International Association for Religious Freedom

An issue announcing the London 1966 Congress and a 1967 United States charter, with reports on the Vatican Council and the U.U.A., memorial pieces on Albert Schweitzer, Thorvald Kierkegaard, Lord Chuter Ede, and Paul Tillich, and an excerpt on churches in Europe and the United States.

An issue covering papal prestige and Vatican II, Albert Schweitzer, the 1964 I.A.R.F. Congress, the 1961-1964 secretariat report, Leiden, Russia, obituaries, and a visit to Hungary.

An issue exploring moral standards, personal integrity, religion in the world of tomorrow, Japanese liberal religion, spirituality and sociality, church councils, religious liberty, and member-group activity.

An issue on I.A.R.F. congresses, Ralph Bunche, James Baldwin and Kenneth B. Clark, mixed marriage, world religions, experimental worship, organizational history, and member-group reports.

An issue on religious liberty in Italy, theology, I.A.R.F. observers at the Vatican Council, preparations for the 1964 Congress, new executive leadership, Eastern European member groups, and liberal Christian women.

A focused Vatican Council II issue presenting reports from two I.A.R.F. observers on their experience of the Council and its significance for ecumenism and religious liberty.

An issue covering the Liverpool Domestic Mission, experiments in the Swiss church, human rights, a church peace center near the United Nations, public-school prayer, and debate surrounding Albert Schweitzer's Lambaréné work.

An issue focused on the approaching Vatican Council, Khasi Unitarians, dialogue between faiths, I.A.R.F. leadership, British individual members, and reports from liberal religious movements.

An issue on Unitarian history, war and peace, the New Delhi assembly, renewed Transylvanian ties, the United Nations General Assembly, and International Religious Fellowship activities.

The full report of the 1961 Davos Congress on 'The Unity of Mankind in Our Divided World,' including addresses, panel findings, the International Union of Liberal Christian Women, and organizational notices.

A pre-Davos issue featuring Rabindranath Tagore, the unity of mankind, debate over the World Council of Churches, liberal religion and race in the American South, and news from England.

A preparatory reader for the 1961 Davos Congress on the theme 'The Unity of Mankind in Our Divided World,' presenting perspectives on unity, diversity, religion, and international fellowship.

A Davos 1961 preparatory issue with an extended group of articles on modern church architecture and worship space, alongside reports on the history of religions, member groups, and the I.R.F.

An issue spanning Theodore Parker, the future of liberal Christianity, the Manila inter-faith congress, Konko-kyo in Japan, art and worship, and reports from the secretariat and member groups.

The Chicago Congress issue, with the Congress report, presidential message, panel declarations and resolutions, participant impressions, and reports from the international fellowship and member groups.

A special issue of the I.A.R.F. News Digest devoted chiefly to the 1952 Oxford Congress, including its programme, religious-education exhibition, discussions of credal statements, and notices of international liberal-religious conferences.

This short documentary records an IARF human-rights education programme with Adivasi women in Kerala, India. Participants describe discrimination experienced in everyday life, including exclusion from upper-caste social events and denial of access to shared wells and water sources. The programme creates space to identify such treatment as a question of rights rather than an unavoidable feature of social hierarchy.

The film also documents the religious and cultural context of the community, including nature-centred practices and the relationship between Adivasi identity, religion and social equality. Through group discussion, visual materials and community education, the programme links freedom of religion or belief with caste discrimination, Indigenous rights and women’s dignity. It is an early audiovisual record of IARF’s community-based human-rights education work in India.

C. N. N. Raju gives a concise first-person account of the growth of IARF in India. Beginning with his involvement in the Brahmo Samaj, he recalls efforts following an IARF conference in Kolkata to establish branches across the country, eventually building a network of roughly twenty-two local branches and creating a national chapter with its own constitution and registration.

Raju describes serving as national secretary and helping coordinate international and regional activity from the 1980s onward. He recalls IARF conferences in India and the development of a South Asia coordinating structure in 1993. Although brief, the recording is a valuable oral-history source on how IARF moved from relationships with individual reform movements to a more organised Indian and South Asian presence.

This field recording documents a human-rights awareness programme held on 12 March 2013 in Enarau, a rural community in Kajiado district in Maasai country south of Nairobi. The event was organised by Adhengo Boaz of the Jahwar Amber Fund with support from Hiyoshi Shinto Shrine of Nagoya, an IARF member group.

Community discussion addresses minority rights, respect for cultural traditions and the need to distinguish cultural identity from practices that violate human dignity. Female genital mutilation is discussed directly, alongside the role of elders, schools and community education in changing harmful practices without treating Maasai culture itself as a problem. The film provides a compact record of IARF-linked human-rights education at community level in East Africa.

Bro. Albert Xaviour describes how IARF’s human-rights education work helped young adults in India move from learning about rights to carrying practical awareness into rural communities. Drawing on his own background in a fishing family and social work, he recalls confronting bonded labour, caste discrimination, honour killings, communal violence and other forms of exclusion before encountering IARF human-rights training in 2005.

The film follows the development of youth-led programmes in villages and colleges, with particular attention to Dalit, Adivasi and other marginalized communities, women and children. Xaviour presents human-rights education as a way to help people recognize their dignity, understand legal and social rights, and build peace and harmony across caste, religious and community divisions. The video was submitted to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Division for Social Policy and Development.

