Coming up Sunday January 15th 2006 will be World Religion Day.

"Observed on the Third Sunday in January each year, in all Continents, from major cities to the most rural of localities, World Religion Day events help foster interfaith understanding and harmony. It provides the opportunity to seek a unified approach to the spiritual challenges that confront humanity, and recognizes that the Earth is but one country and mankind its citizenry."

Source:

http://www.worldreligionday.org/information.html

This is an excellent way to have representatives from the various religions in your community come together in a public forum to share their faith and culture together.

I've organized three of these events the past years myself in my community and everyone has seemed to have a great time and walked away with a greater appreciation of the diversity of our communities and learned things about other religions!

This coming WRD I hope to have more use of choirs, chanting and art.

If any of you out there in the cyber world would like some encouragement to organize one of these events or share some ideas I'd be interested in talking with you!

- Art

Thanks for the info, Art. Where do you usually hold these meetings?

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In Arizona we used to do outdoor picnics and invite the public and particular congregations to join us. One year the Foursquare Gospel Church came and exorcised us, that was a little creepy but mostly funny.

In colder climes that is not such a good idea, but if you, for instance were to contact Baha`i and other religions in your community and suggest co-sponsoring an event, I am sure it would shake itself out nicely.

Regards,
Scott

The past three years World Religion Day has been held at a local University. The University Chaplain also supports our activity and an Inter-faith Mayor's Prayer Breakfast which I'm also involved in. The Religious Studies students are encouraged to attend. So the University which also has a diverse student population supports inter-faith activities and the community tends to support the University.

The Inter-faith Council will jointly sponsor World Religion Day with the Baha'is so many church members attend and we have good representation from the Islamic community, the Jewish community as well as Hindus and Zoroastrians.

We've had particpation from Buddhist groups as well but not as consistently.

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

I never heard of it. Judging from my Internet searches, it's a Baha'i thing, with a total of two events in Sweden from 2002 onwards. I'll be on the lookout next month to see if it will be even mentioned in secular Sweden.

Thanks for the post Luguber!

There is a Swedish Baha'i site at

http://www.se.bahai.org

I'm unable to read much about anything there because I'm not familiar with the language but they do post events.

Correction: From the site above though it appears there will be a "varldreligionens dag i Uppsala" on January 16th!

In my community we usually have the co-sponsorship of the Inter-Faith Council and the University is usually a site for holding it. We've had Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Baha'is, Jews and Christians involved in the program. It doesn't require Baha'is though to start it or set it up...anyone could say organize a World Religion Day!

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

I found it.

remains to be seen if there will be a significant impact.

and it's *****y hard to find any in Sweden.

OTOH, I sometimes say that Islam might be the religion that has the greatest number of active followers in Sweden.

It's getting closere to World Religion Day!

We have joint spoonsorship of the event with the Multicultural Center at the University; the Inter-Faith Council and the Baha'i Community....

Our speakers include reps from Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Society of Friends, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism, Islam and Judaism...

Topic is "One Light- Many Lamps: What we have in common!"

I'll let you know how it turns out..Our event is scheduled though on January 22nd.

- Art

__________________
"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

Just a review of how our World Religion Day went where I live.. The event was sponsored by the Baha'i Community and co-sponsored by the Inter-faith Council. The event was our fourth World Religion Day so it is becming an annual event.

We were fortunate to have the following religions represented at our event:

Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Chan Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith. There were four tables set up displaying books and materials about the religions of Judaism, Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith...

I would say an average of sixty people were present during our event and many were religious studies students from the University with two professors of Religious studies present.

Christians representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as well as United Church of Christ and Society of Friends attended.

Several Muslims were there and Baha'is.

We had a series of prayers at the opening following by brief presentatiosn of each religion, this was followed by a panel discussion where members responded to questions form the floor.

I received positive responses from those attending the event...

- Art

__________________
"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler