“Your Turn” is a segment of IndyKids newspaper in which kid readers offer their take on a particular topic, proving that kids, too, can have a say in important current events.

When the March 2011 issue’s “Your Turn” asked girls at a public school  in the Bronx why they wear a headscarf, the purpose was to help confront misconceptions kids (and adults) may have about Muslim girls and women, that can only be dispelled by asking and becoming informed.

Also in the March 2011 Issue, one of the young women had the opportunity to share her personal experiences in "My Hijab." She wrote, "Wearing a hijab in the Bronx, where there are more people who don’t wear it than people who do, is really hard, but since I’ve been wearing the hijab ever since I was seven years old I don’t mind wearing it. People ask me questions about it and I answer. Most people are nice but some can be really rude and judgmental."

IndyKids is a free national newspaper, website and teaching tool that aims to inform children on current news and world events from a progressive perspective and to inspire a passion for social justice and learning. It is geared toward kids in grades 4 to 8.

A typical American childhood is one that is oversaturated with commercialism and sheltered from the real struggles and injustices in the world. From its first issue of in 2005, IndyKids has worked against that to bring kids in the United States closer to kids worldwide and the genuine issues they face. IndyKids is not afraid to take on difficult topics such as the financial crisis, same-sex marriage, healthcare, wars, immigrant and labor rights, and global warming. It presents these issues in a way that is easy to understand, and mixes in stories of kid activism, science news, recipes, and puzzles.

IndyKids aims to encourage kids to form their own opinions and become part of the larger movement for justice and peace.

Spend the month of July in New York working on a research or writing project related to the theme Explorations at the Intersection of Religious Pluralism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue, with access to libraries and research facilities at Columbia University, Union, Auburn, and Jewish Theological Seminaries.

The 2011 Research Colloquium seeks applications for individual research projects relating to the theme Explorations at the Intersection ofReligious Pluralism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue. Application deadline is February 1, 2011.

The 2011 summer Research Colloquium aims at bringing into conversation two discourses that currently run on parallel tracks. On the one hand, there is the discourse on religious pluralism and comparative theologies, which theorizes and reflects on the changing landscape of religious belongings in a globalized and pluralist world, such as multiple religious identities, religious hybridity and migration patterns, or conflicts between various world religions. On the other hand there is the Jewish-Christian relations discourse which has evolved with renewed urgency after the devastating impact of the Shoah and the founding of the State of Israel.

The Colloquium will bring together fellows who have worked on either one of these two parallel tracks and offer them an opportunity for in-depth scholarly exploration of commonalities and differences. By creating an environment conducive to research, open reflection and scholarly inquiry, participants are encouraged to learn from both the plurality of religious voices and the particularity of the case of Jewish-Christian dialogue.

There is a richness of resources that has accumulated in the research and literature on Jewish-Christian relations, but the discourse on Jewish-Christian dialogue may have suffered from a parochial narrowing of perspective. There is a visionary potential for religious plurality, but without deep engagement within a spiritual tradition it may suffer from civic indifference toward communities with deeply-felt religious roots.

At the Colloquium, participants of diverse backgrounds that represent areas of interest in either of the two discourses mentioned above will spend the length of four weeks together, pursuing individual research as well as gathering as a group for focused and facilitated discussions.

The Colloquium is led and facilitated by professors Katharina von Kellenbach, Karla Suomala, Björn Krondorfer and Charles Henderson. We already have a commitment from CrossCurrents, under the guest-editorship of Karla Suomala and Katharina von Kellenbach, to put together a themed volume on these explorations as they emerge in the colloquium.

If you have further questions about the content of the Colloquium, please contact Björn Krondorfer, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, bhkrondorfer@smcm.edu

Karla Suomala, Associate Professor, Religion Department, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, suomka01@luther.edu.

Katharina von Kellenbach, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, kvonkellenbach@smcm.edu

Application Process:
The Colloquium runs for four weeks during July. Those who are selected for a fellowship are referred to as "Coolidge Scholars" after William A. Coolidge, the principal benefactor of this program. Each Coolidge Scholar works on his or her own project, but benefits by being able to collaborate with others. The collegial relationships that develop within the group are a crucial element of this program and one of its distinctive aspects.

