Interfaith

Material about a variety of faith traditions

Singapore gets 9 religious leaders to bless F1 track again this year

The SIA Formula 1 Grand Prix is set to start in Singapore next week and organisers have again invited 9 religious leaders to pray for and bless the track before the event.

A ceremony was held at the track yesterday (Sept 10) where the religious leaders prayed for good weather and the safety of all those involved in the race including drivers, teams, officials and spectators.

The nine different faith groups that were represented were Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Judaism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and the Baha’i faith.

Organisers explained that they didn't want to leave anything to chance and that's why they continued the tradition of bringing in religious leaders to bless the track and pray.

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Baha'i, B' Who are you?

MissMandiMae

In a recent poll of religious association by state, the news was that an obscure religion was number 2 in South Carolina. Having lived in North Carolina for many years, I was surprised to find a name that I didn't recognize. The second largest religious affiliation in South Carolina is Baha'i. For most of us, this is not at all familiar and for a valid reason; it's 'messenger of god' didn't declare himself as such until 1866. The leader, Bahá'u'lláh, followed the unconventional teaching of a Shi'a man, Báb. These teachings led him to 3 keys beliefs, which are the basis of the religious faith of his followers today. (1) The unity of god- god is omni this and that, the creator, the force of universal consciousness, which isn't anything terribly different from most major religions. (2) The Unity of religion- all religions are from the same god and are essentially all the same once you remove cultural and time-specific regulations. (3) The unity of humanity- all are created equally and diversity is valuable.

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Learning To Accept Muslims As A Baha'i

I've already posted how I went from a Christian to a Baha'i. Perhaps some [of you] noticed one religion missing from the list of faiths I'd investigated: Islam. I still hadn't gotten over the Islamaphobia I had been raised with at this time, and so I didn't read the Quran and I didn't even consider Islam.

And something that made it difficult for me to become a Baha'i was: Muhammad is considered one of God's Messengers. But everything else just drew me in, and in the end I accepted anyone. So I accepted that Muhammad was a Prophet. But His followers? What am I to think of them?

Not long after becoming a Baha'i, I learned about the horrors that Babis and Baha'is have faced, and are still facing, in Muslim countries. Just another thing to add to the list of reasons not to like Muslims.

Right?

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Spirituality makes unity in diversity possible

"Cities need lots of imagination to work," said the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Rowan Williams at an event in St James's Church Piccadilly yesterday.

He was speaking to a mainly Christian and Muslim audience on the themes of the city, spirituality, and trust.

Lord Williams spoke about how spirituality was vital for holding cities together into the future, giving people "a vision of human dignity" and transcending diversity.

"Either the city is a challenge for our imagination, or it is a desert and chaos," Lord Williams explained, as he spoke about the need for imagination to see past differences.

{josquote}God did not say 'get lots of people to agree with you and then begin doing the work you need to do'… the task isn't to turn diversity into uniformity.{/josquote}

He discussed the need to understand the stranger, saying, "I am not going to be fully human without that person."

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World Religion Day, from "Religions of the World"

World Religion Day, observed worldwide on the third Sunday of January each year, is a Baha'i-inspired idea that has taken on a life of its own. In 2009, for instance, the Halifax (Nova Scotia) Regional Municipality in Canada celebrated its sixth annual World Religion Day in the Cathedral of All Saints, in recognition of which the mayor and councilors of the Halifax Regional Mu-nicipality issued a proclamation. In 2007, at the World Religion Day event hosted by the Entebbe Municipal Council of Entebbe, Uganda (situated on the northern shores of Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake), participating religious leaders signed a joint declaration to establish the Entebbe Inter-Faith Coalition. The signatories pledged to use "the unifying power of religion to instill in the hearts and minds of all people of faith the fundamental facts and spiritual standards that have been laid down by our Creator to bring them together as members of one family."

{josquote}Your letter of September 30, with the suggestion that 'there should be one day in the year in which all of the religions should agree' is a happy thought, and one which persons of good will throughout the world might well hail. However, this is not the underlying concept of World Religion Day, which is a celebration of the need for and the coming of a world religion for mankind, the Baha'i Faith itself.{/josquote}

As these examples illustrate, World Religion Day is now observed internationally, its American Baha'i origins notwithstanding. The history of World Religion Day dates back to 1949, when the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States (the national Baha'i governing council) instituted an annual World Religion Day "to be observed publicly by the Baha'i Communities wherever possible throughout the United States." Then as now, the third Sunday of January each year was designated for this celebration. The first World Religion Day event took place on January 15, 1950, and was observed by Baha'i communities across the United States. The Baha'i Faith, among the younger of the independent world religions, emphasizes unity in the human community, and the inauguration of World Religion Day could be seen simply as a natural expression of the Baha'i focus on the unity of religions, races, and nations. However, interfaith association was not the exclusive, nor even the primary original purpose of World Religion Day. In 1968, the Universal House of Justice, the international Baha'i governing body established in 1963, wrote: "Your letter of September 30, with the suggestion that 'there should be one day in the year in which all of the religions should agree' is a happy thought, and one which persons of good will throughout the world might well hail. However, this is not the underlying concept of World Religion Day, which is a celebration of the need for and the coming of a world religion for mankind, the Baha'i Faith itself. Although there have been many ways of expressing the meaning of this celebration in Baha'i communities in the United States, the Day was not meant primarily to provide a platform for all religions and their emergent ecumenical ideas. In practice, there is no harm in the Baha'i communities' inviting the persons of other religions to share their platforms on this Day, providing the universality of the Baha'i Faith as the fulfillment of the hopes of mankind for a universal religion are clearly brought forth" (Lights of Guidance, no. 1710).

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Source: "World Religion Day" published in Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, Vol. 6, ed. J. Gordon Melton & Martin Baumann, pages 3138-3140
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010

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About the book: Religions of the World (Second Edition), in six volumes, brings together the scholarship of experts from around the globe. The encyclopedia offers entries on every country of the world, with particular emphasis both on the larger nations as well as profiles on religion in some of the world's most remote places (e.g. Antarctica and Easter Island). This collection is unique in that it is based in religion "on the ground," tracing the development of each of the 16 major world religious traditions through its institutional expressions in the modern world, its major geographical sites, and its major celebrations. Order it online from the publisher or amazon. See also ABC-CLIO ebooks.

From Baha'i Library Online