Sep 26, 2013

Coexistence (AKA Articles of Faith Part 2)

By Ramona Siddoway


Last month I wrote about the first two articles of Mormon faith, with the intention of removing stereotypes and misunderstandings. While these articles are not complete in explaining all the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, they are a good summary of LDS scripture and principles taught and understood by the members of our faith.

Sep 17, 2013

Celebrating Religious Differences

By Saadia Faruqi

Some of us working in the field of interfaith dialogue have rosy ideas about loving each other and forgetting our differences. We bring people of different faiths together for talks, social service projects and much more; the understanding while doing all this is that our similarities are much more in quantity and quality than our differences, and that we should all get along despite everything. While noble, this ideology is also terribly flawed, according to a book I've recently started reading, by Stephen Prothero entitled "God is not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World and Why their Differences Matter".

Sep 13, 2013

Twelve Years Later, Words Are Still Not Enough

By Saadia Faruqi
Source: Tikkun Daily
 
Actions speak louder than words. It’s a litany spoken by teachers to students, parents to children, wives to husbands (and sometimes vice versa) thousands of times around the world each day in tens of different languages. It echoes in my mind from my own childhood, and although it irritated me beyond belief as a child, I have often found myself repeating the very thing to my own little ones. “Saying sorry after hitting your sister is all very good, but actions speak louder than words” or “You may say you love your mom, but when’s the last time you helped me out around the house?” Sound familiar? Because despite the fact that this little sentence is so clichéd it ought to be outlawed, it also happens to be the essence of human nature.

Sep 8, 2013

Buddhist Temple Thrives in the Heart of Montrose

By Kyrie O'Connor
 
You'd be forgiven if, driving past Dawn Mountain, you thought it was a creatively named architecture firm. Though it's housed in a neat brick building on busy Richmond Avenue near South Shepherd, it's a Tibetan Buddhist temple and community center. Founded in 1996, Dawn Mountain is the creation of Anne Klein, a professor of religious studies at Rice University, and her husband, Harvey Aronson, a therapist, and it is the outcome of an unlikely life journey for a girl from Albany, N.Y., and a boy from Brooklyn.