The daily schedule allows a balance of structured and unstructured time, including:

1. Time for individual research, reflection and consultation with fellows and staff   2. Seminars for facilitated and focused discussion that also integrate work-in-progress reports by fellows   3. Common meals and opportunities to explore the artistic and cultural resources of New York City.

The Colloquium is residential and provides fellows with room and board (vegetarian/kosher food available) and access to libraries and research facilities at Columbia University, Teachers College, Union, Auburn and Jewish Theological Seminaries. Participants are required to pay a $125 registration fee upon acceptance plus the cost of travel.

Applications should be sent via an email that includes:

1) Title and brief description of the applicant's proposed project. 2) A brief resume including religious affiliation or preference, academic standing and professional experience. 3) The names, titles, institutional addresses and telephone numbers of two references. (You do not need to have these persons write a letter; we will contact references as needed.)

The successful applicant will be capable of writing for a publication of the caliber of CrossCurrents. Normally, fellows will hold doctorates; some will have professional degrees; a few will qualify by reason of equivalent experience.  For ideas on the types of projects we encourage, please check the CrossCurrents website to view back issues of the journal.

If you have any further questions about the Colloquium or would like to explore the appropriateness of a project you are thinking about, please contact:

Charles Henderson, CrossCurrents, Executive DirectorEmail: colloquium@crosscurrents.org Tel: 212-870-2544 or Cell: 917-439-2305

This article originally served as the guest introduction for Issue 5 of the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue

The contemporary Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, has developed a compositional system that—reduced to its sparest minimum—consists of the dynamic interplay of two musical lines in a field of silence.

The melody, which proceeds mainly in steps up and down the scale, might be compared to a child tentatively walking.  The second line underpins each note of the melody with a note from a harmonizing triad (the fundamental chord of western music) that is positioned as close as possible to the note of the melody, but always below.  You could imagine this accompaniment to be a mother with her hands outstretched to ensure her toddler doesn’t fall.[1]

This simple, but elegant musical metaphor can be helpful when we struggle to think of how religion can be a force for peace.   It invites us to ponder two fundamental contributions.  One, referring to the way we find ourselves concretely in the present, invites us to think of how religious actors can contribute their assets, skills, and comparative advantages to the emerging field of conflict transformation.  Viewed from a modern secular paradigm of peacemaking, these religious assets are seen as “instrumental” to resolving conflicts, even if the religious actors themselves retain their intrinsic religious motivations.  The other contribution is more foundational in religious terms, and refers quite directly to visions of peace, rooted in religious experience, which go beyond contemporary secular models of reality.  For many religious people, these two modes are complementary even if at times in tension.

Let me focus first on the second musical line noted above, the one that is “holding and taking care of us,” and let me call it the “Gift of Peace.”  As a religious believer and in my capacity as the Secretary General of Religions for Peace, I have grown ever more convinced that it is precisely religious communities’ respective experiences of Transcendent Mystery—the Holy; the Supremely True, Good, and Beautiful; the Supremely Merciful—that is at the heart of their capacities to build peace. To speak of these respective religious experiences requires sensitivity, solid principles, and care in our use of words, as I—like the religious leaders with whom I work—am firmly committed to respecting the genuine differences of belief that are present among our respective traditions.

Nevertheless, in place after place, I have seen people turn to their faith and find strength when everything seems at an impasse. Ordinary people in the midst of conflicts and gross injustices often show us that—despite their sufferings, despite injustices that cry out to be addressed—they are not separated from what might be termed by each of our religious traditions in its own way as the Gift of Peace.  Often, it is a dark night of affliction, gross injustices, or withering losses that—like an x-ray—disclose the hidden strengths of spiritualities. This is worth pondering deeply by each believer in the terms of his or her respective religious tradition.