A short retrospective film from the 2016 conference of IARF’s Europe and Middle East Region, held in Tetovo, North Macedonia, 22–25 August 2016 under the theme “Religion and Conflict Prevention.” Hosted by the Bektashi Community and the Evropa Centre for Human Rights, the gathering brought participants from across Europe and beyond to consider the role of religious communities in preventing violence, addressing discrimination and building interfaith understanding.

The film offers a visual record of the conference, its participants and its setting rather than a conventional lecture. It preserves an important moment in IARF’s engagement with the Balkans and with the Bektashi community, whose own struggle for recognition and religious freedom formed part of the wider context of the event.

At the 35th IARF World Congress in Washington, DC, Rev. Dr. Richard Boeke receives the Distinguished Leadership Award in recognition of a lifetime of work for international liberal religion, interfaith understanding and peace. The presentation recalls his involvement in IARF from the early 1960s, including friendships with Toribio Quimada and Shinichiro Imaoka, participation in the 1964 Hague Congress, his role in broadening IARF’s interreligious identity and his leadership in the IARF Peace Commission.

In his remarks, Boeke reflects on formative encounters spanning his ministry, US Air Force chaplaincy and peace activism. He recalls the nuclear age, the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., and the importance of relationships across religious boundaries. The recording is both an award presentation and a compact first-person testimony to several decades of IARF history.

On 5 March 2026, the International Association for Religious Freedom delivered this oral statement during the Human Rights Council’s interactive dialogue with UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Nazila Ghanea. Responding to the Special Rapporteur’s report on death and honouring the deceased, IARF highlights a regulatory gap affecting Indigenous communities when ancestral burial places and sacred sites lie on privately owned or privately governed land.

The statement uses Kāneʻākī Heiau in Hawaiʻi as an illustrative case, where Native Hawaiian practitioners face barriers in accessing and caring for iwi kūpuna, ancestral remains. IARF calls on states to assess sacred and burial sites affected by private land governance and develop legal and policy frameworks that reconcile property rights with Indigenous peoples’ rights to access sacred places, care for the deceased and manifest religion or belief.

Rosemary Bray McNatt牧師による「The Dangers Without, The Dangers Within」の日本語版です。2023年の米国社会を背景に、和解がいつ必要で、いつまだ時期尚早なのかを問いかけます。アフリカ系米国人女性でありユニタリアン・ユニヴァーサリストの牧師としての経験から、自由主義宗教が守るべき自由は思想や信仰だけでなく、黒人、女性、LGBTQの人びとなどの身体的・政治的自由を含むべきだと論じます。黒人キリスト教に根付く赦しの伝統と「No justice, no peace」という訴えを対比し、被害が続いている段階で被害者に和解や赦しを求めることの危険を指摘します。

講演では、当時の米国民主主義への脅威として、白人キリスト教ナショナリズム、Heritage FoundationのProject 2025／Mandate for Leadership、投票権、女性の身体的自己決定、LGBTQの権利、人種的不平等、気候危機などを取り上げます。McNattは、基本的権利への攻撃が続く状況では、まず抵抗、歴史の真実を語ること、そして記憶と希望の共同体を築くことが必要だと主張します。宗教共同体には、人びとが不正を認識し、互いを支え、将来の真の和解に向けて行動する場となる可能性があると結論づけます。

Speaking in 2023, Unitarian Universalist minister and seminary president Rosemary Bray McNatt asks when calls for reconciliation become premature in the face of continuing injustice. Beginning with her identities as an African American woman, former Roman Catholic and Unitarian Universalist, she argues that liberal religion’s historic commitment to freedom must include bodily and political freedom for people marginalized by racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. She contrasts traditions of forgiveness in Black Christianity with the cry “no justice, no peace,” asking whether reconciliation can become a demand that victims forgive before harm has ended.

McNatt then examines threats she perceived to US democracy in 2023, focusing on white Christian nationalism and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 / Mandate for Leadership, alongside voter suppression, attacks on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, racial inequality and climate crisis. Her conclusion is that resistance, truth-telling and communities of memory must precede reconciliation where basic rights remain under attack. She presents religious communities as places where people can recognize injustice, sustain one another through grief, and organize for democratic, racial, gender and environmental justice - laying the groundwork for a future reconciliation that does not require surrendering fundamental dignity.

Esther Suter牧師による朝鮮半島の平和条約に関する講演の日本語版です。1953年の朝鮮戦争休戦協定から70年を迎えた2023年に、休戦状態を正式な平和条約へ移行するために何が必要かを考察します。南北分断は安全保障上の問題であるだけでなく、離散家族や世代間の記憶に関わる人間的課題でもあり、教会による平和運動や署名活動は、固定化された「敵」のイメージを問い直すための社会教育でもあると論じます。

韓国キリスト教教会協議会、北朝鮮の朝鮮基督教連盟、世界教会協議会などによる交流、2018年の板門店宣言、その後の米朝外交を振り返りながら、平和条約と核軍縮を不可分の課題として扱います。一方的な非核化要求だけでは、相手が軍事的・核的脅威を感じ続ける限り持続的解決は難しいとして、対話、緊張緩和、信頼醸成、地域全体の核軍縮を進める必要性を訴えます。

Rev. Dr. Esther Suter marks the seventieth anniversary of the 1953 Korean Armistice by asking what would be required to replace the continuing state of armistice with a genuine peace treaty. She describes the division of the Korean Peninsula as both an international security problem and a human one, with families separated across North and South and generations increasingly distant from direct memories of the Korean War. Church-led peace campaigns, she argues, are therefore not only attempts to collect signatures but forms of public education intended to challenge inherited enemy images and build a broader culture of reconciliation.

