The Center for the Study of the Family in Traditional and Contemporary Societies
This Center will be devoted to the study of the family, its values, and the transformations of family life in contemporary society. Collaboration between religions on the subject of The Family will help increase awareness of the significance of the theme in contemporary life within the religions and offer religions a more powerful voice within society at large.
The recent work of the "Crisis of the Holy" Think Tank pointed to the crisis of family institutions as closely related to various dimensions of crisis that the religions are undergoing. The family is one of the most important religious training grounds and society's most basic unit of living. The pressures and challenges to the family, both theoretical and practical, make the family an important site for interreligious collaboration. Alongside peace and ecology, the two areas most often at the center of interreligious collaboration, we suggest the family is an important meeting point for religions. A long term research project on various aspects related to the family has been drawn up. Study and education on the subject of the family, based on collaboration between religions and their scholars, holds great promise and is an area Elijah seeks to enter. A detailed proposal for the work of the center is available.
The Center for the Study of Comparative Mysticism
There is much popular talk of spirituality, often crossing the lines between religions in ways that classical religions would consider irresponsible. Over the past 20 years the field of spirituality has emerged in the academic world as a discipline in its own right. Practitioners of this discipline see an important role for themselves in addressing the marketplace of ideas and in introducing responsible, scholarly and critical ways of approaching spirituality. This academic discipline holds great promise for interfaith relations. It provides a meeting place for religions in the heart of their religious life, rather than on the common battlefield of life. It holds the promise of growth and transformation through experience, sharing and emulation. It suggests new ways for religions to understand themselves, thereby enriching our view of the possibilities for interfaith relations. Several of the programs Elijah has ran over the past decade belong to the realm of spirituality. We hope to be able to address this area in a more systematic way over the coming decade.
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