Parliament of Worlds Religion 1999 Capetown SA

Author(s): Parliament of the World’s Religions
Publisher: USA Parliament of the Worlds Religions

Page 49

A CALL TO OUR GUIDING INSTITUTIONS
DECEMBER
9
9
Organizations of civil society are involved in all areas of human concern, providing essential social services, humanitarian relief, and innovative programs for social, economic, and political reform. Moreover, because governments do not easily or naturally extend rights to their citizens, civil society often takes on a prophetic role as the body politic struggles to identify and secure basic rights and meet unfulfilled needs. Such organizations act regionally and globally as monitors and sometimes as guarantors of the freedoms, rights, and the very survival of individual citizens. In time, the civil social process can come both to exemplify and to sustain the ethical character and public life of a society.
THE CALL TO ORGANIZATIONS OF CIVIL SOCIETY
As individual citizens facing larger societal dynamics and world events, we may often feel that our voices are not heard and our actions are viewed as inconsequential. Yet movements bringing transformation most often have arisen from the grassroots, because it is at this most vital level that rights, needs, and responsibilities are brought into sharpest relief. Because its lifeblood is voluntary association, civil society is an expression of the grassroots. Choosing to associate with others in common cause amplifies our voices and strengthens our actions. Speaking and acting in concert with others, we make a difference in the world.
In itself, civil society is never complete or perfect. It is grounded in the reality that communities whether rural or urban-are not simply spaces occupied by numbers of discrete people but hubs where history, habits, and harbingers converge. Thus, the chief task of civil society is to broaden the scope of citizen participation, to mediate between the community and the state, and to deepen the pluralistic exchange of ideas. Organizations of civil society have a special responsibility to cultivate and demonstrate moral leadership if they are to contribute to the elevation of public discourse and collective action on behalf of a better world.
We call on the organizations of civil society to develop practical ways to engage creatively with other guiding institutions in pursuit of a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.
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