IARF Dialogues (2020–2023)

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.

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.

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.