Suter reviews ecumenical and diplomatic initiatives involving the National Council of Churches in Korea, the Korean Christian Federation in the North and the World Council of Churches, including the 2018 Panmunjom Declaration and subsequent US-North Korean diplomacy. She links a peace treaty to the wider question of nuclear disarmament and regional security, warning that demands for unilateral denuclearization are unlikely to succeed where states continue to perceive nuclear or military threats. The presentation advocates sustained dialogue, de-escalation, confidence building and movement toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula within the broader global struggle against nuclear weapons.

Kathy Matsui教授による北東アジアの和解と平和に関する講演の日本語版です。Matsuiは、和解を真実の直視、謝罪、赦し、共感、人権、そして繰り返し行われる対話から成る長期的な過程として説明します。日本と韓国をはじめ北東アジアに残る歴史的傷は、政治的宣言や圧力だけでは癒やせず、人びとが互いの歴史を学び、固定観念を関係性へと変えていく継続的な出会いが必要だと論じます。

IALRWの韓国大会で日本側参加者が「アリラン」を歌い、言葉を超えた和解の瞬間が生まれた経験を紹介したうえで、IALRW、Religions for Peace Japan、NARPIなどによる平和教育の実践を取り上げます。ウクライナ、バルカン、アルメニア、ミンダナオ、日本の宗教教育機関での事例や、自身の大学での紛争解決、人権、軍縮、多文化、宗教間、ジェンダー、環境教育を紹介し、北東アジア共通の平和教育枠組みと、市民社会・宗教団体・教育者の協力を提唱します。

Peace educator Kathy Matsui presents reconciliation in North-East Asia as a long-term process of truth-telling, apology, forgiveness, empathy, human rights and repeated dialogue. Drawing on Desmond Tutu and conflict-transformation scholarship, she argues that unresolved historical wounds between Japan, Korea and neighbouring societies cannot be healed through pressure or political declarations alone. Trust grows through sustained encounters in which people learn one another’s histories and gradually replace inherited assumptions with relationships.

Matsui illustrates this approach through religious and civil-society initiatives. She recalls an IALRW gathering in Korea where Japanese participants sang “Arirang,” producing an unexpected moment of shared emotion and reconciliation. She then surveys peace-education work through IALRW, Religions for Peace Japan, NARPI and other networks, including programmes in Ukraine, the Balkans, Armenia, Mindanao and Japanese seminaries. Her own university curriculum combines conflict resolution, human rights, disarmament, multicultural, interfaith, gender and environmental education. She concludes by advocating a common North-East Asian peace-education framework and stronger collaboration among religious organizations, educators and civil society to rebuild trust and transform cultures of violence.

Esther Suter牧師によるInternational Association of Liberal Religious Women（IALRW）の紹介の日本語版です。IALRWは1910年のIARFベルリン世界大会で女性の課題が初めて大会議題として取り上げられたことを背景に生まれ、1913年のパリ世界大会で正式に組織されました。SuterはHelen HerfordやMartha Everettなど初期の指導者に触れ、第一次世界大戦やその他の困難な時期を越えて組織が存続してきた歴史を紹介します。

講演は、参政権など大きな成果を得た後も、なぜ女性の組織が必要なのかを問い直します。ジェンダーに基づく暴力、土地・財産権、賃金平等など、女性の人権をめぐる課題は今も残っています。同時にIALRWの特徴は、単なる権利擁護団体ではなく、異なる宗教伝統に属するリベラルな女性たちが友情を築き、平和と正義に取り組む場であることだとSuterは説明します。

Rev. Dr. Esther Suter introduces the International Association of Liberal Religious Women (IALRW) through its history and continuing purpose. The organization emerged from the 1910 IARF World Congress in Berlin, where women’s concerns first entered the Congress agenda, and was formally organized at the 1913 Congress in Paris. Suter recalls early leaders including Helen Herford and Martha Everett, whose long presidency helped sustain the association through the First World War and other difficult periods, and connects this history with her own involvement in IALRW and the International Alliance of Women.

The presentation asks why women’s organizations remain necessary after major achievements such as suffrage. Suter points to continuing issues including gender-based violence, land and property rights, pay equity and other human-rights concerns highlighted during the UN Decade for Women. She also distinguishes IALRW from a conventional advocacy organization: its particular vocation is to create friendship among open-minded women from different religious traditions who share commitments to peace and justice. That emphasis on relationship, religious encounter and liberal religious identity, she argues, gives the organization a continuing role alongside broader women’s-rights movements.

Rabbi Bob Carroll presents the Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA) as a model of grassroots peacebuilding in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Founded during the second intifada, IEA uses sustained face-to-face religious encounter to replace stereotypes with direct knowledge of the other. Carroll describes groups involving Jews, Muslims, Christians, settlers and Palestinians, as well as clergy, young people and health professionals. A personal story about his friendship with Palestinian peace activist Talib al-Shariti illustrates the trust that can grow through years of repeated meetings even under political pressure and personal risk.

