The Biblical Tradition that gives unique dignity to the human person must not be understood in terms of domination but in terms of respect and solidarity. This requires of us a sense of a “human ecology” in which our responsibility for the eco-system is bound up with and reflective of our obligations to one another and in particular “a special generosity towards the poor, towards women and children, strangers, the sick, the weak and the needy” (Papal Address at the Synagogue of Rome, 17 January 2010, sect. 7).

The ethical aspect of human intervention in the natural order lies in the limitation on the power of science and its claim to absoluteness, and in the expression of human solidarity and moral responsibility towards all. To that end the bilateral commission strongly urges that all scientific innovation and development work in close consultation with religious ethical guidance. Similarly States and international bodies should engage in close consultation with religious ethical leadership in order to ensure that progress be a blessing rather than a curse. A genuine environmental ethic is a key condition for world peace and harmony.

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Nigerian authorities have relaxed the 24-hour curfew in the central city of Jos, where fighting between Muslims and Christians has left hundreds dead.

Army chief Lt Col Shekari Galadima said he was satisfied the violence which began on Sunday had been halted.

Officials said easing the curfew would allow people to find food and water and those displaced to return home.

Eyewitnesses say the army is patrolling the streets and people are wary about venturing too far.

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Three days of Muslim-Christian clashes in the Nigerian city of Jos have left around 300 people dead, clerics and a paramedic said Tuesday, as troops were deployed to control the unrest.

Authorities placed the central city under a 24-hour curfew amid reports of continuing armed clashes, with terrified residents saying they could hear gunshots and smoke was billowing from parts of the Plateau State capital.

Nigeria’s Vice President Goodluck Jonathan sent in troops and ordered security chiefs to “proceed to Jos immediately to assess the situation and advise on further steps,” his office said.

All flights to the city were suspended, aviation sources said.

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If John Paul’s visit “brought down a wall, then Benedict’s visit builds a bridge across two sides of the Tiber that sometimes seem very far,” said Andrea Riccardi, a church historian and founder of the lay Community of Sant’Egidio, which helped orchestrate Sunday’s event. (The Vatican is on the other side of the Tiber from the synagogue in the former Jewish ghetto.)

Both the Vatican and Jews in Rome see Benedict’s visit, his third trip to a synagogue since becoming pope, as the continuation of an interfaith friendship and an effort to calm recent controversies.

“It’s true that there have been moments of tension and misunderstanding,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. “But a specific meaning of this visit is to affirm from the Catholic side the essentiality and richness and importance of the common elements in the relationship.”

The visit evolved from a longstanding invitation by Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, for Benedict to call at the synagogue. “We have a very, very complicated history and a lot of problems to resolve,” Rabbi Di Segni said. “But it’s one thing to resolve them at a distance marked by chill and total hostility, and it’s another thing to have a willingness to listen respectfully.”

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There’s a certain irony in the fact that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak traveled to Saudi Arabia, of all places, within 24 hours of his administration’s threat to use draconian measures to quell religious violence. His absence during a crisis is a mistake, as is his government’s approach to it so far.

The “Allah” scandal is the most serious domestic challenge the Najib government has yet faced in its nine months in office. Since a High Court ruling two weeks ago allowed Christians to use the word “Allah” in their Malay-language publications, radical Islamists have capitalized on the fraught climate to intimidate Malaysians and push their agenda. Yesterday saw the 11th in a spate of incidents, with Molotov cocktails, bricks and stones hurled against churches, a convent school, and even a Sikh temple. Lawyers representing Christian plaintiffs have found their offices ransacked. No perpetrators have yet been caught.

So far, the ruling United Malays National Organization is trying to tramp down the violence in any way it can””except the right way, which is to abandon the hardline Islamism that has traditionally appealed to its political base….

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Another Christian church has been attacked in Malaysia – the ninth such incident since Friday.

No one was injured in the attack on an evangelical Christian church, but buildings were damaged by what appear to have been home-made petrol bombs.

In another case a church was vandalised with black paint.

The attacks appear to have been triggered by a High Court ruling last month that overturned a government ban on non-Muslims using the word “Allah”.

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The number of Malaysian Christian churches hit by firebombs and vandal attacks has reached six following a court decision last week to allow Christians to use the term “Allah” in Malay language publications.

A Molotov cocktail was hurled at the Anglican All Saints Church in Taiping town in Perak state early yesterday, said state police chief Zulkifli Abdullah. He said the building was not damaged, The Australian reports.

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Would-be arsonists in mostly Muslim Malaysia struck at a convent school and a sixth church on Sunday while church and government leaders called for calm in a row over Christians’ use of the word “Allah” to refer to God.

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Attackers firebombed three churches in the southeast Asian nation of Malaysia overnight, assaults that come amid widespread Muslim ire over a court ruling that allowed Christians to use the word Allah as a term for God.

