Program Description for the 4th Interfaith Leadership Forum

Human-caused damage to the environment and the ensuing ecological crisis can hardly be underestimated. While a more technocratic / secular language has shaped the global discourse on the environment, there’s growing recognition of the role religion and interfaith collaboration can play in addressing the challenge. This change in outlook is accompanied by faith-specific and ecumenical initiatives exclusively dedicated to creation care.

The 4th Interfaith Leadership Forum will focus on the moral, spiritual, and religious urgency of the wider environmental crisis. The event aims to explore the overlap between faith and ecology with pioneers who are strongly grounded in their particular faith traditions and who take the lead in making faith a driving force in addressing urgent environmental challenges.

The forum will be an opportunity to help DC area stakeholders to reconnect with like minded individuals and institutions, a renewed affirmation of the foundational link between faith and environment, and an overview of practical arenas where faith communities continue to make significant contributions in upholding our shared responsibility against the rest of the creation.

About the Interfaith Leadership Forum

Interfaith Leadership Forum (ILF) is a DMV area learning platform that aims to make the existing expertise, capacity and scholarship on interfaith engagement available to the use of clergy, educators, public servants and other interested individuals. The Forum is a partnership of the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington, Rumi Forum, and Washington Theological Consortium.

ILF aims to promote pluralism by convening leaders of various religious, ethnic, racial, cultural and gender backgrounds to exchange ideas and generate an action- oriented agenda. It provides a venue where a diverse group of community leaders, scholars, clergy and public officials can engage in in-depth discussions on shared values and explore ways to harness them for social action. ILF is open to all individuals who are interested in advancing their interfaith literacy and serving the community as interfaith mobilizers in their professional or individual capacities.

Objectives

Interfaith Leadership Forum aims to strengthen interfaith relationships, literacy, and leadership by;

• Equipping one another with various models of dialogue with distinct ends.
• Experiencing deeper levels of interfaith encounter and dialogue
• Strengthening literacy about other’s faiths and about one’s own
• Overcoming prejudices and misconceptions about other faiths
• Eliciting social action through interfaith engagement