Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning
Upcoming Public Events at UST
Muslim-Christian Dialogue: Challenges and Possibilities
Presentation by Amir Hussain
Tuesday, February 14, 7:30 p.m.
O’Shaughnessy Educational Center Auditorium
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus
Christians and Muslims together make up over half of the world's population. Their relationship has included periods of violence, but also of cooperation and coexistence. Professor Hussain will discuss Muslim-Christian dialogue both historically and in our contemporary world.
Amir Hussain, Ph.D., is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit university in Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on world religions. A Canadian Muslim who specializes in the study of Islam, his academic degrees are from the University of Toronto, where he received a number of awards, including the university’s highest alumni award for outstanding service. He is the author of Oil and Water: Two Faiths, One God, an introduction to Islam and Muslim-Christian dialogue, and more than two dozen book chapters and scholarly articles about Islam and Muslims. He is also the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the premier scholarly journal for the study of religion. An appointed fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, he has appeared on the History Channel and has given interviews to numerous newspapers and magazines, including Beliefnet.com, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, and The Washington Post.
Jointly sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning and the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center at the University of St. Thomas
Free and open to the public
Religion and Gender: Jewish and Catholic Perspectives
An Interfaith Conversation featuring Rabbi Sharon Stiefel
and Father Erich Rutten
Thursday, March 1, 12 noon to 1:15 p.m.
McNeely Hall 100
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus
Buffet lunch provided free of charge
Within the worlds of Judaism and Catholicism, a variety of issues have to do with gender. Rabbi Stiefel and Father Rutten will discuss some of the central issues, giving special attention to the challenge of involving young men in religious activities and the claim made by some observers that spirituality has become associated with femininity.
Rabbi Sharon Stiefel is spiritual care director and rabbi of Sholom Hospice for Sholom Community Alliance. She holds a B.A. in sociology from Pomona College, an M.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. in Hebrew Letters from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania, where she was ordained. Rabbi Stiefel has spent most of her career serving Jewish students on college and university campuses (Grinnell College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Minnesota). In 2005 she received the University of Minnesota’s Breaking the Silence Award for confronting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification.
Fr. Erich Rutten is the director of campus ministry for the University of St. Thomas and the chair of the St. Paul Archdiocesan Commission on Ecumenism and Interreligious Affairs. He holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois-Champagne-Urbana, an M.A. in systematic theology from Saint John’s University (Collegeville, Minnesota), and an M.Div. from The Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity. Following his ordination, Fr. Rutten became an associate pastor at the Cathedral of St. Paul and then the associate pastor of Our Lady of Grace in Edina. Prior to becoming the director of campus ministry, he taught in both the theology department and justice and peace studies departments at St. Thomas.
Jointly sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning and Campus Ministry at the University of Saint Thomas
God and Politics: A Spiritual State of the Union
Presentation by Rabbi Sharon Brous
Tuesday, March 13, 7:30 p.m.
O’Shaughnessy Educational Center Auditorium
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus
Recent years have witnessed a dangerous resurfacing of racial tension, religious intolerance, and political divisiveness in American life. Outbursts of venomous anger, often expressed in the name of God, have produced an ugly new standard in public discourse. At the same time, Americans, often inspired by their faith in God, have seen through racial, religious, and national fault lines and have responded courageously and contributed generously to others in the wake of disasters at home and abroad. In this presentation, Rabbi Sharon Brous will reflect on how different views of God serve to foster different types of public discourse, action, and culture
.
Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles whose mission is to promote the integration of soulful prayer, serious learning, and social justice. A graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in history and an M.A. in human rights and conflict resolution, she was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where she received several awards in Talmud and homiletics. She has been named to The Jewish Daily Forward's list of the 50 most influential American Jews and to Newsweek's list of America's leading rabbis. Rabbi Brous is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post's "On Faith" and she has been a guest on Krista Tippet's National Public Radio program "Speaking of Faith." She serves on the board of Rabbis for Human Rights, on the rabbinic advisory board of American Jewish World Service, on the regional council of Progressive Jewish Alliance, and as a member of the Task Force to Advance Multireligious Collaboration on Global Poverty.
This presentation is part of the Jay Phillips Center's Rabbis-in-Residence program supported by a grant from the Brenden-Mann Foundation
Reaching Across Faiths
A Christian and a Muslim Responding to Each Other's Sacred Texts
An Interfaith Conversation Featuring John Del Vecchio and Adil Ozdemir
Thursday, March 29, 12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m.
McNeely Hall 100
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus
Buffet lunch provided free of charge
How can engaging the faith tradition and sacred texts of your neighbor both inspire and challenge dialogue? Is interfaith engagement of sacred texts outside your own tradition appropriate and should it be encouraged? These questions will serve as the basis of this interfaith program, which John Del Vecchio conceived after receiving an English copy of the Qur’an from someone in a mixed-faith marriage.
John Del Vecchio, J.D., is an adjunct professor in the ethics and business law department of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas. He also teaches history of music industry and music careers in the UST music department. He operates a private general practice law firm for people with varied backgrounds, incomes, and faiths.
Adil Ozdemir, Ph.D., a native of Turkey, taught Qur'anic rhetoric at Nine September University in Izmir, Turkey, for twenty five years. Since 2003 he has been teaching courses on Islam at the University of St. Thomas where he also is co-director of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center. He is the co-author with Kenneth Frank of
Visible Islam in Modern Turkey (Macmillan).
Sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning, Ethics and Business Law Department, and the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center
How Interreligious Engagement Transforms Faith
Presentation by Peter Feldmeier
Thursday, April 12, 12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m.
McNeely Hall 100
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus
Buffet lunch provided free of charge
When we enter into the theological and spiritual vision of the religious other, we can discover new ways of seeing the world and ourselves. This new vision can not only deepen our own religious convictions, but can also provide a whole other spiritual dimension. Professor Feldmeier will reflect on how interreligious engagement can move from merely comparing sets of religious claims to transformational possibilities.
Peter Feldmeier, Ph.D., formerly a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, is the Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo. He holds a doctorate in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and has published widely in areas of spirituality and interreligious dialogue. His most recent books are The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada with Leo Lefebure (Peeters/Eerdmans) and Encounters in Faith: Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue (Anselm Academic), both published in 2011.
Free and open to the public