Malaysian news reports said no casualties have been reported, and police have promised to step up security for churches and other places of worship.

But the acts stirred unease in the diverse society — where 60 percent of the people are Muslim, 19 percent are Buddhist, 9 percent are Christian and 6 percent are Hindu.

“We regret the irresponsible actions of certain extremist elements for the recent spate of firebombs thrown into church premises. These actions display their immaturity and intolerance toward others within a multi-racial society,” the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship of Malaysia said in a statement.

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The world’s religious situation has not greatly changed. True, the old gods of Greece and Rome have long since been discredited and discarded. But new gods have arisen in their place, and other ancient faiths have experienced a resurgence. As a result of modern communication media and ease of travel, many countries are increasingly pluralistic. What people want is an easy-going syncretism, a truce in inter-religious competition, a mishmash of the best from all religions. But we Christians cannot surrender either the finality or the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. There is simply nobody else like him; his incarnation, atonement and resurrection have no parallels. In consequence, he is the one and only mediator between God and the human race. This exclusive affirmation is strongly, even bitterly, resented. It is regarded by many as intolerably intolerant. Yet the claims of truth compel us to maintain it, however much offence it may cause.

–John R.W. Stott, The Contemporary Christian (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p. 64.

The publication of a draft constitution for Kenya, recognising the presence of Muslim civil courts known as the Kadhi courts, has once again widened the Christian-Muslim split in the East African nation.

Kenyan Church leaders have dismissed the creation of the Kadhi Courts, as currently proposed in the draft constitution, as a ploy to “elevate one religion over the other,” while the Islamic clerics ha ve warned that they would mobilise the Muslim community to reject a new draft that omits the Kadhi courts.

Kenyans have been discussing the prospect of a new constitution. The last attempt to have a constitution, in November 2005, ended with a majority vote rejecting the draft constitution, which proposed to create the office of the Chief Kadhi, to enjoy similar constitutional powers as the Chief Justice.

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It sounds like the start of a joke: a rabbi, a minister and a Muslim sheik walk into a restaurant.

But there they were, Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie and Sheik Jamal Rahman, walking into an Indian restaurant, and afterward a Presbyterian church. The sanctuary was full of 250 people who came to hear them talk about how they had wrestled with their religious differences and emerged as friends.

They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding in a country reeling from the spectacle of a Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood opening fire on his fellow soldiers.

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Speaking at LaGrange College about his varied experiences in Iraq, White recalled the day his Iraqi doctor suggested stem cell treatment and said it could start the next day. White said there are 63 Iraqis with MS who also are receiving the treatment.

“All of us have improved greatly,” he said.

The Anglican clergyman talked about the danger for Christians — and everyone else — in Baghdad. “Everyone in Iraq is faring badly. Everyone is having it difficult,” he said.

“Christians do have it hard,” White said. He said 93 members of his church were killed last year. During the last year, he baptized 13 people — 11 of whom have been killed.

I have thought about that last sentence for a long time. I hope you do as well. Read it all.

However much he tried, Mr. [Paul] Knitter found that certain longstanding Christian formulations of faith “just didn’t make sense”: God as a person separate from creation and intervening in it as an external agent; individualized life after death for all and eternal punishment for some; Jesus as God’s “only Son” and the only savior of humankind; prayers that ask God to favor some people over others.

Mr. Knitter’s response, based on his long interaction with Buddhist teachers, was to “pass over” to Buddhism’s approach to each of these problems and then “pass back” to Christian tradition to see if he could retrieve or re-imagine aspects of it with this “Buddhist flashlight.”

He was not asserting, as some people have, that religions like Christianity and Buddhism are merely superficially different expressions of one underlying faith.

On the contrary, he insists they differ profoundly. Yet “Buddhism has helped me take another and deeper look at what I believe as a Christian,” he writes. “Many of the words that I had repeated or read throughout my life started to glow with new meaning.”

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Former British prime minister Tony Blair said Wednesday (Oct. 7) that Muslims and Christians working to understand each other’s cultural and religious beliefs could help build a global movement for peace.

“In religion, we are told to love your God, love your neighbors as yourself,” Blair said at a Georgetown University panel on the future of Muslim-Christian relations, adding that too often people view their neighbors as only those with similar beliefs.

Blair said both Christians and Muslims had been outsiders at one point in their histories, and that each had wrestled with how their own beliefs defied convention at one time.

“If we can get on, the 21st century world can get on,” he said. “It’s true we are different, but so were our founders.”

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Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and four other bishops issued on October 5, a “Statement of Principles for Catholic-Jewish Dialogue.”

The cardinal and bishops also said in a letter that the June 18 document titled, “A Note on Ambiguities Contained in ”˜Reflections on Covenant and Mission’” would be amended by removing two sentences that might lead to misunderstanding about the purpose of interreligious dialogue.

