Interfaith Seminarian Exchange Program
The ultimate goal of our series of Summits for Interfaith Respect is the development of the Interfaith Seminarian Exchange Program, a new training institution for novice and intermediate religious professionals from the three Abrahamic faiths. The Interfaith Seminarian Exchange Program will be designed for the education of men and women who have been trained intensively within a particular religious tradition in one of its leading seminaries. Students will have the opportunity to meet their counterparts in the other faiths and to teach them the basics of their own religious traditions and sacred texts prior to entering their professional religious vocation. They will in turn learn from each other the elements of their basic tradition and basic texts.
Once students enter their professional religious vocations, they will see the Other as a real person of faith who is worthy of God’s love and of human respect. Furthermore, their professional preaching and teaching will refer to the Other with positive curiosity and faithful respect, rather than continue the tradition of inter-group contempt and stereotype.
The first session of these Interfaith Seminarian Exchange Programs should take place no later than the summer of 2008. We will discuss the location and the nature of the participation – both teachers and students – jointly with our Sunni, Shiite, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish colleagues to make sure that we all can agree on a schedule of venues and a structure for the Encounters.
We intend for our Exchanges to eventually produce an agenda for interfaith peace efforts to lower tensions between the US and the Arab-Muslim world. We also hope to advance the peaceful lowering of tensions among the religious leaders and their followers more generally. It has become necessary for religious leadership in our generation to take up its share of the responsibility for preparing Civil Society among Muslims, Christians, and Jews to educate for tolerance and mutual respect. This will serve to inspire a more active search for world peace, as well as a determined effort to wipe out the destructive tendencies to turn to violence every time there is a disagreement in this multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-national global society.
