|
The Boniuk Center welcomes its newest Non-Profit Affiliate:
The Emerson Unitarian Universalist Adult Education Committee has joined the Boniuk Center as an Associate Member. The group has been a venue for Boniuk Center events since the inception of the Center in April 2004. We welcome them in this new relationship as the Center begins its 5th year of the study and advancement of religious tolerance.
More about Emerson Unitarian Universalist Church
More about the Boniuk Center Affiliates Program
Bering Omega Partnership
Destination: Birmingham, UK
Bering Omega Community Services has joined with the Boniuk Center to send a participant to the International Summer School on Religion & Public Life (ISSRPL) being held in Birmingham, UK.
The Center is an official sponsor of the ISSRPL, which is held in different locations around the world, and sends two participants each year - one of the ISSRPL's choosing, and one from the Houston area.
This year the Center is happy to send Kym King to participate in the summer school. More about this story
Also attending the International Summer School for Religion and Public Life, is a young cultural anthropologist from Kyrgystan. The Boniuk Center annual sponsors a scholar or activist from another country by providing a Boniuk Scholarship. This year the recipient of that award is Zemfira Inogamova, a researcher with Aigine Research Center in Bishkek, Kyrgystan, in Central Asia. Boniuk Center Special Project Director Calvin Preece met Ms. Inogamova by chance on a flight from Bishkek to London recently when they were seated in the same row. When they began to talk about who they were and where they were going, Ms. Inogamova indicated she was going to Birmingham, UK. That led to the discovery that she was attending the ISSRPL on the Boniuk Award.
Zemfira Inogamova, Bishkek, Kyrgystan
The International Summer School on Religion and Public Life provides a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its goals are to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas, moral beliefs and communal loyalties. Its focus is on religion, as our religious identities are our most exclusive and our religious communities are those to which we devote our greatest loyalties. In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together. The school takes these very real, critical and defining differences, especially communal and religious differences between people, as the starting point of a publically shared life.
Aigine Research Center ("aigine" means “clear”, “definitive”) was created in the spring of 2004 for a comprehensive and thorough study of the Mazar phenomenon in Kyrgyzstan. The main sponsor of this organization is The Christensen Fund (California, USA).
The mission of Aigine is to study and promulgate little known aspects of the diverse cultural and natural heritage of Kyrgyzstan, search for ways to reconcile and integrate esoteric and scientific approaches to understanding, nature and culture, tradition and innovation, history and modernity, and west and east; and to emphasize and utilize inter-ethnic, inter-cultural, inter-religious, and inter-age phenomena to promote tolerance and mutual understanding among the ethnicities, cultures, religious groups, and generations of Kyrgyzstan.
NOW SHOWING
Featuring videos about comparative religions and topics in religious tolerance from around the internet. Good for teachers to use as backgrounders for teaching world religions, good for students who are looking for supplemental learning materials, good for anyone who wants to learn more about other faiths and practicing tolerance. Use the link above to visit the ToleranceChannel at YouTube(tm).
Click the Quilt to Learn more about "Just Symbols"
Become a Friend or Supporter of the Boniuk Center
Transform the World. It is within your power. We are working everyday to build a culture in which peaceful coexistence is possible. Please join us. You can make a difference.
The Boniuk Center co-sponsors events that foster understanding and respect across the boundaries of religion. We are particularly eager to support events that will draw a diverse audience and that are co-sponsored by organizations representing different religious communities.
Because discussions of religion, religious difference, and tolerance provoke strong feelings and heated debate, the Center will work with community partners to create a hospitable atmosphere so that all people, especially those who disagree with the program or speaker, feel welcome and invited to participate. Facing up to our differences is the first step towards peaceful co-existence.
Opinions expressed by speakers sponsored or so-sponsored by the Boniuk Center do not necessarily represent the views of the Center, its staff, or of Rice University.
a listing of
past events is available here
|