The Note addressed issues related to evangelization and the Jewish covenant that were discussed in an article written in 2002 by a group of Catholic scholars who were consultants to the USCCB and the National Council of Synagogues. Intended “as a clarification of Church teaching primarily for Catholics,” the Note “led to misunderstanding and feelings of hurt among members of the Jewish community,” the bishops said in their statement.

Read it all and read the original statement linked in a pdf at the bottom of the linked page.

The key to solving some of Rochester’s most pernicious problems lies in increased collaboration across faith, racial and geographical boundaries, Episcopal Bishop Prince Singh said Sunday at an interfaith service downtown.

The service was part of the city’s ongoing 175th anniversary celebration. Singh, who is bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, addressed a crowd of about 50 at the Episcopal Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene on South Fitzhugh Street. Scriptures from Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian traditions and a Buddhist prayer were read aloud.

Participants also prayed together for the city’s leaders, firefighters, police officers, young people and others.

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[Bishop Jon] Bruno, who was unable to be present, sent a letter expressing gratitude for recognition of efforts “to build bridges of cooperation between the great religious traditions … [and] assist you as your community strives for justice and equality.

“The world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we Christians often sought to dominate rather than to serve,” according to the letter, read to the gathering by Guibord, who is also the consultant for interfaith relations for the Episcopal Church.

“In order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I renew the apology that I have offered to the Hindu community for the religious and racial discrimination that Christians have directed towards Hindus for far too long. Such discrimination is wrong; it is a sin. There is no justification for it.”

Bruno committed to working together to put an “end to racial and religious discrimination against Hindus. We desire to work together in the great divine task of our time: to build reconciliation and peace, honoring the God-given dignity of each person, sharing and learning the wisdom of each other’s traditions, recognizing God’s equal love for each of us, and sincerely responding to God’s desire to bring us together into one human family, rich in diversity and mutual respect.”

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All that could be seen of Maryan Shalaby was her face, wrapped in a yellow headscarf and peeking above the lectern, as the 11-year-old from O’Hara led 250 Jews, Christians and Muslims in a prayer for peace inside St. Paul Catholic Cathedral in Oakland.

She asked God to grant “peace to you all, to the G-20 summit and to the universe.”

The prayer service, among numerous other G-20-related religious events, was organized by Christian Associates of Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Religious Leadership Forum of Southwest Pennsylvania. Another interfaith service, with groups as diverse as Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was held simultaneously on Mount Washington.

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A Muslim mob torched a church and the homes of a number of Christians in the Punjab last week, following claims that local Christians had committed blasphemy by desecrating the Koran.

The Sept 11 attack in the village of Sambrial, approximately 20 miles west of the city of Sialkot near Pakistan’s border with Kashmir, marks the fourth time in two months that Muslim mobs have attacked Christian neighbourhoods over alleged insults to the Koran, reports Aftab Mughal of Minorities Concern of Pakistan.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have condemned the attack and have asked Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to investigate the incident. Press reports from Pakistan report that President Zardari has called for calm, and promised the government would rebuild the church.

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Christians and Muslims share concern and compassion for those suffering in poverty and can find common ground to work toward eradicating both the causes and the problems it creates, the Vatican said.

In its traditional message to Muslims at the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue called attention to poverty as “a subject at the heart of the precepts that, under different beliefs, we all hold dear.”

As “brothers and sisters in humanity,” the letter said, people of both faiths can help the poor “establish their place in the fabric of society.”

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The primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, was scheduled to make his first visit to the Middle East and to the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem Aug. 22-29. The diocese extends over Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel.

“The context for the trip…is a resolution from General Synod in 2007 that the primate make a solidarity visit to the diocese of Jerusalem,” said Archbishop Hiltz. At press time, the primate was scheduled to meet with the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Suheil Dawani, and to tour the diocese’s various projects and churches, including the Cathedral Church of St. George the Martyr. The diocese has 27 parishes that minister to various communities; it also runs hospitals, clinics, schools, institutions for the deaf, disabled and elderly, and inter-faith relations.

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…the salvation, which is announced universally, is exclusively accomplished and applied through the work of the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Both the Psalm citation and Moses and Jesus bear witness to this exclusivity. I believe Rabbi Wilson was referring to Psalm 119:99, which reads, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” Taken as a whole, this verse points in an exclusive, not an inclusive, direction. At the very heart of Moses’ articulation of covenant obligations is exclusivity. Note the first two commandments: “No other gods before me” and “No carved idols” (Exodus 20:3-4).

In the Christian New Testament, Jesus and his followers taught exclusivity in terms of salvation accomplished and applied, though again they did assert it should be offered to all. The Jesus who said to make disciples of all nations and ethnic groups and to teach them all that he had commanded them had as part of his teaching: “I am the way the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6-7; see also Matthew 28:18-30 and other instances of this radical claim of Jesus ”” John 7:28, 8:19, 55 and 15:21).