And what a mysterious Gift: in Sierra Leone, I worked with Muslim and Christian amputees, victims whose limbs had been chopped off, but who also said they were willing to forgive. During the formal peace talks in Lomé, Togo, I spoke with a man who lost his beloved wife and daughter, his house, his job. His loved ones could not be returned to him.  Yet, he ended his story with the words:  “Thank God for peace. I forgive them all.”

To acknowledge that the living link with Transcendent Mystery remains in the midst of social brokenness is not a license to exonerate us from our moral responsibilities.  It does, however, help center our attention on what is uniquely religious.  It can invite each to open to his or her tradition’s most original religious experience of the Gift of Peace.  A Gift that is—however mysteriously—positive, holistic, harmonious, compassionate and a summons for justice.  The Gift of Peace is alluded to in various religious traditions by fecund words such as Shanti, the Pure Land, Shalom, the Kingdom of God, Dar el-Salam and others.

Today, in my own organization, Religions for Peace, religious leaders are working together from over 100 countries to transpose their basic symbols of peace into a public notion of “Shared Security” that tries to give modest public expression to what is shared among diverse religious communities’ visions of peace.  This notion of Shared Security recognizes the profound reciprocity of all of existence, its fundamental vulnerability and the moral imperative to care for the other.  Perhaps it can be understood as an invitation for collective creativity to forge a new public political paradigm resonant with the deepest shared wisdom of religious traditions.  Such religious creativity can extend contemporary secular discussions of peace by focusing on its positive, inter-related, and normative characteristics.  It is work for the long haul.

But we live in the rapidly changing present, so let me return to the musical metaphor, shifting attention away from “the one who is holding us,” the Gift of Peace, to the toddler, to us as a fragile and collectively “battered” child trying to go forward.  This pole of the musical metaphor calls us to face squarely the extremely difficult concrete situations that confront us and the challenge of taking next steps.  It calls us to clarify for ourselves how religious people can contribute concretely to the emerging field of conflict transformation.

The fact that religious intolerance and extremism are real factors in some conflicts, including those in fragile states, makes it all the more important to identify genuine religious potentials for helping to transform conflict.   How, then, can religious people, contribute to the emerging field of conflict transformation?

While no two conflicts progress in the same way, there is an emerging method of multi-religious conflict transformation.  At its simplest, this method involves assisting religious communities to join in a multi-stakeholder dynamic analysis of a given conflict to identify the needed roles (education, advocacy, mediation, reconciliation) essential to the resolution of that conflict.  In a second step, religious communities inventory themselves to discover if they have assets—at least potential assets—to serve the roles identified as essential to resolving the conflict or a dynamic aspect of it.   In a third step, the potential religious assets are mobilized, equipped, and engaged in the needed conflict transformation roles.

The engagement of the method often takes place in a multi-religious context, which can align different communities around similar goals, capture the complementary strengths of such communities, and provide efficiencies in training and facilitate multi-stakeholder partnerships between the religious communities and other essential actors.  This is difficult, hard work, and it is typically chronically underfunded.  It can often work best when it is carefully aligned, and sometimes softly linked, with governmental and or United Nations peacemaking processes.

But what, then, are the assets that religious communities can bring to resolving conflicts?  The first class of religious assets might be called “spiritualities.”  People do find hope when there appear to be no grounds for ordinary hopes.  People do sacrifice themselves out of care for others. And people do forgive the unforgivable. Spiritual strengths, such as these are cultivated in each religious tradition in its own way. These spiritualities can provide the strength to engage in roles essential to conflict transformation such as countering messages of hate and calls for violence, and advancing reconciliation and healing among and between conflicted persons and communities.

Building on the power of spiritualities, there are the related moral heritages of each tradition that can provide to their believers a compass for dealing with the extremely complex situations encountered in conflicts.  Our moral heritages are not simply catalogs of “do's” and “don'ts,” although these are important. They are shapers of character and conscience and cultivators of virtue.