The heart of the presentation is IEA’s dialogue methodology. Religious identity and sacred texts are used as a starting point because they open deeper questions of meaning and shared values, while overt political argument is initially postponed until relationships are strong enough to withstand disagreement. Carroll summarizes practical guidelines: speak only for yourself, never assume another person’s beliefs, avoid generalizations and personal attacks, use “I” statements, listen actively, allow people to define their own identities, understand texts through living traditions, and prohibit proselytizing. He argues that religion can intensify nationalism and conflict, but can also provide the human infrastructure of trust without which political peace agreements cannot endure.

Representatives of the Hungarian Unitarian Church Youth Association present a 123-year-old youth movement rooted in Transylvanian Unitarian communities. Founded in Kolozsvár in 1900 as the Ferenc Dávid Youth Circle, the association now works through both local congregational groups and national events, with roughly a thousand members, hundreds of youth sermons and a programme of camps, arts events, leadership training, volunteering, worship, sport and cultural activities. Its aim is not simply to organize events but to create a community in which young people can experience belonging, responsibility and freedom to be themselves.

A personal testimony from a young Roma member gives the theme of culture and identity particular depth. He describes negotiating Roma family traditions, higher education, ethnographic research, folk-tale collecting and a decade of participation in the Unitarian youth movement, which he calls a second family. The presenters also highlight service projects, including camps where young volunteers repair homes and gardens for elderly people. The session shows religious youth work as a place where faith, minority identity, culture, friendship and practical service reinforce one another.

寺澤邦彦教授による日韓和解に関する講演の日本語版です。古代に百済など朝鮮半島から日本へ仏教や文化が伝えられた歴史から出発し、明治国家の形成、国家神道、天皇制イデオロギー、日本による1910年から1945年までの朝鮮統治へと話を進めます。植民地期の同化政策、言語・宗教・文化への圧力、強制労働や「慰安婦」問題、そして1919年の三・一独立運動などを、宗教と国家主義の関係から考察します。

講演の中心的な問いは、日本の仏教徒やキリスト教徒が国家神道と帝国主義に十分抵抗できなかったのはなぜか、そして今日その失敗から何を学べるかというものです。内村鑑三、吉野作造、妹尾義郎、賀川豊彦などを取り上げ、宗教の自由を守るための宗派を超えた連帯の可能性を検討します。戦後の日韓条約や政府声明だけでは和解は完成せず、歴史的自己検証、草の根の謝罪と赦し、教育と継続的交流が必要だと論じ、宗教間協力を東アジアの平和と人権の基盤として位置づけます。

This interfaith morning devotion brings together Christian, Buddhist and Shinto practices around the Congress theme of reconciliation. Rev. Lóránd Ilkei opens with the Beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers,” after which Rev. Yukonobu Sahara of Rissho Kosei-kai leads a recitation from Chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra. He connects the Buddhist teaching of “three thousand realms in one mind” with the responsibility to cultivate thoughts that build trust, friendship and peace rather than transmit hostility to others.

Rev. Yoshinobu Miyake introduces a Konko/Shinto prayer, explaining the sacred evergreen twig as a sign of humanity’s place within nature and offering an English rendering of a daily prayer to Kami. Rev. Jarek Kubacki, a Mennonite minister in the Netherlands, reflects on John 20 and the Hebrew ruach - breath or spirit - as a divine life-force that people receive and share with one another. The devotion closes with blessings from several traditions, presenting interfaith worship not as a blending of religions but as mutual hospitality among distinct spiritual practices.

Kunihiko Terasawa examines Japanese-Korean reconciliation through the intertwined religious and political history of the two countries. He begins with older exchanges in which Korean kingdoms transmitted Buddhism, learning and culture to Japan, then traces the rise of Meiji nationalism, State Shinto and imperial ideology that culminated in Japan’s annexation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. The colonial period brought forced assimilation, compulsory shrine attendance, suppression of Korean language and identity, forced labour and the system of “comfort women,” while the March First Movement of 1919 became a major nonviolent independence movement involving Christians, Buddhists and Cheondogyo.

Terasawa pays particular attention to missed opportunities for religious solidarity. He discusses Uchimura Kanzō, Yoshino Sakuzō, Buddhist reformer Senoo Girō and Christian social activist Toyohiko Kagawa, arguing that Japanese Buddhists and Christians might have resisted State Shinto and imperial aggression more effectively by defending religious freedom together and building transnational ties with Korean and Chinese reformers. Turning to unresolved post-war disputes, he argues that treaties and governmental statements are insufficient without historical self-examination, grassroots repentance, forgiveness and sustained exchange. He proposes religious cooperation, education and public remembrance as foundations for a future Japan-Korea relationship based on human rights and religious freedom.

Janhvi Gupte presents the Religious Freedom Youth Network (RFYN) as IARF’s effort to carry its work into a new generation through education, practical service and interfaith encounter. She traces RFYN’s development from the 2010 IARF World Congress and explains the two-tier model developed in India: young adults aged roughly 18-35 receive training and opportunities to volunteer, while projects are designed to reach rural and disadvantaged communities whose immediate needs often make abstract discussion of religious freedom inaccessible.