Rabbi Wilson calls for dialogue. I wonder if the inclusivism approach to dialogue that Rabbi Wilson espouses is broad enough to encompass a person like me ”” an exclusivist, who would dialogue for better understanding as well as for an opportunity to “speak to truth in love” about the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ alone.

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Florida has a knack for turning family dysfunction into national spectacle. Ten years ago it gave us the Elian Gonzalez mess; five years later came the Terri Schiavo debacle. Now we have a new domestic dispute that threatens to become another culture-war circus, complete with a clash-of-religions angle to boot: the battle for Rifqa Bary, a 17-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio, who ran away to an Evangelical church in Orlando, Fla., because, she claims, her Sri Lankan Muslim family has threatened to kill her for recently converting to Christianity.

The saga began in mid-July when Rifqa, after a dispute with her parents, bolted from her home and rode a bus to Orlando. There she took refuge with the Rev. Blake Lorenz, the pastor of a conservative Christian congregation, the Global Revolution Church, and his wife Beverly, whom the cheerleader and honor student had met on Facebook. Almost three weeks later, on Aug. 6, the Lorenzes finally let authorities and Rifqa’s frantic parents know the girl was with them. Then, a few days later, Rifqa dropped a bombshell to an Orlando television station: she had run away, she claimed, because her family, angry about her conversion to Christianity, had “threatened to kill me.”

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U.S. Jewish leaders have expressed concern over a June statement issued by the U.S. bishops to clarify a 2002 document that raised questions about the church’s mission of evangelization and how the church relates to the Jewish community.

In a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the leaders said that because of the statement dialogue between the two faiths is at risk.

Representatives of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee and rabbis from various branches of Judaism sent the letter Aug. 20.

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Ethel Khurshid Gil gingerly held out the charred Bible she pulled from the rubble of her home, using a swatch of cellophane to keep the scorched pages from scattering in the hot wind. “Look how they’ve destroyed our Bibles!” the 47-year-old Christian Pakistani cried out.

Not far away, charred wood and broken dishes crunched underfoot as Umair Akhlas stepped through his house to point out the blackened bedroom where he and his relatives hid from the mob that firebombed the building, shouting “Burn them alive!”

Akhlas and several relatives escaped. But six, including two children, couldn’t breach the flames and died in that room.

“They were screaming Christians are dogs, that we’re American agents,” Akhlas said. “They look for any reason to do something against Christians.”

Pakistan has had its hands full waging war against a Taliban insurgency. Now another troubling crisis simmers. Last week, riots broke out in Gojra, a city of 150,000 in the eastern province of Punjab, after accusations surfaced that Christians at a wedding ceremony had desecrated a copy of the holy Koran.

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So now we come to the big and final issue…How will Christianity as a whole fare in the world of the twenty-first century–and beyond?

The big issue is pluralism. Call it diversity, the one and the many, inclusion versus exclusion. This is the future of Christianity. It is also the world’s task.

–Paul F.M.Zahl, The Christianity Primer (Birmingham: Palladium Press, 2005), page 299

The July 2009 issue of the Digest of Christian-Muslim relations, which is produced by the Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns in fulfilment of the mandate given to it by the 1998 Lambeth Conference, is now available on this website….

The issue looks at news from China and the oppression of Uighurs in Xinjiang region; Iraq and bombing of churches in Baghdad; Malaysia and whether or not Christians can use ”˜Allah’ for God; Somalia and the killing of Christians; Pakistan and the Taliban’s introduction of jizya in Malakand; then at a Global Study of Interfaith Relations conducted by Gallup Poll, which concentrates on the integration of Muslims in Europe.

The controversy over the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury Crossing has posed one of the biggest challenges to interfaith relations in Boston in years, and the tension was readily on display during the Friday morning opening ceremonies for the new mosque.

Inside the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College, mosque backers hosted an interfaith breakfast whose honorary cochairmen included an Episcopal bishop, a Catholic priest, and the heads of the Black Ministerial Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization.

Critics have accused the mosque’s backers of being extremists and radicals, but much of the mainstream Christian leadership, as well as the political leadership, in Boston appears to have rejected the allegations. On the way in to the breakfast, I encountered Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, the Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts and asked him why he was there. He noted that about 400 Muslims who work downtown regularly worship in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and said he wanted “to honor them,’’ he also called the new mosque “much needed for interfaith dialogue.’’

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At the invitation of the Archbishop Christian and Islamic scholars from both theological and scientific backgrounds met for reflection and dialogue on the relationship between religion and science. As in previous Building Bridges seminars a number of scriptural texts, supplemented by historical and contemporary texts from the Christian and Islamic traditions, were used as the basis for discussion in a programme that included public lectures and private sessions. The proceedings of the Seminar will be published in due course.

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