Introducing this Resource Study Guide

Hi – My name is Megan Anderson and I serve as the Resources Creative Consultant at the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement, at Seattle University.

At the Center, we are pleased to offer this guide to the finest public document on the interreligious connections to the world around us.  This guide celebrates the text – Faith for Earth: A Call for Action, which was created through the auspices of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in collaboration with the United Nations Environmental Programme – Faith-for-Earth Initiative.

The guide before you allows us to explore this document together.  Each section is a stepping stone through that journey.  If you ever lose your way, you can return to the home page, where you will see all 10 sections.  Every section allows you to learn more about … the Earth, the voices of youth around the world and how numerous faith traditions respond to the earth.  As you continue along this journey, you are afforded an opportunity to learn more about Indigenous Traditions, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, the Sikh Religion, and much, much more.

As you approach each section, you will see a thumbnail of the cover of the Faith for Earth: A Call to Action document. This signifies when you’ll be engaging with sections from the text itself. Click on the text “Open the Resource” and the document will open to the specific religion or faith tradition, or aspect of the Earth in the case of Section 2, you are currently studying.  In addition, we have enlisted voices from within each faith tradition to read sections of the resource aloud for you.  We chose to do this because at the Center we believe that the spoken and written word, connected to images of the human face, illuminate the stories of our shared humanity in resplendent and essential ways. We also know that, as fellow learners together, inflection across traditions reveals the beauty of both our singularity and our plurality, respecting both.

At the Center, we invite you to engage any section of this resource at any given time. You don’t have to go in order from 1 to 10, although I personally think starting with the Earth section provides a good frame for engaging the rest of the resource.  I also want you to pay attention to a resounding aim of the original resource – that of placing your learning into action.  In the conclusion, we ask you to consider new and meaningful ways for learning and engaging, and for drawing in others to learn with you as well.  Be called into action to the gift of the world around us.

If you are an educator in a classroom or community, I hope you will use this content to illuminate the minds and hearts of others. 

At the Center we commend this guide to you.  We praise the efforts of our colleagues at the Parliament of the World’s Religions and the Faith for Earth Initiative of the United Nations Environmental Program for creating the document Faith for Earth: A Call for Action.

I am pleased you are with us.  And, on behalf of the whole Center Team, thank you for listening. Now, please go and engage!