Gupte surveys six areas of work. Human Rights Education and Training uses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Article 18, to introduce religious freedom in schools and colleges. “Invincible” draws on Hiroshima to promote peace and anti-nuclear education. Urja combines women’s empowerment with digital literacy and livelihood support; Career First helps young volunteers with employment and exam preparation; G1 links environmental action to community incentives; and interfaith programmes create opportunities to learn about religious festivals and traditions. The discussion addresses sustainability, self-funding, work in rural India, religious violence, Kashmir and Northeast India, and the challenge of building an international youth network beyond India.

This youth-led morning devotion brings several IARF traditions together in prayer, ritual and song. Sean and Laura, Unitarians from South Wales, open with a Welsh and English prayer for community, healing and peace, followed by a simple embodied prayer of openness, acceptance and presence. Young participants from India then offer Jain prayers and devotional recitation, while members of Rissho Kosei-kai introduce their Buddhist movement and sing “Hana wa Saku” (“Flowers Will Bloom”), a song associated with the recovery from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and offered here for people affected by war and climate-related disaster.

The devotion closes with an Indian Raksha Bandhan ceremony in which participants tie handmade rakhi threads as symbols of protection, mutual responsibility and enduring relationship. Taken together, the contributions illustrate the Congress in miniature: distinct traditions retain their own language and practices while sharing a common space of care, reconciliation and solidarity across generations.

Rev. Norbert Rácz introduces Transylvania as a historical region shaped by changing borders, multiple languages, ethnic communities and religious traditions. He traces its passage through the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, the independent Principality of Transylvania, Habsburg rule, Austria-Hungary and modern Romania, emphasizing how centuries of political change made coexistence and accommodation practical necessities. He surveys Hungarian, Romanian, Saxon, Jewish, Armenian, Roma and other communities, while also confronting twentieth-century losses through the Holocaust, communist persecution and the mass departure of Transylvanian Saxons.

The second part focuses on the birth and survival of Transylvanian Unitarianism. Rácz introduces Ferenc Dávid, Prince John Sigismund and the 1568 Edict of Torda, which established an unusually early form of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. He describes the Hungarian Unitarian Church as both an ethnic and religious minority, its persecution under communism, its reunification across the Hungarian-Romanian border in 2012, and its contemporary commitment to dialogue. The presentation frames Transylvania’s complicated history not as a romantic tale of perfect tolerance, but as a source of lessons about pluralism, minority identity, historical memory and religious freedom.

宗教学史家George M. Williamsによる基調講演の日本語版です。Williamsは、真の和解は成功だけでなく失敗も記憶し、そこから学ぶことから始まると論じます。米国南部の人種暴力、ハワイのhoʻoponoponoとアロハの伝統、Queen LiliʻuokalaniとMauna Kea、1568年のトルダの勅令、共産主義期のトランシルヴァニア・ユニタリアンの経験など、複数の歴史的事例を通じて、和解、赦し、非暴力、歴史的記憶を考察します。

講演の重要な部分はIARF自身の歴史への自己批判です。今岡信一良の「自由宗教」、東京のUnity Hall、1984年世界大会での「liberating spirituality」をめぐる議論、立正佼成会や山本行雄の活動などを振り返り、宗教自由運動が文化的誤解や制度的失敗から学ぶ必要を指摘します。最後に、戦争、気候変動、技術変化など現代の課題に対して、さまざまな宗教文化が持つ和解の知恵を共有するようIARFに呼びかけます。

Historian of religions George M. Williams argues that genuine reconciliation begins with remembrance, especially the willingness to confront failures rather than celebrate only moral successes. He sketches major phases of IARF history and then develops a series of stories from different religious and cultural settings: racial violence in the American South, Hawaiian traditions of hoʻoponopono and aloha, Queen Liliʻuokalani’s non-violence, the defence of sacred Mauna Kea, the Transylvanian Edict of Torda, communist-era betrayal and forgiveness among Unitarians, and post-war religious reconstruction.

A major part of the keynote examines IARF’s own institutional memory. Williams recounts Shin’ichirō Imaoka’s vision of Jiyū Shūkyō, or Free Religion, and criticizes misunderstandings between American Unitarians and Japanese religious liberals, including the loss of Tokyo’s Unity Hall and the failed 1984 attempt to broaden IARF’s identity toward “liberating spirituality.” He also recalls Rissho Kosei-kai and Shinto leader Yukitaka Yamamoto as examples of service and commitment. The address closes by challenging IARF to learn from historical failures and bring multiple traditions of reconciliation to contemporary threats including war, climate change and technological disruption.