Think for example of the great Emir Abd el-Kader, who won the praise of fellow 19th-century luminaries as diverse as President Lincoln, Queen Victoria and Pope Pius IX. Abd el-Kader, you may recall, mounted military resistance against the bungled French occupation of Algeria in 1830. During the time that he led the resistance, he was known for his courage and tenacity, but equally for his exacting moral standards. He demanded, for example, that prisoners receive humane care— indeed, exactly the same rations as his own soldiers. He surrendered to French generals in 1847, lived under house arrest in France, and was exiled to Damascus in 1852. There he saved thousands of imperiled Christians. He had a moral compass, and struggled to use it consistently, most tellingly in his comportment with those with whom he differed. When he died in 1883, the New York Times hailed him as “one of the few great men of the century.”[2]

Finally, religious communities have unique social assets.  Hundreds of thousands of mosques, churches, synagogues, and temples dot the four corners of the earth. These local congregations are linked by districts, and organized on national and often regional and global levels. They constitute a tissue of connection that unites each congregation with the others associated within the same tradition. Every local congregation in the vast webs of religious networks is potentially a local center for advancing peace.

In short, we have spiritual, moral, and social assets that can be engaged in today’s emerging field of conflict transformation.  It is these assets that can concretely be harnessed for the needed roles of education, advocacy, mediation, and reconciliation essential to transforming conflicts.

In pragmatic terms, we can see the added value of multi-religious cooperation in situations that are extremely difficult for nation states or the United Nations to manage.  Increasingly we are forced to recognize the link between religion, conflict, and failed or fragile states.  One in four countries is defined as a “fragile state,” according to a Foreign Policy focus issue (August 2010).  Fragile states often cannot provide even the most basic of services for their citizens, including minimum security for their inhabitants.  These fragile states can too easily become breeding grounds for radicalization and a refuge for extremist groups, compounding the miseries of innocent civilians and multiplying instability.  The international community faces difficulties in addressing violent conflict in these places not least because it does not know with whom to engage to set things on the right track.  Religious communities provide an important entry point.  For example, even an extremely difficult situation such as Somalia makes clear that religious channels can remain open when diplomatic ones are blocked.

In this special edition of the Journal of Inter-religious Dialogue, you are invited to ponder how religious assets need to be engaged to create an environment of trust in the Middle East and Sri Lanka, to be deployed in efforts to protect women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to support youth with a healthy alternative to the callings of radical groups.  These, and the other fine examples in this edition, point to an ever fuller engagement of religious people in peacebuilding.

As more and more religious people around the world work together for peace—cooperating with one another as they work to marshal their spiritualities, moralities, and the living networks of their faith communities in concrete peacemaking roles—we can also take heart in the chord that arises out of silence and supports every tentative step forward.  People hear it and interpret it in different ways.  Yet, they find in their hearings comfort in the hardest of times, hope when nothing seems clear, and acceptance of one another as part of the Gift of Peace.

Dr. William F. Vendley

Secretary General
Religions for Peace

[2] See John W. Kiser, Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader (Monkfish Book Pub. Co, Rhinebeck, NY, 2008).

If respectful debate and engagement enliven our own sacred texts, we must similarly work to make interfaith learning in seminary rather than view it as a passive undertaking. By its very nature, it seems meant to be made, not simply learned cold and dry in a course on comparative religions. This is not to say that such courses should be discounted, but rather that they should be supplemented or structured so that seminarians can engage, struggle with, debate, and thereby gain a fuller respect for other religious traditions.

But how can interfaith studies be made? If everyone in a seminary is of the same denomination (as in many cases) or at least the same umbrella religion (as in most others), with whom can seminarians engage in the creative, tense process ofmaking interfaith learning?

Some seminaries have answered offhand that you simply cannot do so without a multi-faith student body. Hebrew College andAndover Newton Theological School cohabitate the same campus to ensure the creative tension necessary to make interfaith learning happen daily. The now-interfaith Claremont School of Theology similarly brings students in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian programs under the same roof. But for the majority of seminary, divinity, and graduate school students, deeper interfaith learning cannot be found on campus - and sometimes not even nearby.

Yet such learning must continue to take place. Without it, an entire generation of clergy may enter congregations and positions of leadership with notions of other traditions that resemble cardboard cutouts rather than refined, detailed pictures wrought by intensive study and full-hearted grappling.

