to honoring other faiths.
• Pastor Dean Jackson, Pastor of the Rock Canyon Church, an affiliate of the Assemblies of God.  Pastor Jackson calls himself a ‘follower of Jesus’ [see keynote].  He stopped Mormon-bashing in his church.  Cultural differences are more important than religious differences.  He does not like the verb ‘tolerate’.  He tolerates bad weather and potholes, but not people.  At core this is about relationships.  Problems do not go away, but opportunities open up for solutions.  He feels we must wrestle with our own values, e. g., honesty vs. loyalty.  He points out that the business world pays for loyalty, not honesty.
• Imam Muhammed Mehtar, the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake After 9/11 he was asked, “Whose side are you?”  So he asked himself who he was.  He undertook seven years of charia law study.  150 non-members come to the Islamic Society.  He urges all people of the book to find areas of common understanding.  Common values are important for relationship.  For the little differences, we need greater understanding.
• Gayla Sorenson, J.D., Senior Fellow the International Center for the Study of Law and Religion, J. Reuben Clark law School, Brigham Young University The LDS 11th Article of Faith allows others their own faiths.  She grew up in an interfaith family and lived as part of a minority.  We need to practice ways that we can work together.

Comments: 

Jim Wiggins does not like the term ‘other’.  We need to affirm our differences and learn from them.  He prefers conversation to dialog.URI-NA operates on synergy – build with.

How do we engage with minorities?
Don’t talk about religion, but about the troubles of the world and how to solve them.
Use interfaith to solve community problems.
Pastor Jackson:  Faith groups are proprietary.  “Open source” groups like Rotary are valuable meeting grounds.

Keynote: Doug Johnston

Doug Johnston, Director/Founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, was our Keynote Speaker.  His book Religion: the Missing Dimensions of Statecraft is now required reading at the U. S Foreign Service Institute and is used as a text at colleges, universities, and seminaries  around the world.  The speaker was sponsored by the Religious Studies Program at Utah Valley University.

Mr. Johnston spoke about faith-based diplomacy, which makes religion a part of the solution.  He spoke of reconciliation, as opposed to conflict.  He said it is not absence of conflict, but a restoration process which includes all parties, even the enemy.  It includes deep-level forgiveness and social justice. 

The International Center for Religion and Diplomacy’s approach with local leaders is an excellent example of diplomacy.  Johnston quotes from the Qur’anic verses which indicate that we intended by Allah/God to get along with one another.  He calls himself a ‘follower of Jesus’ and reminds the Muslim leaders that they also revere Jesus as a teacher.  He asks, if Jesus were here now, what would he have us do?  He relates that this approach dissolves tension and allows them to move forward in discussion.

The Center applies faith-based diplomacy  in seven parts of the world, including the Sudan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East.  There is no cookie-cutter approach.

In the Sudan they focus on “what women know from birth and men sometimes get – that all things are relational”.  They seek the answer to what a Muslim-led country can do to assure the rights of non-Muslims by recalling periods of history when this has happened.

In Kashmir they avoid a top-down approach.  The governments of India and Pakistan are not interested in a resolution, because the conflict distracts from their internal issues.  Johnston’s team invites second-level leaders – Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim leaders – to work towards faith-based reconciliation.

In Afghanistan/Pakistan, the program of ‘madrasa enhancement’ expands the curriculum to include human rights and religious tolerance without touching the religious core.  They seek to transform the pedagogy to include critical thinking.  They have worked with 2547 madrassas out of about 20,000.

The American government has not fully realized that American Muslims represent a great asset for constructive engagement.  He cites the International Institute for Islamic Thought as a constructive non-profit involved in Islamic Issues.

One of the attendees, Mr. Mohammad Fani from Camp Brotherhood in Mt. Vernon, WA, said that it is the first speech he had ever heard on issues concerning Islam that was entirely accurate.