第36回IARF世界大会「Faith in Reconciliation（和解への信仰）」の開会式の日本語版です。クルージュ＝ナポカ／コロジュヴァールで行われた宗教間礼拝では、神道、イスラム教、ゾロアスター教、ヒンドゥー教、キリスト教などの代表者が祈りや聖典の言葉を分かち合い、ユニタリアン高校の合唱とチャリスの点火を通して、平和と多様性の中の一致を表現しました。

IARF会長Robert Inceは、和解とは単に戦闘を終えることではなく、かつて敵対した人びとが信頼を再び築き、共に生きることを学ぶ過程だと述べます。ルーマニア宗教庁の代表者は、欧州人権条約第9条、世界人権宣言第18条、そして1568年のトルダの勅令に触れ、宗教の自由の歴史的・法的背景を説明します。ハンガリー・ユニタリアン教会のIstván Kovács主教は、和解は個人の内面から始まり、共同体、社会、国家へと広がる霊的な過程であると語ります。

The 36th IARF World Congress opens in Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca with an interfaith service centred on the theme “Faith in Reconciliation.” Religious leaders representing Shinto, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Hindu and several Christian traditions offer short prayers and sacred readings, joined by music from the Unitarian High School choir and the lighting of a chalice as a symbol of hope, peace and unity in diversity.

IARF President Robert Ince argues that reconciliation must go beyond ending armed conflict to rebuilding trust and learning to live again with former enemies. A representative of Romania’s Secretariat of State for Religious Affairs places contemporary religious freedom within Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Transylvanian legacy of the 1568 Edict of Torda. Bishop István Kovács of the Hungarian Unitarian Church welcomes participants to the historic “land of religious freedom” and presents reconciliation as a spiritual process beginning with the individual before extending to communities, societies and nations.

Betsy Darr, President of the IARF US Chapter and a climate activist, compares the sudden disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic with the slower but increasingly dangerous disruption of climate change. She identifies common patterns in the two crises: denial despite scientific warning, unequal exposure of poorer and marginalized communities, the limits of individual action without competent public leadership, and the high cost of delaying preparation. In the United States, she connects the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on African Americans with broader questions of health, wealth and environmental inequality.

Darr also asks what positive changes might become possible after such a shock. Reduced commuting and consumption, cleaner air, emergency income support, free COVID treatment and new patterns of remote work all demonstrate that individuals and governments can change rapidly when circumstances demand it. Rather than simply restoring the old normal, she argues for a rebalancing toward renewable energy, healthcare and economic security, racial equality, lower consumption and stronger solidarity. The discussion considers climate justice, fossil-fuel finance, conspiracy theories and science, surveillance, international responsibility, resource conflict and the role IARF can play in promoting human rights and a shared sense of global interdependence.

Arben Sulejmani reflects on the long collaboration between IARF and the Bektashi community in North Macedonia, using it as a case study in how an international religious-freedom network can support a small community facing legal and political exclusion. He describes how contacts with IARF helped the Bektashis gain access to international advocacy channels, including UN mechanisms, and how the 2016 IARF regional conference in Tetovo brought international attention to religious pluralism in North Macedonia. The discussion also addresses the community’s continuing struggle for legal recognition despite a favourable judgment from the European Court of Human Rights.

Sulejmani places this advocacy within a wider Bektashi understanding of freedom: freedom is inseparable from responsibility, openness to others and the refusal to claim that one tradition possesses God exclusively. He discusses Haji Bektash, the spiritual character of Bektashism, relations with Alevis and Baháʼís, the unity of the prophetic tradition from Abraham and Moses to Jesus and Muhammad, and the Bektashi emphasis on conduct over doctrinal labels. The pandemic becomes another point of reflection on equality, spiritual closeness and how religious communities can remain connected across physical separation.

Wendy Goldberg, a founding leader and Executive Director of the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska, describes an experiment in intentional religious neighbourliness: autonomous Jewish, Christian and Muslim congregations located on one shared campus alongside an interfaith centre. The initiative grew out of relationships strengthened after 9/11 and is built on a clear principle - the congregations do not blend their faiths or proselytize to one another, but remain fully themselves while creating repeated opportunities to show up for their neighbours, share ordinary life and deepen mutual understanding.

Goldberg explains why physical proximity matters, from shared gardens and practical cooperation to worship visits, family activities and sustained friendships. She also describes how the model is expanding beyond houses of worship into schools, healthcare and workplaces, where religious accommodation, literacy and inclusion are often poorly understood. The discussion explores perspective-taking, employee resource groups, religious freedom at work, research on reducing prejudice, youth engagement, social cohesion, political polarization and the challenge of making space for people who believe their own religion is uniquely true without requiring them to endorse someone else’s beliefs.

Gurpreet Singh introduces the Sikh practice of langar - the free communal meal offered in gurdwaras - and the wider ethic of seva, selfless service. Beginning with Guru Nanak and the story of Sacha Sauda, he explains how sharing food expresses Sikh teachings on oneness, honest living, equality and service. Langar is not charity only for the poor: everyone eats the same vegetarian meal together, traditionally seated at the same level, challenging distinctions of wealth, caste and status.

The talk then turns to a practical COVID-19 initiative in Germany, where Sikh communities prepared meals in gurdwaras and distributed them to homeless and vulnerable people in several cities. Singh discusses financing through community donations, partnerships with existing charities, surplus food, outreach and a prototype mobile app intended to connect people needing food with volunteers and distribution points. The discussion broadens into Sikh spirituality and identity, including the Five Ks, the Khalsa, the turban, mantra meditation, ego, equality of women, sexual ethics and the Mul Mantar. Throughout, Singh presents service and spiritual discipline as inseparable parts of the Sikh path.

