Parliament of Worlds Religion 2009 Melbourne Australia

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

Page 159

PROGRAMDE
Friday, December 4, 2009
Older People: Revered or Redundant
Mary Braybrooke
Room 208
Panel Discussion
The moral character of a society is reflected in its care for the elderly and the marginalised. This panel discussion focusses on the welfare and care of older people including the issue of dying well.' It will explore how various religious traditions meet the spiritual needs of the dying and also consider the responsibilities of families, local communities, religious congregations, and governments toward the elderly. Particular attention will be given to the hospice movement.
Mary Braybrooke is a Vice-President of the World Congress of Faiths and has worked for fifty years as a social worker in child care, in the community, and in hospitals. She has also published a research paper on the attitude of members of different faiths to organ transplants and presented a program on this subject at the Cape Town Parliament. At present she is working with people suffering from renal failure.
Muslim Women's Artistic Expressions of Faith and Interfaith
Ninie G Syarikin
Suad El-Amin
Room 209
Artistic Performance
Muslim women's artistic expressions of faith reach out across racial, ethnic, religious and geographic boundaries because they so often celebrate the spirit of cooperation between all human beings and because they manifest love for God. This program will celebrate the talent and diversity of Muslim women artists from various disciplines. These women will share the motivation and inspiration behind their arts which include poetry reading, storytelling, chanting, faith-based inspirational music and others. They will also demonstrate and express their God-given talents by performing for participants. These performances are designed to provide both enlightenment and spiritual inspiration.
Ninie G Syarikin is a writer, translator/interpreter and broadcaster. Originally from Indonesia, Ninie now lives in the US and has three children. She manages House of Creative Writing, LLC, based in Washington, DC, providing translation, interpreting, writing, language education, and cross-cultural consulting services. Poetry is Ninie's passion and Islamic poetry is her life's work. She is a member of the American Translators Association, the National Writers Union, and the Fulbright Association. Suad El-Amin is an African-American Muslim singer and songwriter with over 30 years of faith-based performance experience with the Honorable Imam WD Mohammed. She performed at the Wisdom University conference 'Sacred Activism: The Power of Inclusion", appeared with Gospel music great Shirley Ceasar, and performed for Ms Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights movement.
11:30am-1:00pm
INTERRELIGIOUS SESSION
Globethics.net Principles: Sharing Values across Cultures and Religions
Christoph Stückelberger Shanta Premawardhana
Siti Syamsiyatun Heidi Hadsell
Wande Abimbola (TBC) Room 210 Symposium
In an interdependent, globalised world with challenges such as climate justice, there is a great need for a global ethics. But how can global and contextual values be combined? How can diversity be respected without justifying contextual injustices? What are the methods for a fair sharing of values by different cultures and religions? The global ethics network Globethics.net has developed a set of values, principles, means and methods for sharing values for dialogues to become transformative dialogues and to enable joint actions which build communities. The draft principles were elaborated at the international and interreligious Globethics.net conference which took place in Nairobi in 2009. The panel and plenary discussion will help to further develop and enrich them. The draft principles will be distributed at the event and available from 1 December on www.globethics.net.
Professor Christoph Stückelberger is Executive Director and Founder of Globethics.net, Geneva, Switzerland.
Rev Dr Shanta D Premawardhana is the Director of Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation for the World Council of Churches, Switzerland. Dr Siti Syamsiyatun is the Associate Director of ICRS (Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies), Yogyakarta/Indonesia, an International, Inter-religious and Interdisciplinary Ph D program supported by three leading universities in Yogyakarta. She earned her MA in Islamic Studies from McGill University, Canada, and her PhD in Politics from the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University. Australia in 2006. She lectures on History of Islamic Civilization, Gender and Religion, and the History of Indonesian Religions. her main research interests are on gender issues in Islam, women's religious movement, and interfaith relations.
Dr Heidi Hadsell is a member of the Board of Globethics.net and President of Hartford Seminary, USA. Dr Hadsell has worked as a consultant to the dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and also has worked with Plowshares Institute in its pilot immersion project for the globalization of theological education.
Professor Wande Abimbola is the current Awise Agbaye, or spokesperson of Yoruba Religion in the World. He was formerly Vice-Chancellor of University of Ife Inow Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife from 1982-1989, Senate Majority Leader for the Federal Republic of Nigeria from 1992-1993, and Special Adviser to the President of Nigeria from 2003-2005. Professor Abimbola has taught at Harvard University and Boston University. He is currently President of the UNESCO-sponsored Ifa Heritage Institute, Nigeria.
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