The Global Ethics Conference
April 13, 14, 2005


Synopsis:

On July 13 and 14, 2005, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel was honored to host the conference on Global Ethics together with Niagara Foundation and Divinity School of the University of Chicago. The roster of speakers--academics, activists, and leaders from three religious traditions --offered a variety of perspectives on the possibility of defining a global ethic. The sources to which they referred included sacred texts, current events, historical situations, theological suppositions, contemporary projects, and the hopes of people everywhere for basic guidelines that can guide the global community to mutually satisfying practices that bring justice, harmony, and a shared commitment to the well-being of all people.

Their approaches were very different, but their conclusions were similar: the process will be difficult but it is very necessary. Rather than discarding the whole proposition as a temptation to articulate a meaningless "lowest common denominator", a washed-out series of pronouncements that would take the global community nowhere, the project was applauded as one that has never been more necessary. Religious traditions today, in particular, are noted by many as the sources of intra- and inter-community violence. The conference speakers, rather, affirmed the positive role that religious communities need to play today. To say that "religion" is the problem in the current world order is simplistic. Particular local or regional religious communities certainly contribute to violence today, but the great majority of the world's religious communities are actually the crucial, often untapped resources ready to provide the ethical guidelines and motives for relating positively to one another, for harnessing the nations' resources for serving the most vulnerable, and for establishing equitable relationships with one another. The challenge for religious people today is to help this potential to bear fruit.

Look for a special issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, to be published this fall, that will feature the papers offered at the conference.

Alison L. Boden
Dean of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and
Senior Lecturer in the Divinity School; also in the College

The conference on global ethics entitled “The Search for Common Ground” organized by the Niagara Foundation and held at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago was an unusually rich and timely event. Never before has the quest for common ground among people of faith and religious values assumed such momentous significance as at the present time. The academics and activists who gathered at this two-day conference generously shared their insights into their religious traditions and identified both the positive contributions and problems generated by specific construals of these traditions. There was emphasis laid on how we should re-engage our religious texts and challenge illiberal and divisive interpretations promoted in certain quarters which hurt particularly our youth. Through pro-active intervention and faithful re-readings of scripture, we can counteract such corrosive messages by promoting a liberal and tolerant understanding of the role of religion in our contemporary world.

At the end of the day, the impressive papers presented from a variety of religious perspectives – primarily Christian, Islamic, and Jewish – underscored the crucial point that these cognate religious traditions share core ethical values. Such a shared ethical vision allows for a global idiom to emerge focused on commonly cherished values of tolerance, humanitarianism, justice, and reconciliation. I do not think I speak only for myself when I say that I came away from the symposium with renewed optimism that our religious traditions can yield to us the resources for fashioning a more pluralistic and just global order.

Asma Afsaruddin
University of Notre Dama