Peace and security specialist Caecilia van Peski examines democracy as more than elections: a functioning democratic society depends on citizens who can encounter difference, revise their assumptions and participate in strong institutions capable of checking political power. Drawing on her background in educational and cultural psychology, she connects openness of mind with education, access to information, civil society and the ability to understand perspectives other than one’s own. She also reflects on the role of organisations such as IARF in strengthening a culture of pluralism and democratic participation.

Van Peski brings these questions into focus through her work in international monitoring missions, including in Georgia and eastern Ukraine. Restrictions on freedom of movement, she argues, can quickly become restrictions on healthcare, justice, administration, inheritance and voting. The COVID-19 pandemic raises related dilemmas around digital inequality, isolation, privacy, contact-tracing technologies and state surveillance. The discussion ranges over democratic institutions and checks and balances, proportional representation, human rights, inequality, civil society, UN institutions, the Sustainable Development Goals and the tension between democratic deliberation and urgent global challenges such as climate change.

Rev. Chris Hudson of All Souls Unitarian Church, Belfast, reflects on his direct involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process and distinguishes three stages of peacemaking: public campaigning against violence, conflict resolution with the people actually carrying it out, and the long work of sustaining peace after an agreement. Hudson describes moving from Peace Train protests to confidential dialogue with Loyalist paramilitaries in the early 1990s, carrying messages between the UVF, the Irish government and British representatives, and helping create conditions in which the 1994 Loyalist ceasefire and later Good Friday Agreement became possible.

He argues that protagonists who know how to conduct a conflict may not know how to end it, and that effective peacebuilding sometimes requires engaging people one profoundly opposes rather than merely denouncing them. Hudson also discusses post-conflict transformation: persistent sectarian and social divisions, the continued existence of paramilitary organisations, restorative-justice initiatives such as Resolve, integrated education, community work against racism, and efforts to move former armed groups toward civilian roles. The discussion considers Brexit, inequality, women’s contributions, political leadership and the continuing need for grassroots investment after formal peace agreements.

Yehuda Stolov, Executive Director of the Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA), explains a grassroots model for building durable relationships among Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and others in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Founded during the second intifada, IEA deliberately avoids taking organisational positions on contested political questions. Instead, it brings neighbouring communities together around meaningful religious and cultural subjects, allowing participants to discover similarities while also learning how to sustain friendship across real disagreement.

Stolov argues that a single positive encounter is not enough: lasting change requires recurring local groups whose members meet over months and years, become friends, and gradually carry different attitudes back into their families, workplaces and communities. He describes groups involving Israelis and Palestinians, including settlers and Palestinians in places such as Hebron, as well as work with schools, universities, women and young adults. The discussion addresses anti-normalization pressures, unequal internet access during COVID-19, funding constraints, Druze participation, work in Palestinian communities, and the practical methods IEA uses to make dialogue safe, substantive and repeatable.

In this keynote from the 2021 IARF EME conference “Does Religion Set You Free?”, Rabbi Mark Solomon asks when religion becomes a source of liberation and when it becomes a prison. He begins with his own journey from an Orthodox Jewish upbringing and rabbinate through the conflict between traditional religious teaching and his identity as a gay man. A decisive influence was Rabbi Lionel Blue, whose teacher Leo Baeck had said that Judaism should be one’s religious home, not one’s religious prison.

Solomon develops this theme through Jewish teachings on Exodus, the Ten Commandments and Jubilee, arguing that freedom is not simply freedom from restraint but the voluntary acceptance of principles that protect the freedom and dignity of others. He then turns to psychology of religion - especially extrinsic, intrinsic and “quest” orientations - to examine links between religiosity and prejudice. Feminist theology, Alice Walker, Judith Plaskow, Spinoza, mysticism and interfaith encounter all become part of his account of a faith capable of self-criticism, doubt, change and liberation. The discussion ranges over women rabbis, LGBTQ inclusion, religious law, reason, pantheism, idolatry and the relationship between tradition and personal conscience.

Former UN Environment Programme official and Buddhist chaplain Don De Silva examines the relationship between faith, environmental justice and conflict. Beginning with the history of modern environmentalism and sustainable development, he argues that climate change, COVID-19 and ecological degradation cannot be separated from poverty, inequality, public health and human rights. Drawing on Buddhism, Christian environmental teaching and his experience with UNEP, he presents interdependence and care for the natural world as resources already present within religious traditions.

De Silva surveys environmental conflicts over water, fisheries, forests and shared natural resources; climate litigation; climate migration and “climate apartheid”; unequal resource consumption; biodiversity loss; vaccine inequality and environmental links to emerging disease. He also recalls the creation of the South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme as an example of environmental cooperation across political divides. His central challenge is practical: faith communities should move beyond isolated religious concerns, work with science, use their international networks and financial assets ethically, and help build sustainable responses to environmental crisis, social conflict and human well-being.

Morgana Sythove of Pagan Federation International examines anti-pagan discrimination and the ways pagan, heathen and earth-centred traditions have been misunderstood, stigmatized or persecuted. Drawing on contemporary surveys and human-rights work, she discusses the history of “pagan” as a pejorative, the Inquisition and Doctrine of Discovery, modern accusations of witchcraft in Africa and Asia, faith-based abuse, and the disproportionate vulnerability of indigenous and marginalized communities. She also highlights the 2021 UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning harmful practices related to witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks.