Clergy will be less able to collaborate with other religious communities if they do not understand their own traditions in relational terms - terms forged through intensive discourse. Yet even American seminaries devoted to a single denomination can encourage students to make interfaith learning - in this case online.

Current seminarians are expected to be versatile online - and in time even use online resources to teach and help make their traditions come alive. A number of websites, notably this very online publication, have worked to foster quality dialogue between readers and commentators of different traditions. Yet few have enabled seminarians to actually guide the conversation and contribute a majority of articles.

As Chris Stedman, Managing Director of State of Formation, a new forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders, notes in a recent article, "The current American discourse on religion and ethics is primarily defined by established leaders... While their perspectives are invaluable, this leaves an entire population of importantstakeholders without a platform: the up-and-comers.'"

For future clergy to truly make interfaith leadership, they must first find a conversation that they can join as equal partners. When we are willing to allow it, this may readily take place online.

This article was originally published on the Tikkun Daily and then re-featured on the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue's State of Formation website.

"'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart." So said Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, in a 2007 interview with The Atlantic. He might be right, but I can't help but wonder: What if we could reach both the head and the heart?

It's a question I asked myself many times over while writing my Master of Arts in Religion thesis on narrative and religion last year. Now, as the Managing Director of State of Formation, a new online forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders founded by the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue and run in partnership with Hebrew College, Andover Newton Theological School and collaboration with Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, I am so excited about the content that has flooded the site in its inaugural week -- and how our religious and philosophical academics are using both their minds and their hearts to enter into dialogue.

Our initial group of nearly 70 contributing scholars contains Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Protestant (among them Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and others), Hindu, Secular Humanist, Sikh, Agnostic, Greek Orthodox, Unitarian Universalist, Mormon, Evangelical Christian, Atheist and Lindisfarne participants. Some were born in the Bible belt; others grew up in places like Jamaica, Singapore, Japan, and Germany. They are gay and straight, liberal and conservative, religious and secular.

There is also a wide range of experience among them. Some have been engaged in interfaith dialogue and social action for years -- others are brand new to it. There are Ph.D. students, people in Master of Arts in Religion, Master of Divinity, and Master of Education programs, some fresh out of graduate school, community organizers and activists, and even a recent Master of Fine Arts graduate and current professor of creative writing who is at work on a memoir about growing up as an Evangelical Christian. Many live in various parts of the United States of America, and there are several in England, Israel, Australia and other parts of the world.

It's an eclectic cohort, to be sure, and already their dialogue is rife with questions, disagreements and attempts at answers. The singular consensus among these religiously varied emerging leaders? This dialogue matters.

Jason A. Kerr, a doctoral candidate in English at Boston College and a lifelong Mormon, has high hopes for this project. "I'm hoping that State of Formation will enable its contributors and readers to forge a new community, one that can amplify the capacities for good now present in those communities to which we already belong," wrote Kerr in his first post. "We're undertaking a very difficult sort of dialogue here, but also a very necessary one."

Kari Aanestad, a Master of Divinity student spending a year in Oxford, England, where her husband is a Rhodes Scholar studying the history of science, agrees. "Interfaith work ... is absolutely crucial, and as a Lutheran I could not be more committed to this dialogue. One of the primary tenets of my faith is that I am free to love and serve my neighbors, which challenges me to go beyond my local culture and hear the stories of those outside, to meet new people (yes, even non-Lutherans!) and learn from them," Aanestad wrote in her first post, a reflection on what she is discovering about interfaith dialogue by living in a context dramatically different from the Midwest, where her Lutheran heritage was commonplace. "While I have ultimately learned that my spiritual identity is not synonymous with Minnesota culture, perhaps there's room for a new potluck where everyone's dish is welcome."

Every contributor comes from a particular religious or philosophical background, but this difficult and enriching dialogue also enables each to be an individual, not just a representative of her or his tradition. "While I hold no illusions that my contributions to this space represent the Islamic perspective on any particular issue," wrote Garfield Swaby, a student working towards a Masters in Islamic Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations at Hartford Seminary, "I hope only to blog new reflections into existence informed by my understanding of Islam, or by any of my other commitments, for that matter."

By engaging with one another's commitments, they are already getting to know one another and making their dialogue more about mutual understanding than about academic knowing. "As young scholars, practitioners, and activists, our intellectual lives, our spiritual lives, or our careers might be in states of formation, but the public conversations about religion and ethics in the United States are also in a state of formation," wrote Joshua Eaton, a Buddhist and recent Master of Divinity graduate from Harvard University. "My hope is that State of Formation can help put some meat on the bones of that conversation by giving voice not just to the what of religion, but also to the who, when, where, why, and how. Religion could not be more important to our public life; we cannot afford to be uninformed."

This is a new and exciting endeavor for all involved, but perhaps maybe for none more than Brandon Turner. In his first post, Turner explored why an online forum may be an ideal platform for this challenging and transformative dialogue.

"Why did an individual who has never blogged, tweeted, or facebooked (is this the term?) decide to apply to a new interreligious initiative that will exist almost exclusively in the online world?" asked Turner. "I believe that ... those who are a part of this ever growing community are truly embarking on something unique. As we get to know each other over the next few months, I believe we will be, in many ways, defining what 'interreligious dialogue 2.0' will look like in the future."

To see the future religious and philosophical leaders of tomorrow begin to redefine the discourse on religion and ethics together today, please take a look at the website. We invite you to weigh in; as our diverse group of Contributing Scholars can attest, this is a conversation that not only needs everyone -- it needs everyone's heart and mind.

Contact: Christopher Delos Stedman, www.stateofformation.org
612-750-1661; chris@irdialogue.org

Leading Interfaith Organizations Launch "State of Formation" Forum for Emerging Leaders

Current American discourse on religion and ethics is primarily defined by established leaders—ministers, rabbis, academics and journalists. There is an entire population of important stakeholders without a platform: the up-and-comers.

To remedy this, the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, Hebrew College, Andover Newton Theological School, and the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions have joined forces to create State of Formation, a forum for up-and-coming religious thinkers to draw upon the learning that is occurring in their academic and community work, reflect on the pressing questions of a religiously pluralistic society, and challenge existing religious definitions.

State of Formation is a community conversation between leaders in formation. Together, a cohort of seminarians, rabbinical students, graduate students, activists and the like—the future religious and moral leaders of tomorrow—are working to redefine the ethical discourse today.

Writers for State of Formation will demonstrate candor and respect, and State of Formation's content will reflect the diversity of budding religious and ethical leadership in America and the particular learning that only occurs in religious and philosophical education. Above all, its contributors will address the pressing ethical issues of our pluralistic world.

The Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, the parent publication of State of Formation, is a program of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.

State of Formation: www.stateofformation.org
Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue: www.irdialogue.org

Photo Courtesy of JTSA

Seminaries, higher education institutions where professors of religion and religious leaders train students to become clergy, have been present in the United States for centuries. Because seminary students are generally being trained as religious leaders who will oversee congregations, their seminary education has a powerful impact on these students’ future congregations.

For decades, religious diversity in American seminaries meant the admission of students from different Christian denominations. Then Jews began to attend and even found prominent seminaries, notably Hebrew Union College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Yet with the notable exception of the MacDonald Center for the Study of Islam at Hartford Seminary, few American seminaries have historically developed programmes focusing on the study of Islam. The Muslim population had been dramatically underrepresented. Only in the past decade have these trends begun to change – with a greater emphasis on both teaching Islamic studies in Christian and Jewish institutions and giving credence to the increasingly prominent idea that it is time for Muslim Americans to found a seminary of their own.

Regarding the latter, the last two years have shown a particular flurry of growth and institution-building within the Muslim American community. First was the founding of Zaytuna College (as an outgrowth of the Zaytuna Institute) in 2009, designed to become a full-scale university for Muslim undergraduate and graduate students in America.

Then just this past October, a landmark interfaith workshop, “Judaism and Islam in America”, co-sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hartford Seminary and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), brought to the fore discussions about building an American seminary solely for the training of imams and Muslim religious scholars. While such a project may still be years away, excitement surrounding the idea for a Muslim American seminary reflects a growing need to train Muslim clergy well-versed in traditional texts and with an understanding of the American context in which they would work.