The second part considers the misappropriation of religious and indigenous symbols and practices, from the swastika and runes to commercialized ritual traditions, neo-shamanism and modern far-right uses of pagan imagery. In the discussion, Sythove introduces contemporary Paganism and Wicca, earth-centred spirituality, the revival of Slavic and other European pagan traditions, ecological responsibility, and the importance of understanding symbols in their historical and religious contexts. Participants also explore religious freedom, cultural appropriation, suffering, nature, ritual and the role of dialogue in overcoming prejudice.

This IARF US Chapter memorial discussion remembers Rev. Dieter Gehrmann, IARF’s first full-time General Secretary, through the testimony of his family, colleagues and long-time collaborators. Dorle Gehrmann traces his formation in the post-war German Free Religious youth movement, his Unitarian theological education in the United States, and his appointment as General Secretary in 1972. Lucie Meijer recalls the growth of the Frankfurt Secretariat, the expansion of IARF membership and Gehrmann’s emphasis on encounter, dialogue, youth participation, social service and international cooperation.

The discussion becomes a valuable oral history of IARF itself. Participants remember pioneering conferences and study tours in Africa, Japan and India; humanitarian and educational projects through the Social Service Network; support for Unitarians in communist Eastern Europe and Transylvania; the 1984 Tokyo and 1987 Stanford Congresses; and Gehrmann’s role in building relationships among liberal religious communities around the world. Personal recollections also illuminate his energetic leadership style, strategic work under difficult political conditions, and lasting influence on later generations of IARF participants.

This IARF US Chapter webinar compares the rise of religious nationalism in India and the United States. Nikhil Mandalaparthy of Hindus for Human Rights explains the development of Hindutva, its distinction from the diversity of Hindu traditions, and its contemporary political expression through the BJP and Narendra Modi. He discusses anti-Muslim violence and rhetoric, lynchings, discrimination against minorities, Kashmir, diaspora polarization, disinformation and efforts by progressive Hindus to oppose religious nationalism from within their own tradition.

Rev. Will McGarvey examines white Christian nationalism in the United States, its links with white supremacy, Christian identity politics, revisionist accounts of American history, church-state conflict and the political religious right. The discussion compares how sacred symbols, historical myths and majoritarian identity are mobilized for political power, while also exploring resistance through interfaith solidarity, civil rights, constitutional religious freedom and religious arguments for pluralism. The Q&A addresses colonial legacies, education, religious texts, Kashmir, Christian Zionism and strategies for countering nationalist movements.

Recorded during UK Inter Faith Week, this joint IARF British Chapter and World Congress of Faiths event features theologian Alan Race exploring how religious experience can inform interreligious dialogue and a pluralist understanding of religious diversity. Drawing on Iris Murdoch, John Hick, mystical traditions and examples from Jewish-Jain, Buddhist-Christian and monastic dialogue, Race asks how very different accounts of transcendence can be taken seriously without collapsing their differences into a false unity.

At the centre of the talk is a three-level model of dialogue: learning about the other, learning with the other, and learning through the other. Race argues that sustained dialogue can move beyond tolerance and parallel coexistence toward mutual accountability, transformation and a deeper theology of religious pluralism. The discussion also touches on religious violence and nationalism, neuroscience and mystical experience, social conditioning, and the relationship between religious freedom, reconciliation and pluralism.

This issue of the IARF's newsletter commemorates the centenary of the International Association for Religious Freedom (1900-2000). It features reports on centennial celebrations held in Bangalore, India; at Hotaka Shrine in Japan; and at the Klingberg Youth and Education Centre in Germany. A centerpiece of the issue is a historical retrospective by Rev. Robert Traer titled 'The IARF At 100: Looking Back and Ahead,' which traces the organization's development from its 1900 founding in Boston through the 20th century. Additional content includes the results of a membership strategic planning questionnaire, reports on young adult participation, and reflections on the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nations.

This book is a collection of addresses and papers presented at the inaugural meeting of the 'International Council of Unitarian and other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers,' held in London in May 1901. This event was the first congress of the organisation that would later become the IARF. The volume documents the proceedings and discussions on liberal religious thought at the turn of the 20th century.

This volume contains the proceedings, addresses, and papers of the Fourth International Congress of Religious Liberals, held in Boston, September 22-27, 1907, under the auspices of the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers. Edited by Charles W. Wendte, it documents a significant event in the history of inter-religious dialogue and the liberal religious movement.

Held during the 2025 conference of the International Association for Religious Freedom's Europe and Middle East region, this interfaith and multilingual service was a profound exploration of liberal faith in a complex world. Opening with a candle lighting ceremony dedicated to freedom, humanity, and tolerance, the gathering featured a central sermon that challenged attendees to grapple with the "paradox of tolerance" and embrace a faith of active repair, accountability, and honest self-critique. The service beautifully wove together diverse spiritual threads, including readings from Khalil Gibran, a Muslim prayer and a call of radical welcome inspired by Rumi, and reflections drawing from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics. Through communal singing of hymns like "Dona Nobis Pacem" (Give Us Peace) and the anthem "Die Gedanken sind frei" (Thoughts Are Free), the service culminated in a powerful call for participants to become the "human hands, human courage and human caring" needed to answer the world's suffering and build a legacy of engaged, compassionate action.