Yet even as an institution that trains Muslim American clergy remains in discussion, Muslim students are now becoming valued as essential participants in divinity and graduate programmes across the United States. In fact, a number of new partnerships have emerged in recognition of the growing presence of Muslims and Islamic studies in seminaries.

Since 2008, for example, the Hebrew Union College and University of Southern California have partnered with the Omar Ibn Al-Khattab Foundation – a Los Angeles-based philanthropic organisation that works to support other Muslim organisations – to establish the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement. All three institutions feel that the centre holds significant potential, noting the success of its interfaith text-study programmes and existing efforts to bolster Jewish studies programmes in majority-Muslim countries while also strengthening Islamic studies programmes in North America and Europe.

Other centres, such as the Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice (CCME) at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, have been in existence even longer. CCME has focused largely on urging Christian graduates of the seminary to be knowledgeable about Islam so they may collaborate with Muslim organisations and clergy throughout their future careers.

Most remarkable, however, was the announcement earlier this year that southern California’s Claremont School of Theology, an institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church, is poised to add full-scale ordination programmes for Muslim and Jewish students seeking to become members of the clergy in their respective communities. It is set to become the only institution in the world that also offers parallel training programs for imams, rabbis, and pastors.

While these profound institutional shifts may be more visible, cultural shifts in seminaries are also rapidly taking place. When I first spoke with colleagues about the potential to found State of Formation, a blog for top emerging religious and ethics leaders from across America, the first question many asked was whether I would be recruiting Muslim students. This would never have happened five years ago and is an indication that Muslim students are not simply tolerated in American seminaries but actively welcomed.

Seminaries have historically been at the leading edge of social change in America. It would seem that one of their current causes is the fuller integration of Muslims into American society – beginning in their very own classrooms.

Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI issued a warning that the Internet was "numbing" young people and creating an "educational emergency - a challenge that we can and must respond to with creative intelligence."

Speaking at a Vatican conference on culture, Benedict also expressed concern that "a large number of young people" are "establish[ing] forms of communication that do not increase humaneness but instead risk increasing a sense of solitude and disorientation."

Benedict's comments created an uproar, but he has a point. Studies show that Internet addiction is linked to depression; in 2007, the comedy website Cracked offered a surprisingly moving take on this phenomenon titled "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable."

It's tempting, knowing this, to suggest that we all take a step away from our keyboards, turn off our computers, and go find a field to frolic in.

As much as I love the instant gratification of being able to download the latest Kanye West album the moment it is released and being able to stay connected to my family back in Minnesota through Facebook, I also know that the Internet has created a new kind of culture in which the rules of engagement have shifted dramatically. The rise of cyberbullying in recent years demonstrates that our more-connected world comes with new moral and ethical questions that we must respond to with creativity and acumen.

As we saw with "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,"culture wars are born online. But I also believe that the Internet has created opportunities to open channels of dialogue that were, previous to now, next to impossible. Where culture wars are born, so too can we build bridges.

With this conviction, I am excited by the launch of State of Formation, a new online forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders from around the world, founded by the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue and run in partnership with Hebrew College, Andover Newton and collaboration with Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions.

My hope is that State of Formation will be just one of many attempts to use the Internet as a tool to make our world more connected, not more isolated; more informed, not less; more humane, not more cruel.

When I stopped believing in God, I swore off religion altogether, believing that it was an inherently bad thing because it had negatively impacted my life. Today, as an interfaith activist, I recognize that religion can be harnessed for good, especially when we work across lines of religious and secular identity to uncover our common values and act in unity.

Just as religion can and has been used as a force to commit to evil, the Internet can allow bullies to dominate the conversation. But the Internet, like religion, can also be a tool for transformation, if we wield it responsibly.

Today's guest blogger is Chris Stedman, an IFYC alum; the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University; and the Managing Director of State of Formation, a new initiative at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue. This article has been featured by On Faith and Tikkun.